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AI Tools at UCF

Recommended AI Tool: Copilot-Chat

The official AI tool at UCF is Copilot-Chat (which is also known as Copilot-Web). The term “Copilot” is also used by Microsoft to refer to embedded AI in MS Office products, but the web-based chat tool is separate.

Copilot with Commercial Protection is not the same thing as “Copilot.” The latter is the public model of Microsoft’s LLM, also available on the web. Copilot with Commercial Protection (if logged in with a UCF NID) is a “walled garden” for UCF that offers several benefits:

  • It searches the current Internet and is not limited to a fixed point in time when it was trained
  • It uses GPT-4 (faster, better) without having to pay a premium
  • It uses DALL·E 3 to generate images within the Copilot application
  • It provides a live Internet link to indicate where the information was found.
  • Faculty, staff, and students log in with their NID
  • Data stays local and is NOT uploaded to Microsoft or the public model version of Copilot. Inputs into Copilot with Commercial Protection are NOT added to the system’s memory, database, or future answers. However, per UCF retention policies, a local copy is kept in a hidden (local) mailbox folder in your own Sharepoint account for you to view or delete.

The safe version of UCF’s Copilot is accessed via this procedure:

  1. Start at this URL: http://portal.office.com
    • If the site doesn’t recognize your UCF email, switch to the Edge browser.
  2. Click “sign in” at the top-right
  3. Select “work or school” for the type of account
  4. Type your full UCF email (including @ucf.edu) and click NEXT
  5. Log in with your NID and NID password. (Note: you may need to alter your SafeSearch settings away from “Strict”)
  6. You should see a checkmark in a green shield near the top. This is how you know you are in “data protection” mode.

Other AI Tools

The lists below are organized in a modified stoplight structure to indicate which products are safe (green), which require caution (yellow), and which cannot be used (red).

Green

Products in this category have been deemed safe by UCF IT, and may be used without reservation. Some are websites that search research databases, but do not pose a threat to UCF sensitive data. Most in this list (but not all) can be used for free.

  • Adobe Firefly – this image generation AI is included for UCF faculty and staff through our Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. Students are not included in this subscription.
  • Elicit – the freemium AI service helps you find relevant academic papers and provides summaries.
  • Intelligent Course Search – Built in-house at UCF, ICS ingests all the information from published items in a Webcourses class, and allows students to query it for information. This would be especially useful if they want to pinpoint something they remember reading.
  • Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint) – Increasingly there are AI-assisted functions within MS Office products. These are all greenlit for use by UCF IT.
  • Microsoft TEAMS AI – MS TEAMS uses AI to provide transcripts of meetings. UCF IT has authorized this functionality since it does not leave the UCF ecosystem.
  • ResearchRabbit – a standalone AI-powered website, Research Rabbit provides “forever free,” reliable network maps to quickly discover the seminal (and related) studies to any given academic topic and links to Zotero.
  • Scite – this website answers questions with citations and links, and helps researchers verify that published studies have not been retracted. There is no free version.

Note: students should not interpret “green” as permission to use these tools in every class. The color designation means that UCF has approved the technology behind these tools, but instructors determine the appropriate use of AI tools within their courses.. Continue to consult the syllabus for specific permissions or restrictions.

Light Green

Microsoft uses the term “Copilot” to refer to several other products besides Copilot Chat. These additional tools are not free for UCF users, and must be paid for individually or by departments. However, they have been vetted and approved by UCF IT, and could be installed if you are willing to pay for them. These are the two most common tools to consider:

  • M365 Copilot
    • A custom AI tool that is “trained” on everything in your OneDrive and Outlook emails. You can ask it to find patterns, detect “needles in a haystack,” or analyze your own documents.
    • A Copilot tool embeds itself in each product in MS-Office. You can click the Copilot icon within PowerPoint, for example, and ask it to assemble a presentation based off a Word document from your OneDrive.
    • $400/year
  • Copilot Studio
    • Build your own agents with your own custom training
    • Can analyze materials within

Other considerations:

  1. Personal funds cannot be used to pay for either of the enhanced Copilot licenses. A valid UCF funding source is required to pay through the IT department.
  2. Both tools only work when logged in to Windows with your work account
  3. Both tools are available for faculty or staff, but not available to students.
  4. Indicate your interest in purchasing either of these by opening a ServiceNow ticket.

Yellow

Products in this category are neither greenlit by UCF IT, nor are they banned. UCF stakeholders can independently decide to use these products, either the free or paid models. However, none of these products must be allowed to access sensitive UCF data, which includes you (the user) pasting or uploading such data. You must also be cautious about uploading someone else’s published material. The copyright belongs to the original author, and uploading their work should be considered akin to publishing their content to the open Internet.

Here is the official statement from UCF-IT: The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), including Generative, Conversational, Agentic, etc.,  at the University of Central Florida must adhere to UCF’s established Data Governance Standards. All AI-related activities—such as data input, processing, and output—must comply with university policies on data classification, privacy, security, and ethical use.

Users who choose to engage with AI technologies that are not centrally managed or approved by UCF do so at their own discretion and assume full responsibility for any associated risks, including data privacy, security, and compliance implications. For more information, please visit https://aiforall.ucf.edu/resources/ai-tools-at-ucf/.

