Imani Tailly, News Editor

On Monday, September 14, The University of North Carolina Greensboro announced that all current students, staff, and university faculty now have access to Spartan AI. UNCG describes Spartan AI as, “a new secure AI workspace that brings multiple AI models together in one university-supported environment.” Using nebulaONE, an AI gateway owned by Cloudforce, it gives UNCG access to well-known AI models such as Grok, Claude, and ChatGPT. These models are intended to help with drafting, summarizing, and analyzing documents, among other tasks. The announcement states that Spartan AI will benefit UNCG by providing a “…secure, university-supported way to use generative AI.” Spartan AI will not be used for the training of open sources models, but it is integrated within Microsoft 360, giving it access to L3 and L4 level documents based on the university’s data classification chart. L3 data is considered confidential, moderate-risk, materials such as employee reviews and FERPA information with L4 being restricted, high-risk, data including information such as social security numbers and protected health information (PHI). 

Safeguards have been put in place to help keep L3 and L4 data safe. These include ones within Microsoft 360 Copilot as well as ones by UNCG. Spartan AI runs within UNCG’s Microsoft Azure cloud environment, not public AI servers. Safeguards include access only being provided to certain UNCG accounts on select devices that meet the university safety requirements and keeping data on by UNCG-managed resources.  

Spartan AI is a part of a twelve-month evaluation to provide the university with “…real-world experience with different AI technologies.” This goal is to see how the UNCG community uses Spartan AI and to determine future use of AI at UNCG. This comes over a year after the school’s AI committee was formed in February 2025. The committee’s webpage states that it’s been charged with “…providing strategic guidance and oversight for how UNCG will responsibly embrace, engage, and empower AI use across the university in its approach to learning, academic integrity, professional development, and operational efficiency.” The committee is made up of representatives from each division on campus. The goals of the committee include providing guidance, updating policy, and more. To begin using Spartan AI, you first have to log in with your school account. Once in, you can choose an AI model to access and begin using it. Professors determine how AI can be used in their courses, so before using Spartan AI for a course, review your professors’ AI policies. If AI is not allowed in the course, use of it for classwork may be a violation of the university’s Academic Integrity Policy. Additionally, the university encourages the removal of any “identifying details” and to verify the accuracy of information provided by Spartan AI if you are unsure about it. 

Alongside the rollout of Spartan AI, the university provides both in-person and online training to help students, staff, and faculty learn how to use it. The trainings are concerned with issues such as which AI model to use for certain tasks, how to write effective prompts for AI, and more. The in-person training will be held Monday, October 5, at noon and Wednesday, October 14, at 10:00 a.m. 

The university has also asked for feedback in response to the AI pilot. The Microsoft form asks about your experience with Spartan AI, including what you used it for, whether it went well, and what challenges you faced with it. AI is a topic that garners many understandable concerns, fears, and opinions. Regardless of your stance or opinion of AI, this article hopefully helps you to navigate the changes coming to the university in response to the growing use of AI across our personal and professional lives. 

Headline image from UNCG.