ERC clarifies rules on the use of AI in grant evaluation

The Scientific Council of the European Research Council (ERC) has published guidelines on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the evaluation of funding applications. The aim is to safeguard the integrity of the peer-review process while allowing responsible use of AI.

Key principles are: no delegation of evaluation tasks and strict protection of confidentiality. Reviewers remain fully responsible. AI must not be used to summarize applications, assess scientific quality, or draft reviews. Application content must not be uploaded to external AI systems.

Very limited AI use is permitted, for example, for language editing of reviews or general information research, as long as no sensitive content is shared and no evaluation decisions are outsourced.

Further information and the full guidance documents are available on the ERC website.