Best Practices for Trust in the Use of Generative AI Tools (prompt-summary, text-to-video, text-to-image)

Project overview

Summary:

A series of activities in an Innovation Fora tailored to expand Sprite+ networks explored what the general public understand about artificial intelligence (AI) and how generative AI (GenAI) tools (text summarisers; audio, sound and video generators) are being used in the public and private sector.

Driven by questions gathered through a GDPR-compliant survey before a free-to-attend, hybrid public international panel, the event brought together interested stakeholders in-person and online, on Thursday 22 May 2025 in Coventry University, in a dialogue discussing ‘Do you know your AI from your Generative AI?’.

The panel event highlighted that the public’s awakening to AI was increasingly through GenAI, such as Google’s Gemini, or OpenAI’s ChatGPT. This was amidst an increasing awareness of our personal data going to the top four or five big tech companies with our online privacy possibly infringed, copyright violations, identity and authenticity compromised from the capability of GenAI to produce students’ assignments, to trust erosion with using these nascent AI tools as personal assistants for everyday tasks. A second survey, post-panel event demonstrated that there was an eagerness for more public events about where AI is headed.

The final event hosted an in-person roundtable to focus on the implications for education from the prevalence of GenAI applications available to students and how to support their critical thinking. This Sprite+ innovation fora concluded successfully showcasing Sprite+ is an excellent platform, and with a view to finding further grants to organise more events with a diverse cohort of stakeholders to better understand how best to manage our lives in a future of more AI-driven products and services affecting human lives and work.

Further detail:

Designing and distributing surveys before (Survey1: pre-panel) and after (Survey2: post-panel) a free-to-attend public hybrid panel event, held in Coventry University’s Frank Whittle engineering building, gained questions from members of the general public providing an insight into the public’s confusion about ‘What AI is?’ and what the ‘Difference is between AI and Generative AI’. The public’s concerns about trust in the output from GenAI, data security and privacy issues using GenAI, teachers navigating authenticity in students’ learning in the age of AI assistants like ChatGPT, or Copilot drove the organised events facilitating ongoing safe conversational spaces for dialogue between all levels of stakeholders, from individuals who have never used and do not know how to use GenAI, to individuals using GenAI tools efficiently in their day-today tasks, and to AI and other scientists.

Draft questions in surveys 1 & 2 initially designed in a WORD document were sent firstly to Professor Mark Elliot, Director of the Sprite+ project led by Manchester University. Following helpful feedback to better align the questions with the Innovation Fora objectives, and to use an online survey, the questions were improved with the revised surveys designed in Microsoft Forms. These were sent to two Coventry University colleagues for their review and providing further feedback. Dr. Manizheh Montazerian’s and Stephanie Toman’s recommendations were implemented in both surveys’ final versions. The online link to access survey1 was distributed widely to a variety of networks realising numerous questions for the 22 May panel (see page 10: Output folder, .pdf Panel questions).

The date chosen for the panel was Thursday 22 May 2025, the week before UK School half-term thereby providing an opportunity for schools and colleges to participate if they could, in-person or online. Teachers from a local school (Myton) and college in Coventry attended in hybrid panel event in person (Jono Lowe) and online (various).

Invitations to join the hybrid international panel included individuals in Google DeepMind, and at ‘Women in AI’. Though no response was received from these organisations, other individuals forming a multidisciplinary group accepted the invitation to participate as panel members in-person (if in the UK), or online (international). Pre-panel event meetings were held online introducing the Panellists to each other and to discuss the order of this event. The panel were advised that the hybrid event would run as a conversation between the panel and attendees, hence no PowerPoint presentations were required from the Panellists.

As Survey1 questions were received, they were categorised and distributed to the invited panellists in order for the members to capture a flavour of how the public were viewing AI and GenAI. In an e-meeting with the Panellists before the 22 May event, it was suggested by Dr. Luigi Ceccaroni, an AI and citizen science Scientist at Earthwatch, to include an AI as a panellist. Microsoft’s Copilot was included as a panellist since Coventry University possessed licences for Microsoft Office suite of applications.

The list below presents the final invited hybrid panellists. After a welcome from Professor Ian Marshall, and Dr. Philip Gould, Sprite+ Director, Professor Mark Elliot, introduced Sprite+ project led by Manchester University. The international hybrid panel, chaired by Dr. Rebecca Butler (Dean of Coventry University’s College of Engineering, Environment and Science) opened with a Survey1 question on how “businesses prepare their workforce for the automation and AI driven tools?”

