Generative AI is a tool, not an intellectual substitute. In deciding how it may be used in a course, teachers should be guided by a basic principle: human intelligence, conscience, and responsibility must remain primary in a seminarian’s formation; truth must be pursued and verified rather than simply produced; and technology must serve, rather than displace, the human work and relationships through which seminarians are formed.
The seminary’s default policy prohibits seminarians from using generative AI to produce submitted work unless a teacher explicitly permits it. Within this default, teachers are responsible for determining what use of generative AI, if any, is appropriate for their course, and for communicating this clearly to seminarians, ideally in writing in the course syllabus rather than through oral remarks alone.
A course policy should make clear whether generative AI may be used, and if so, for which kinds of tasks. A general statement that AI use is “permitted” or “not permitted” is often not sufficient, since seminarians may reasonably wonder whether this covers activities such as brainstorming, outlining, checking grammar, locating sources, or generating practice questions, in addition to producing full drafts. Teachers should specify not only whether generative AI is permitted, but what functions it may perform for a given assignment, and should note whether this differs by assignment type. The table below illustrates the kind of specification that is helpful; a teacher’s own policy may reasonably reach different conclusions for a given course.
| Function | Typical status |
| Brainstorming ideas | Permitted |
| Explaining a concept (AI as tutor) | Permitted |
| Locating sources (AI as research assistant) | Permitted |
| Grammar and language correction (AI as editor) | Prohibited |
| Generating an outline | Depends on assignment |
| Revising a seminarian’s own draft (AI as editor) | Depends on assignment |
| Translation | Permitted |
| Drafting prose (AI as generator) | Prohibited |
| Generating substantive analysis or argument (AI as generator/substitute) | Prohibited |
It can help to describe these functions to seminarians in terms of the role generative AI is playing. AI can serve as a tutor, explaining a concept or answering questions so a seminarian can check his own understanding; as a research assistant, helping locate or summarise background sources; or as an editor, correcting grammar or suggesting revisions to a seminarian’s own prose. Depending on the assignment, these roles can be legitimate. AI can also function as a generator, producing text, analysis, or argument that did not originate with the seminarian, or as an outright substitute, performing the intellectual work an assignment is designed to develop in place of the seminarian himself. These latter two roles are ordinarily prohibited in submitted work, because they displace rather than support the seminarian’s own exercise of judgement. It is common, for instance, to permit generative AI as a tutor or research assistant for preliminary study while prohibiting its use as a generator of the analysis or argument submitted for evaluation.
Where some use of generative AI is permitted, teachers should decide whether seminarians must disclose how it was used, such as through a brief statement accompanying the assignment indicating the nature and extent of that use. Requiring disclosure is often the simplest way to preserve the value of an assessment while still allowing seminarians to benefit from the tool. Teachers should also identify, as concretely as possible, what would constitute a violation of the course policy, since the general seminary-wide statement on academic misconduct may not be specific enough to guide seminarians in a particular course.
Teachers who have not yet formed a settled view on use of generative AI in their course may adopt as a working default that generative AI may be used to support study and research, but not to produce any text, argument, or analysis that is submitted as the seminarian’s own work. This preserves the seminary’s general policy while giving seminarians a clear and workable standard until a more detailed course policy is developed.
Finally, setting a good policy is not only a matter of stating rules. Pope Leo XIV, in his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas, argues that education must equip people to use new technologies “responsibly, critically and creatively” (§145), and he challenges those responsible for education to “invest in education, beginning with ourselves”. Seminarians should not simply be told what not to do; they should be helped to understand what responsible use of these tools actually looks like, and this depends on teachers — and formation leadership more broadly — engaging the question seriously themselves.