Part of the solution here is to cut the bullshit: GenAI is constitutively unable to serve as a collaborator or a tutor and should not be said to do so, if the meaning of those roles – and the responsibilities those roles entail – is not to be corroded. To be clear, our goal here has not been to argue for a total ban on the use of GenAI systems in higher education – such a ban is neither possible nor desirable – but rather to incite discussion about our language for and conceptualisation of GenAI teaching systems in higher education, in the interests of robust regulatory oversight and pedagogically sound integration.