In-person Panellists Salman Nazir began the discussion explaining from his perspective as a professor in training and assessment, that though we should welcome and integrate AI, since there were some positive signs around applications, there were a lot of challenges, such as ‘trust in AI’. He added that, for a driverless car, say, “which has a higher level of autonomy”, how much information should we impart to, or need to have about, such an AI? Trust and transparency were discussed among the panel and attendees, as well as ethical issues including intellectual property.

AI in healthcare was also discussed. Final year PhD student Juliana Samson explained that in the scope of healthcare “we don't treat diagnosis, we don't treat scans, we treat a person who carries all those things”. Juliana stressed that there are “massive efficiency savings that we'd be mad not to consider”. Despite there being plenty of barriers, which will take time to resolve with the different intertwining systems that need to be implemented throughout healthcare, we would need to increase the “digital literacy of the population, and in the healthcare practitioners as well.”

Another Panel conversation centred around AI models, which were perceived as ‘black boxes’ with trust issues in an AI’s performance and its results, for example, in facial recognition systems for crowd detection, algorithms for banking, or for social media moderation. It was pointed out that we do not have an artificial intellect yet that is as smart as a two-year-old child who can convey their hunger, joy, pain in grammatically short sentences without being taught the science of language, linguistics. AI has not experienced enjoying strawberries and ice-cream on a hot summer’s day. However, it was added that ChatGPT tool was useful to find recipes and design work-out regimes, and that “Artificial intelligence is a form of human intelligence because somehow we have created it.”

Copyright, “fair use”, and the EU AI Act were discussed in how to regulate AI models. Online panellist Aleksandr Tiulkanov explained that AIs were affecting some people’s livelihoods, of those whose created works have been used without consent in training AI models. One Panellist, Dr. Manizheh Montazerian, a software developer, exclaimed she was a GenAI fan, because there were positives: everyone could access a GenAI since tools like Microsoft’s Copilot were free, and though there were negatives, these early tools, were improving. She stressed that, analogous to calculators not killing mathematics, GenAI would not kill critical thinking, because, she felt, you needed to think critically to use these tools. If we did not want people to cheat, it was then a case of ‘How do we teach them [learners] to use it to do even better?’ – she pointed out she had nearly 3000 students in a previous semester and that adequate plagiarism detectors were needed.

The panel session ended on the topic of mental health and online engagement. An in-person audience member, previously a school-teacher reminding about the affect on young people’s mental from addictive algorithms capturing their attention on social media and other online applications. Online Panellist Dr. Roxana Oltean Cardos remarked that there were “some really good initiatives in the mental health field by integrating these AI in diagnostic and also intervention and prevention.”

To close the panel, attendees were given a link to an online poll, using Mentimeter, to choose the last Survey1 question which would be put to Microsoft’s Copilot. The purpose of using a GenAI as a panellist at the end was used to demonstrate how such a GenAI tool responded to a query, or prompt. The most popular question from the audience completing the poll was:

A summary of Copilot’s response shown on the screen in the venue included the following text output:

“To stay relevant in an AI-driven world, both students and professionals should focus on developing a blend of technical, cognitive, and interpersonal skills:

1. AI & Machine Learning Literacy

   a. Understanding how AI works, its capabilities, and limitations.

   b. Tools: Python, TensorFlow, PyTorch, scikit-learn.

2. Data Literacy

   a. Ability to interpret, analyze, and visualize data.

   b. Tools: Excel, SQL, Power BI, Tableau, Python (Pandas, Matplotlib).

3. Programming & Automation

   a. Learning to code (Python, JavaScript, etc.) and automate repetitive tasks.

4. Cybersecurity Awareness:

   a. Understanding digital safety, privacy, and ethical data use.

5. Digital Collaboration Tools:

   a. Proficiency in tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, Notion, and cloud platforms”

With this quick demonstration, the audience experienced how swiftly Microsoft’s Copilot could respond to a prompt, and how its generated response could be used as a starting point to query the GenAI tool further.

Please note, online attendance was disrupted at the start and for about 20minutes due to technical issues. On the fly solutions on panel event day 22 May 2025 enabled a satisfactory engagement of individuals attending online, but their experience is highlighted in post-panel event survey responses, including “More technical support/ equipment to present given to the host”.

The Chair, Dr. Butler closed the panel session as lunch arrived for the in-person attendees, thanking all the attendees, in the venue and online who “persevered through our technology challenges today and have stick stuck with us and engaged with us. It's been a really interesting discussion.” The event concluded with an agreement “that we probably need a series of events rather than one event and to see how we can continue the conversation.”

Some pictures from the hybrid Panel event held on Thursday 17 May 2025:

After the panel event, all registered individuals were sent a short Guide, a 5-step road map for ethical use of generative AI tools (pdf of the Guide is included in the ‘Output folder’ at the bottom of the page), as well as a .pdf of slides showing Copilot’s full response.

