ChatGPT Edu will soon be accessible to the entire BYU student body, according to Arlene Sewell, chair of the Operational AI Committee at BYU.
The Church Educational System recently signed an agreement with OpenAI to provide this access.
"We initially planned to begin the rollout in January 2027, starting with faculty and staff. It began earlier: CES and OpenAI sent invitations to BYU faculty, staff and student employees on Sept. 22," Sewell said. "Invitations to the rest of the student body are targeted for late October, though the date may shift to November."
ChatGPT Edu is a more advanced version of ChatGPT.
"CES ChatGPT Edu gives people more ways to use AI for learning, teaching, research and everyday campus work," Sewell said. "You can use it to explore ideas, summarize documents, analyze data, search the web and build custom assistants for tasks you do often. It also comes with higher usage limits than the free version."
According to BYU's artificial intelligence information page, the data entered into CES ChatGPT Edu will not be used to train large language models.
The page also said certain BYU institutional data may be entered into these models, although sensitive information should be de-identified. This does not mean any data can be entered. HIPPAA-protected data, restricted data and controlled unclassified information "are not permitted unless explicitly approved by the institutional AI Committee," according to the website.
"CES ChatGPT Edu is a secure, institution-managed environment with campus controls for managing access," Sewell said.
Sewell said AI can be a useful tool in many contexts, but it should be used ethically.
"For classwork, follow your instructor’s guidance. If the instructor hasn’t said whether AI is allowed for an assignment, BYU’s guidance is to assume it isn’t," Sewell said. "AI is a tool, not an exception to our existing responsibilities."
According to Sewell, students can use AI to enhance their learning by having it explain complex concepts, organize notes or create practice questions, as long as it is within their professor's guidelines.
She also said faculty and staff can use it for various tasks, including summarizing non-sensitive information and brainstorming lesson ideas while being honest about how AI was used.
David Wingate, associate professor of computer science who has researched artificial intelligence, said AI can be useful for menial programming tasks — leaving room for people to focus on the high-level elements of a project.
One way to think about AI, according to Wingate, is to consider whether the task is output or input-focused. This distinction is a reference to Elder Gong's BYU speech about AI.
"It's very rarely in academia and college that we care about the outputs," Wingate said. "What we care about is the process that the student went through."
Professors don't need students' essays. They need students to learn from writing those essays.
"It's not about the destination," Wingate said. "It's about the process. It's about the struggle. It's about the friction."
However, learning to use AI is also a useful skill for the workplace. Wingate said it is an important balance, where students should focus on the process while in school but should also be open to learning how to use AI in ethical ways to be prepared to enter the workforce.
"Students should be able to use the tools of AI responsibly and well when they go out into the workplace," Wingate said. "I think the ChatGPT Edu license is going to be a blessing to students because what it will do is it will give them more access to AI tools."
Students at BYU are still learning how they can use AI. Jacob Oman, a BYU student, said AI can help "make a more busy, complicated life easier to navigate," when used ethically. He also said he's taken classes with a variety of different expectations when it comes to AI.
"I've had some classes where they fully embrace it. Some classes where they asked you not to," Oman said. "Whenever classes do fully embrace AI, it almost feels like you go to the gym and they take the weights off … there's not as much friction."
Another BYU student, Tatum Peterson, said students should not be completely cut off from using AI, but they should still do their own learning. She said AI can be useful for basic organization or tips.
Lily Christensen, a BYU student, said she is "strongly against" the idea of using AI to do work that takes away from students' learning and creativity. However, she said there are circumstances where AI can be useful, like when doing research.
Updated information about access to CES ChatGPT Edu will be available at ai.byu.edu.