Academic and professional integrity is being challenged like never before. In academia, ‘authenticity of authorship’ is under threat by generative artificial intelligence (gAI) (Nowak, 2026). gAI offers educational and professional benefits, including idea generation, drafting support, and assistance with repetitive tasks (Cotton, Cotton, and Shipway, 2024). However, gAI can also generate apparently ‘original’ content without requiring user comprehension or cognitive engagement (Rodrigues et al., 2024). It can also present fabricated, ‘hallucinated’, material as fact. Furthermore, use of gAI may be concealed behind a veneer of legitimacy, framed as supportive scaffolding. In academic assessments, as well as professional practice, it can potentially tempt, or seduce, people to engage in questionable practices that might not otherwise be pursued.

Despite policy and guidance in both academia and practice (see for example: UWE, 2023; RTPI, 2019; Planning Inspectorate, 2026) grey areas remain in the liminal space between acceptable-unacceptable practices—at what point does assistance become problematic by masking an absence of genuine learning? HE policies often defer definitive guidance to individual tutors, placing responsibility for definition, interpretation, enforcement, and investigation at the local level. There is limited research into tutor perceptions of how such boundaries are defined, communicated, and enacted (Corbin, 2025; Nowak, 2026).

My Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) research explores planning-related subject tutors’ perceptions of acceptability boundaries and seeks to establish improved academic/professional procedures and practice. I am a Senior Lecturer in Planning and chartered member of the RTPI.