Post panel event, Survey 2 was distributed to the attendees to find their opinion of the panel event and what they learnt from attending (see Survey2 in ‘Output folder’). Thirteen people so far have completed this second survey with most finding the event useful.

One category of Survey1’s responses were question around education that required more time devoted to it. The education-related concerns were about how to assess authenticity in students’ work in an era where GenAI tools have become widely available for free, and where more advanced tools are available to those who can afford their subscription.

Roundtable:

The final activity in this Sprite+ Innovation Fora featured a Roundtable. The Roundtable was designed to address the impact on learners’ critical thinking in the age of AI by focussing on one of the main issues emerging from the public’s survey responses: GenAI in education. Due to Coventry University suffering a cyberattack on Friday 6 June 2025 the Roundtable was organised as an in-person only event.

Discussions included reviewing a Coventry University written assessment for a masters’ level module that embedded use of Generative AI to foster learning the benefits and weaknesses in text-generation. The philosophy of education, and what its role was in the age of AI, was discussed with increasing job losses to tech. While it was known that China and some parts of the Middle East were introducing AI in the school classroom, the Roundtable discussed ‘Who is responsible for teaching ethical use of AI?’.

John Halloran explained there was a need to rethink education to outthink AI since curating and summarising was now part of what AI can do. Pedagogy needed to encourage curiosity. The Roundtable considered whether it was time for a new taxonomy of education beyond what Bloom had advocated. Janice Hinckfuss raised awareness of the ten principles as to why certain Writing Studies Researchers believe it is reasonable to ‘Refuse GenAI in Writing Studies’ - a link to this here: Refusing Generative AI in Writing Studies .

The Roundtable ended with an agreement that more activities and events were needed for the ongoing problem, not least that Generative AI could be further expanding the digital divide between learners fearing to use these systems, for example, in case of incorrect information and little time to check information veracity, with those who pay to use advanced models and trust the output.

The roundtable was attended by:

• Dr. John Halloran - roundtable Chair, Coventry University

• Anthony Szpak – former schoolteacher

• Eziamaka Nwakile – former masters’ student, now Teaching Fellow

• Janice Hinckfuss – Centre for Academic Writing, Coventry University

• Jono Lowe – schoolteacher, Myton School

• Joshua Bygate-Ralph – Development Officer, Coventry University

• Laura Di Chiacchio – recent PhD completion, lecturer Aston University

• Mustafa Coban - Centre for Academic Writing, Coventry University

• Sophie May – teacher, Oxford Health

Pictures from the roundtable are here:

Overall

The overall outcome of this Innovation Fora included the objectives being realised through the planned and hosted activities and succeeded in raising awareness of the Sprite+ project among the broad and general public. The activities also realised raw, original data in two surveys shared with Sprite+ (see ‘Output folder’) that will form the basis of collaborative peer-reviewed submissions around the public’s understanding of, and concerns with, generative AI use.

Legacy

The success through wide interest and enthusiastic participation in both the Panel and the Roundtable events demonstrate that more outreach and public engagement would help to remove confusions about purpose of (the scientific field) artificial intelligence, recognise AI hype, identify actual AI opportunities, and learn how to gain access to AI benefits. A future event would be designed around a whole-day colloquium or two-day seminar with:

a) Opening/plenary with a multidisciplinary panel from academia, industry, NGOs, SMEs, policy-makers and AI innovators.

b)Break-out rooms to explore specific themes (data security, education, identity, intellectual property, privacy, sustainability, trust etc.).

c) Closing Keynote by high-profile AI scientist.

Attendance

1. Panel on 22 May 2025 - over 135:

a. Online attendance: Actual attendance online - 94 people with average attendance time of 1hour 19mins

b. In-person attendance: 44

1. Roundtable on 17 June 2025:

a. 10 people

The panel event was over-subscribed for in-person attendance, but not all individuals who registered actually attended the hybrid panel event. Over 135 people attended the hybrid panel event on 22 May 2025. Registrations reached 200 by the end of the day, on Wednesday 21 May 2025, the day before the panel. Of these 200, three were duplicate registrations.

In-person attendance was limited due to health and safety requirements of the booked venue (under 60). The Roundtable facilitated in-person attendance (cyber issues). 10 individuals from those invited that had registered to attend the Panel event were available to attend.

Project outputs

All expected outcomes were realised from the planned activities. The outcomes in this Innovation Fora are summarised in the table below. The outputs (Excel of surveys 1 & 2, etc.) can be accessed via the folder below.