The biggest thing to keep in mind is that our security focus is usually less about the specific AI tool itself and more about protecting sensitive data. We have contractual and audit obligations to protect certain types of information (FERPA, PII, etc.), and we want to ensure University of Tennessee data isn't sitting in the history of third-party platforms over which we don't have control.
Some General Guidance
- Data Sensitivity: If the data you are using is not sensitive, there are generally very few restrictions on which tools you can use.
- De-identification: If data is properly de-identified, it opens up more possibilities for tool usage.
- Meeting Assistants: We have actually blocked many third-party AI meeting bots. Instead, we direct everyone toward Zoom AI Companion and Teams Premium for summarizing meetings. Since people talk about all sorts of things in meetings, this keeps that information within our "closed ecosystem" where it’s safer.
- Conversation History: It's important to think about where your chat history lives. If it’s with a third party, that party owns that data. If you use our internal tools, it stays on our protected servers.
Recommended Internal Tools
We’ve worked hard to provide access to chat tools that keep our data secure within protected environments. I'd definitely encourage faculty to explore:
- UT Verse
- UT AI Hub
- Microsoft Copilot
To help you and the faculty navigate the thousands of tools out there, we’ve recently updated our Artificial Intelligence guidance page. It covers these principles in much more detail: https://oit.utk.edu/ai/