ChatGPT Frequently Asked Questions

ChatGPT Edu is a generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot technology that can process natural human language, written or spoken, images, and videos, and generate a response. Through a partnership with OpenAI, CU will stand up five unique ChatGPT Edu environments for all four campuses and the system office. Each environment will be exclusive to the specific community it serves and will not be used to train OpenAI’s large language models.

Yes, users can build custom GPTs tailored to specific courses or administrative functions, which can be shared within their campus or system workspace to enhance learning and operational efficiency. 

Users will be able to create and share GPTs with individual users as well as multiple users using the invite feature. Users will not be able to share a custom GPT outside their campus or system environment. 

It is important to note that content generated in the campus or system environments can be shared to anyone by anyone within that specific environment. Please be aware of this as you make decisions about what types of content you share.

While AI proficiency is becoming an important part of a well-rounded education and career-readiness, it is also important to acknowledge that current large language model AI technologies are resource intensive. 

Large language model AI systems require significant computing power, which can increase energy use and environmental impacts. Because CU is committed to doing our part for environmental stewardship and sustainability, we encourage our community to consider the following options for heightening our sustainable use of the tool:

• Optimize AI prompts: Providing AI tools with well-structured prompts can reduce unnecessary AI processing. It reduces the number of queries required, which improves efficiency and lowers computational load.
• Turn off unneeded AI integrations: Some software applications have AI-powered assistants running in the background. Going into the applications’ settings and disabling those assistants when not in use will lower energy consumption.

CU will not monitor individual users’ interactions with ChatGPT Edu. CU will collect basic use statistics to better understand adoption and use patterns. This data will only be reported publicly in the aggregate. CU will retain the right to audit individual user interactions in isolated and limited cases. While CU respects user privacy and will not actively monitor day-to-day interactions, as a public institution, the university may need to access and/or disclose records in response to legal requests (such as under the Colorado Open Records Act), court orders, or specific investigations involving potential policy violations.

CU’s ChatGPT Edu is designed for institutional use, with enhanced privacy and security controls compared to consumer accounts. Your conversations are private to you by default, are not monitored by CU IT, and are not used to train OpenAI's models. Access to CU ChatGPT Edu environment content by OpenAI personnel is restricted and is generally limited to specific cases such as incident resolution, user-authorized recovery or legal requirements.

You can delete individual chats or all chats from within ChatGPT Edu. When you delete a chat, it is removed from your view immediately and scheduled for permanent deletion from OpenAI systems within 30 days, with limited exceptions (e.g., legal or security obligations). Deleted chats are not recoverable. Note: Archiving is not deletion; it only hides chats from your main view.

No. CU’s agreement with OpenAI prohibits the company from using any CU environment to train its large language models.

Yes, CU has taken steps to protect your data, including secure sign-on using your CU credentials and data encryption. OpenAI also meets recognized security and privacy standards.

When the system is fully launched this spring, communications will go out to campus with the steps you will need to take to use the tool. These steps will include logging in with your UCCS-issued email address as well as taking a brief training.  After that, access via single sign-on should be seamless. 

Enrolled full time and part time students, faculty and staff of all CU campuses and the system office are eligible to use the tool. Licenses are not intended for alumni or other campus community members such as volunteers or guests. For specifics on this topic, refer to the campus or system office to which you are connected.

At this time, users in CU’s secure ChatGPT Edu workspace are not able to directly transfer their full chat history or the intellectual property they own to a personal ChatGPT account upon leaving the institution. This restriction reflects CU’s commitment to privacy, data security, and appropriate stewardship of institutional environments.

That said, users retain practical options to preserve important work. Key chats or outputs can be manually copied and saved, and ChatGPT Edu can also be prompted to generate a structured summary of prior conversations - such as key themes, memories, or style preferences - which all can be exported as a markdown file and used to “seed” context in a separate personal account. 

CU and the OpenAI Product team are actively exploring secure, streamlined approaches to better support specific transition scenarios in the future, while maintaining strong privacy and data-protection standards. 

Additionally, nothing about the use of the CU ChatGPT Edu changes the intellectual property rights various users enjoy based on their relationship to the university.

If you currently have a free or paid ChatGPT account associated with your CU-issued email address, you will need to decide whether you want to merge it with the CU-wide ChatGPT Edu account or change it to a personal email for personal use only. If you choose to merge, you must first complete the Precipio training. After completing the training, you will be prompted to either merge your existing account and data into the university wide environment or export and delete your existing chat history to reset your account. Please note that deleting your chat history is permanent and can't be undone. Optionally, if you choose not to merge, log into ChatGPT using your current process and update your email associated with that account to a personal email. ChatGPT Edu will not prompt account transfers for accounts associated with non-CU email addresses. A personal ChatGPT account cannot be used with any university information or data as it does not meet university IT security and compliance policies. 

Users with university paid individual accounts may continue using their existing accounts temporarily, pending confirmation that CU’s tenant configuration and SSO can support users who are provisioned into a managed tenant while retaining comparable advanced features.

CU believes that educational equity requires all members of the CU community to have access to the tool. The President’s AI Working Group (listed below), which included area experts from each campus and the system office, recommended the partnership with OpenAI following a review process. Outside some clinical and research settings, OpenAI’s ChatGPT is already the most widely individually adopted AI tool across the CU system.

ChatGPT Edu licenses will be funded by the System Office in year one. Campuses will assume the cost of their individual environments following.

CU ChatGPT Edu users receive the foundational functionality for free. CU purchased the plan for faculty, staff and students.

No. Applicable Regents, system and campus administrative policies as well as student codes of conduct and other student-related policies apply and should govern decision making and use as they do across the university and the variety of teaching, learning, and work-related tools provided by CU.

The Colorado Open Records Act allows the public to view work-related records of public employees and the use of ChatGPT Edu as the platform does not impact whether a record is considered public or not. 

If you work for the university and use ChatGPT Edu to conduct university business, the records you create may be considered public. There are a number of statutory exceptions to the open records act including but not limited to personnel information, student records and donor information. 

If you would like more information about how the open records act applies to university employees, you can check out the university open records policy or get more information on our open records request page.

No. All existing federal and state laws protecting student records apply to any and all AI use, including requirements for data protection, privacy and non-discrimination.

No. Faculty retain control of their curriculum and learning environment. This is a core tenant of academic freedom and is protected at CU. The provision of the tool is meant to provide additional teaching and learning options, should faculty wish to use them.

CU has robust policies enshrined in our student code of conduct that bar academic dishonesty in all its forms and proscribe consequences for these actions. Nothing about the use of generative AI changes that foundational policy or the consequences available to faculty and the university should a student use the tool inappropriately.

Yes. New awards and grants will be available through funding from the CU System office to support faculty who want to engage in this space.

• System Recognition Award: AI for Scholarly and Creative Work
• System Recognition Award: AI for Teaching & Learning
• System Sprint Grant: AI for Teaching & Learning

• M365 Copilot licenses will not be going away or removed as it functions differently than ChatGPT
• BoodleBox will remain paid for by OIT until the launch of ChatGPT. After this time, existing credits will be used for active accounts until exhausted and then transition into free accounts. More information will be coming out about this transition and if you would like to pay for existing accounts.