You can use some AI tools at FIU, with full disclosure and with your committee's agreement. The University Graduate School (UGS) set this out in guidelines from January 2026 and in the ETD manual, version 8.0.0, revised February 2026: students disclose all AI use, and the committee reviews and approves it as part of the thesis or dissertation evaluation. Programs can add stricter rules, and the PhD in Public Affairs does. Ask your major professor and committee before you use any AI tool on the thesis.
If your AI statement clearly doesn't cover what you describe elsewhere in your thesis, Esmond points it out.
The ETD manual has a short section headed Use of AI. Its key sentence: “The committee must review and approve students’ AI use as part of dissertation/thesis evaluation and attest to the authenticity and originality of committee-approved work.”
Ask your major professor and committee first, before you use Esmond or any other AI tool on your thesis or dissertation, and disclose the use if they agree.
The UGS guidelines behind the manual apply to thesis-bound master's students and doctoral students. In our summary: you disclose every AI use to your committee, you keep your original unedited drafts, and you consult your faculty mentors when you are unsure whether a use is acceptable. The guidelines also say programs, schools and departments may set additional standards for their discipline, and that students are responsible for both levels.
A hypothetical example of a commentYour acknowledgments say a tool helped only with outline refinement, but your methods section credits a tool with cleaning the survey data. Which description did your committee review?
A first comment on one part of your own draft, right away and without an account.
Get a free previewThe guidelines give a table of examples. In our words, and with the rule that every acceptable use still has to be disclosed:
| Accepted, with disclosure | Not accepted |
|---|---|
| Grammar and minor editorial corrections | Generating or reworking substantive parts of a proposal, thesis, dissertation or exam answer |
| Help organizing ideas, outlining, or making a passage clearer | Fabricating data, results, citations, literature summaries or arguments |
| Code, data visualizations or images, if your committee or faculty advisor agrees | Uploading proprietary, confidential, identifiable or sensitive data |
| Support with data analysis, under proper oversight | Presenting AI output as your own original work |
| Explanations of concepts or methods to help you learn | Relying on AI output without checking it |
UGS asks for the disclosure in the preliminary pages, in the acknowledgments, preface or a similar section. That applies to proposal drafts and thesis or dissertation drafts submitted for committee review, and to the final ETD manuscript. AI use in data analysis also belongs in the methods section, and AI used for figures or visualizations is cited and disclosed in the figure caption.
The disclosure names the tools, the purpose and scope of their use, and the parts of the work they touched. The ETD manual gives template text for the acknowledgments page, which programs may adapt, and it ends with a sentence stating that your committee reviewed all AI use and agreed to it. On format, the manual says: “Check with disciplinary publishing guidelines regarding the proper format for citing AI.”
The Department of Public Policy and Administration has its own AI policy for dissertations in the Public Affairs PhD handbook for 2025-2026. This is a program rule and applies to that program. On text, it is strict: “Students must refrain from using generative AI algorithms (e.g., ChatGPT) to create text on their behalf.” Spelling and grammar checkers are allowed; AI features that rephrase your sentences are not.
Any other use of AI needs a form signed by the student and the major professor before the use starts, submitted to the PhD program director. The form asks you to explain the purpose, the method and how you will make sure the results are accurate. The handbook adds: “Upon approval by the dissertation chair, the student shall also make sure that none of the committee members oppose the use of AI.”
Once a use is allowed, the record continues: “AI use shall be documented and discussed in the dissertation manuscript, and AI prompts need to be preserved and reported.” AI transcription of interviews is named as an exception that needs no form, though the handbook asks you to check those transcripts for errors.
The UGS guidelines ask students to keep all original and revised drafts, as support for the originality of their work. They also say results from AI detection tools should not be the sole evidence of misconduct, and that programs should not move to allegations without a careful review with the student.
Improper AI use may still count as academic misconduct under the FIU Student Conduct and Honor Code, and use without proper attribution may count as research misconduct under the FIU Research Misconduct Policy. The guidelines quote both.
This example is made up. A master's student in environmental studies tells his committee that he used an AI tool to tidy the outline of his literature review, and his acknowledgments page says the same. Later, under deadline pressure, he uses the same tool to clean and recode a survey dataset, and mentions it briefly in the methods section. His committee reviewed one use. The second one, AI support with data analysis, is on the accepted list only with proper oversight and disclosure, and his acknowledgments page doesn't mention it. The two parts of the thesis now describe different histories.
Esmond evaluates every assignment before you submit. It never writes it.
Esmond is an AI tool that doesn't write for you. If your course doesn't allow any AI tools, don't use Esmond for that work. If you're unsure, ask your instructor or advisor.
At FIU, ask your major professor and committee first, since the committee reviews every AI use in your thesis; in the Public Affairs PhD that means the signed form before you start. If they agree, disclose Esmond in the preliminary pages like any other tool, with its purpose and the chapters you sent. Esmond evaluates the content of a draft from within your field and points out factual errors, inconsistencies and blind spots, which is the kind of use your committee would be judging; how Esmond works and the sample report show it. For the general question, see whether you can use Esmond. Florida International University has not reviewed or approved Esmond.
No. UGS accepts some uses, with full disclosure and committee review. Programs can be stricter: the Public Affairs PhD excludes AI-generated text and requires a signed form for other uses.
The UGS guidelines list grammar and minor editorial corrections as acceptable, and say all acceptable uses must be disclosed.
In the preliminary pages, such as the acknowledgments or preface. Data analysis help also goes in the methods section, and figure help in the caption.
A form in the Public Affairs PhD handbook, signed by the student and the major professor before an AI use other than grammar and spelling checks starts, and submitted to the PhD program director. AI-generated text is excluded altogether, and AI transcription of interviews needs no form.
Read on November 9, 2026.
Get your paper evaluated before you submit