The products in this list are not supported or paid for by UCF. If you have questions about possible future site licenses, email parker.snelson@ucf.edu

These products are mostly phone apps or websites. Some of them offer deeper integration with your computer, but this is only possible if you complete UCF IT’s security review.

  • Apple Intelligence – generative AI embedded within recent MacOS and iOS software.
  • Canva – a freemium online image creating/editing tool.
  • ChatGPT – the most well-known LLM, ChatGPT has several models. GPT-3.5 is completely free, with no login necessary, but free logins are also offered. GPT-4 is available with ChatGPT Plus ($20/month). There are different sub-models within the GPT-4 series; some can generate AI images. There is also a more-expensive ChatGPT Pro subscriptions ($200/month). It is owned by OpenAI.
  • Claude – the text-generating AI created by Anthropic (ex-employees of OpenAI). Like ChatGPT, it has different pricing plans (and a free version), and includes advanced tools such as Sonnet that belong to the Light Red category below.
  • Consensus – the website provides an academic-only search engine, and includes both free and paid subscriptions.
  • DALL·E – the image-generating AI created by OpenAI.
  • Deep Research – the name given to advanced research models by OpenAI and Google (separately). They are “targeted” (narrow) agents that identify and summarize research.
  • Explainpaper – a freemium website, ExplainPaper allows users to upload a paper and highlight passages to obtain a simpler, jargon-free explanation of the concepts being discussed.
  • Gemini – an LLM from Google (formerly known as Bard).
  • Google Docs / Google Drive – their privacy policies allow third parties, including AI, to view (“scrape”) your data.
  • Grammarly – this grammar-check software has both free and paid versions, and a browser extension. It may share data with third-party vendors. It has an “Authorship” product that students can buy individually, which marks which text students type vs. what they paste. The separate Grammarly AI detection product should not be used to “catch” plagiarism.
  • Grok – the LLM embedded within X (formerly Twitter).
  • Llama – this LLM is Meta’s AI model.
  • Midjourney – an image-generating website, Midjourney has no free plans, but is known for its high quality, realistic images.
  • Napkin.ai – a freemium AI that transforms text into visuals such as charts, graphs, diagrams, flowcharts, and infographics.
  • NotebookLM – this AI app from Google will analyze uploads of PDFs, GoogleDocs, Google Slides, Web URLs, copied text, audio files, or URLs of YouTube videos, and generate a custom podcast to summarize the content. It also generates summaries and study guides.
  • OpenEvidence – this website has been trained on JAMA and the New England Journal of Medicine, and is meant to provide more trustworthy outputs related to medicine.
  • Perplexity – a privately-held LLM with freemium and subscription tiers. It is known for research queries, since it provides direct, linked sources (including those from academic databases) and quotations linked to those sources. It also offers an incognito mode, deletion options, and settings to control data usage.
  • Sora – a text-to-video generative AI from OpenAI, included with ChatGPT Plus.
  • Stable Diffusion – an image generating AI that runs on your own computer (with significant technical know-how), or via paid services.

Light Red

Many of the tools in this category are “agents” that complete tasks autonomously within your computer or within your browser. They are sometimes characterized as personal assistants, performing tasks like ordering a meal from a restaurant delivery service. This potentially gives them access to sensitive UCF data, if they have access to your files or browser settings. To use any of these products, you will need to complete IT’s security review before purchasing the software.

Note that students may not use agents to complete coursework; this is a violation of UCF’s academic integrity policies.

  • Amazon Nova Act – this agent will complete in-browser tasks, which may include giving it access to your UCF login credentials.
  • ChatGPT Agent / ChatGPT Operator Mode – these agents perform many tasks on your computer autonomously. ChatGPT Agent is available with ChatGPT Plus ($20/month) or highly monthly usage with ChatGPT Pro ($200/month). Operator Mode is available with ChatGPT Pro ($200/month). Faculty will need to consult with IT before using these agents.
  • Claude for Computer Use – this beta agent from Anthropic can perform many tasks on your computer autonomously with Claude 3.5 Sonnet and other newer models.
  • Cluely – this AI is not a website; it functions as a glass pane overlay to your computer that provides real-time info, definitions, and answers to anything on your screen or from your audio feed. It embeds itself deeply in your computer and keeps its AI outputs to customize itself for you personally.
  • Manus – this agent from China has not been evaluated yet for use at UCF.

Red

Products in this category have not been broadly approved by IT for use at UCF, often for reasons of privacy and security. For any questions, visit Information Security.

  • AdobeAI – the license costs money, and the company reserves the right to share data with unknown third-party vendors.
  • Deepseek – this AI from China has been banned at public institutions in Florida by the state legislature.
  • Otter.ai – this service transcribes virtual meetings such as Zoom, and shares info with third parties.
  • Read.ai – this transcription service has been blocked at UCF because of its practice of auto-adding users without consent.
  • ZoomAI – this feature of Zoom does not guarantee privacy and UCF’s IT department will not enable it.

Faculty Center’s Curated List of AI Tools

There are several repositories that attempt to catalog all AI tools (futurepedia.io and theresanaiforthat stand out in particular), but we’ve been curating a smaller, more targeted list here.

Faculty Multimedia Center’s Curated List of AI Tools

If you’re curious about which tool to choose based on which tasks they perform best, the Faculty Multimedia Center (FMC) curates this separate list of tools.