GenAI, Verifying ChatGPT Education Workspace Enrollment

It is important to be aware of which ChatGPT subscription that you are using, as this determines the types of University of Illinois data that you can use in your prompts. ChatGPT indicates which license and workspace are active in the bottom left corner of the chat interface. When working outside of the Illinois Campus ChatGPT Education Workspace, only Public data - that which would be available via a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request or is otherwise publicly accessible - may be used.

The Privacy & Cybersecurity group provides definitions for how Public, Internal, Sensitive, and High Risk data types are classified on their site here: Data Classification

Personal/Business Subscriptions

Non-Education licenses will display Free, Plus, Pro, or Business in the license indication:

The ChatGPT interface shows an account with "Free" as its license type, as well as a button to Upgrade

If you are using personal subscriptions, disable model training by changing the "Improve the model for everyone" setting to Off. This setting is On by default, but allowing OpenAI to use internal Illinois data (such as work documents or emails) for training risks violating the University Information Security Standards and state laws such as FERPA.

in the "Data controls" section of ChatGPT's settings, the "Improve the model for everyone" option is set to "Off"

More information about the non-Education subscriptions and use-cases offered by OpenAI are available on the ChatGPT Plans page.

Illinois Campus ChatGPT Education Workspace

Licenses for ChatGPT Education and the Illinois Campus workspace can be purchased from the WebStore here: https://webstore.illinois.edu/shop/product.aspx?zpid=5994
Note that this link requires Unit Purchases to be selected, and can only be paid for via CFOP. Personal purchases are planned for 2026.

When this Education license is active, model training is disabled and other data processing protections are always applied. In this mode of operation, ChatGPT is approved for use with Sensitive or Internal data (in addition to Public). If you need ChatGPT to process High-Risk data, send an email to privacy@illinois.edu to contact campus privacy specialists about your use-case.

Education licenses will display University of Illinois ChatGPT Education - Illinois Campus (truncated) in the license indication:

the ChatGPT interface shows "University of Illinois ChatGPT Ed..." as its license type, and a message indicating that OpenAI doesn't use data from the Illinois Campus workspace to train its models.


Keywords:
openai open ai workspace gpt edu 
Doc ID:
156622
Owned by:
GenAI Support in University of Illinois Technology Services
Created:
2025-11-10
Updated:
2025-11-11
Sites:
University of Illinois Technology Services