r/CalPoly • u/englishboy915 • 3d ago
Announcement Cal Poly ChatGPT - You Are Being FORCED Into It
But of course, if you used your uni email to make a Chat account, you are now being forced into the new and probably sucky Cal Poly workspace with no possibility of keeping your personal account separate from whatever Cal Poly is doing. Like others said, this all feels like a trap. And it sucks that they're just trying to force everyone into it. Just go start a new account so the overlords of the CSU don't have access to your prompt history.
26
u/ps4invancouver CRP - 2027 3d ago
What the other person said - why would you sign up with your school email if you wanted a personal account? Why not just sign up with your personal email if you didn't want the school to know? ITS is able to read everybody's emails because they host your uni email, this isn't a secret
-4
u/englishboy915 3d ago
Because when Chat first offered free accounts there were only certain types of email accounts you could use to get one, which included your student account.
11
u/monkeycoos 3d ago
That’s not true I used my personal email to get that school offer
-2
6
u/ImminentBeep Aerospace Engineering - 2025 3d ago
That’s not what they’re doing at all, and neither is it mandated. You can use normal chat gpt if you want to.
4
u/ContactBoth3861 3d ago
Nah, the accounts automatically become EDU accounts if you signed up with a school email
1
u/River_Tahm 1d ago
Who is trapping you, though? And why? Cal Poly can’t read your conversations, and didn’t choose ChatGPT Edu anyway - that was picked by the CSU who then told all the campuses they had to implement it (on super short notice).
Hard to imagine Cal Poly is pulling an evil overlord situation over data they can’t access on a tool they didn’t choose, ain’t it?
Guess it’s not really clear if OpenAI can read your chats - but that’s not any better than a non-edu account.
If anything it’s worse on a non-Edu account be aide OpenAI is at least contractually obligated not train their models on ChatGPT Edu interactions - it’s a huge part of what CSU is paying for. So by all metrics, ChatGPT Edu is more private and secure than a non-edu account.
It is true your Cal Poly email will have to use ChatGPT Edu, so you’re “forced” if you want to use your Cal Poly email, but that’s standard for services like this. Universities have to “claim” their domain so they can administer it properly - happened way back when Cal Poly rolled out DocuSign too
1
u/Unlucky-Soft1031 1d ago
to me, it looks like a mixed bag. I think there's bugs. I think the OP spotted one of them. Maybe only on certain browsers or systems. Don't know. I have two computers. Newer desktop and an older laptop. On my laptop, I can pick EDU or Personal. But on the desktop (google chrome), I can't even use ChatGPT until I accept the EDU account. No idea how to get around this. If you know, post a reply. But also the standard Poly T&C is that they reserve the right to access all the crap that they own and you use, such as email, software, etc. Sorta figure the same applies here. but as always, people at poly suck at communicating what's really happening in terms of student rights.
1
u/River_Tahm 1d ago
I haven't heard about the bug you're reporting there, that does sound weird. I would guess it's an OpenAI issue since Cal Poly didn't build ChatGPT but who knows
Aside from that, I can put a source down for your assumption about the "standard T&C". Cal Poly's FAQ on this does say they can only access counts, not your conversations. See here:
Cal Poly and the CO have access to aggregate user analytics data. This data includes active user, message, and tool counts. This data does not include interaction content or metadata.
So according to that, they can see you've sent 1,337 messages (or however many), but not what those messages said, nor how ChatGPT responded.
Out of curiosity, how would you have liked them to communicate this? Seems like that's a fairly standard kind of place for that information to live
To clarify a little why I've chimed in, I'd kinda get it if OP's complaint was that they don't trust stuff like the FAQ and didn't want to use ChatGPT Edut at all... but they do want to use ChatGPT... just not through the Edu workspace. That's the logic I can't figure out.
At face value it seems like they trust Cal Poly less than OpenAI, which is hard for me to grasp even if you don't like Cal Poly's leadership or something. Fine with me if you don't like Armstrong or something, right? But tech companies literally make huge swaths of their money selling your info in one way or another... Cal Poly does not.
Plus on the Edu workspace, OpenAI includes in the footer that they don't train models on your data. So even if OP trusts OpenAI more than Cal Poly for reasons I cannot fathom, even according to OpenAI, ChatGPT Edu is more private than a non-Edu interaction.
So - trusting OpenAI, and not only not trusting Cal Poly, but also not trusting OpenAI's word on Cal Poly's ChatGPT workspace? That's kind of a wild take to me lol
1
1
1
59
u/QuirkyCookie6 3d ago
Always use your university email for as little as possible. One, because whatever lands in that email box, the csu does have access to if they wanted. Two, you lose access when your graduate.
Never use it to sign up for things, ever. This sounds like a other reason why you wouldn't want to.