As of 13 August 2026, AI can only partly write a dissertation literature review.

What to actually do

1. Hand it to a person

   The route this page recommends

   A person who owns the outcome does this end to end, worth it when the failure is dear.

2. Use a tool built for this

   Second choice

3. Do it yourself

   The distant third

   A chat interface, chat-fluent skill, and roughly 1 hour until you can act on the result.

   How to actually do it

   1. Open your university library catalogue and relevant academic databases, then gather the papers, books and reviews that directly address your research question.
   2. Create a source list containing each item's full bibliographic details, abstract and relevant page numbers, and remove any source you cannot access or verify.
   3. Read the sources yourself and mark their research questions, methods, findings, limitations, disagreements and relevance to your dissertation.
   4. Paste the research question, discipline, word count, referencing style and your checked source notes into the prompt, then upload or paste the relevant papers in manageable groups.
   5. Ask the chatbot for the source table and thematic outline first, and compare every entry with the original paper before asking for the prose draft.
   6. Generate the draft from the approved outline, then compare each citation and important claim with the original source and correct the references and page numbers.
   7. Check your university's current academic-integrity and AI-use guidance, rewrite the argument in your own voice, and send the finished review to your supervisor or tutor for subject-specific feedback.

   Prompt

   Help me develop a dissertation literature review from the materials I provide. My research question is: [research question]. My discipline and level are: [discipline and degree level]. My required word count is: [word count]. My university's referencing style is: [referencing style].
   
   Use only the sources and details I provide unless you clearly label a point as needing an additional source. Do not invent papers, authors, quotations, page numbers, findings, dates or references. For each source, identify its research question, method, population or material studied, main finding, limitation and relevance to my question. Then group the sources into debates or themes rather than summarising them one by one. Highlight agreements, disagreements, gaps and changes in the literature. Distinguish what a source says from your interpretation of it.
   
   First produce a table of the sources and a proposed thematic outline. Then draft the review with an introduction, themed sections and a conclusion explaining the gap or position my dissertation addresses. Use cautious academic language and include citation markers tied only to the supplied sources. After the draft, provide a claim-by-claim verification list showing which source and page or section supports each important claim, and list anything I must check myself. Do not write a personal reflection or pretend to know my university's rules.

   Open it prefilled in ChatGPT or Claude, or copy it into Gemini, which takes no prefill link.