Policy on the use of machine translation : a good model for wider policies on generative AI?

Since the advent of ChatGPT and other automatic text generators, educators from many disciplines, including language learning and teaching, have published numerous articles exploring this technology’s “pitfalls and potentials” (Barret, 2023; see also: Kohnke et al., 2023) and offering recommendations based on their own practice to teachers, users and institutional decision-makers (Forrester, 2023; Beku et al., 2024). But it is early days yet and, while recognising the need to offer guidelines, there is not enough scientific data to create evidence-based guidelines. Having been working on machine translation (MT) literacy (Bowker & Buitrago Ciro, 2019; Cotelli Kureth & Summers, 2023) for several years, we have developed guidelines for the use of MT tools in higher education, which have been implemented in a Swiss university. Given that such tools are technically similar to other generative AI (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT (see Benites et al., 2023), we believe that applied knowledge of the former could facilitate understanding of the latter. In this presentation, we will draw on both our own experience and a thorough literature review of recommendations for the use of GenAI for language learning and teaching to map what guidelines on the use of automatic text generators should include and how they should be presented to teachers and users.