What funders now say about AI in applications.
The rules changed in 2025. Here is what the major funders actually published, linked to the primary source so you can read it yourself. Last verified 2026-07-02.
NIH
Notice NOT-OD-25-132, in effect for applications submitted for receipt dates on or after September 25, 2025, says NIH will not consider applications substantially developed by AI to be the applicant’s original ideas, and detected AI-heavy applications can be removed from consideration. The notice also caps each principal investigator at six new, renewal, resubmission, or revision applications per calendar year. Fabricated citations already fall under research-integrity rules.
Using AI as support for text you author and verify sits inside the notice’s safe ground. Letting a model originate the science, or submitting citations no one checked, is what the notice targets. Keep the researcher as the author, keep every citation real, and be ready to say how AI helped.
NSF
NSF’s notice to the research community encourages proposers to disclose, in the project description, how generative AI was used in developing a proposal. The same notice bars reviewers from uploading proposal content to AI tools that NSF has not approved, to protect the confidentiality of what you submit.
The notice invites disclosure and attaches no penalty to it. A short, factual statement of how AI assisted your writing meets the spirit of the notice, and your proposal text gains protection on the review side too.
Foundations
There is no single foundation rulebook. The visible 2026 pattern is that application forms increasingly ask about AI use directly, in the funder’s own words on the funder’s own form. The authoritative source for any given foundation is its current application instructions.
Expect the question and have a truthful answer ready before it is asked. A specific, honest statement of how AI helped, and of who verified the facts, reads far better than a blank or a hedge.
How this tool lines up
TSD Grant Writer drafts only from your organization’s own documents and attaches a citation to every factual claim, so the substance of an application stays yours and every reference resolves to a real file you uploaded. When a fact is missing from your documents, the draft shows a labeled blank instead of an invented figure. Every Word export ends with a submittable statement of how AI was used, written to be edited into whatever wording a specific funder requires.
That describes the tool’s behavior. None of it is a guarantee of any funder’s decision. No software can promise that a funder accepts an application, and funder rules keep changing, so read the linked notices and the instructions of the funder you are applying to. You stay the author, and the drafting page is built around keeping it that way.