GU Pilots ChatGPT Premium for Faculty in Latest AI Expansion

By Andrew Jiang, Academics Desk Editor • October 16, 2026

Georgetown University gave some faculty members premium access to ChatGPT in the school’s latest bid to expand its artificial intelligence (AI) offerings, a university spokesperson confirmed to The Hoya on Oct. 14. 

The university’s pilot program allocates a fixed number of licenses to ChatGPT, OpenAI’s large language model (LLM), to participating faculty members and departments, which can also request student access for in-class usage. The program is Georgetown’s second public partnership with a generative AI platform after Georgetown granted students and faculty premium access to Gemini, Google’s AI assistant, in March. 

The spokesperson said the pilot program expands AI access across Georgetown. 

“The university is committed to providing access to new AI tools to the community,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “The ChatGPT pilot is designed to compare the uptake of different AI models to determine how best to serve the diverse needs of the university community.” 

The ChatGPT pilot program comes as University President Eduardo Peñalver develops a university-wide AI framework to govern teaching, research and university operations by Spring 2027. Nine professors will also serve on a steering committee that guides Georgetown’s AI policy based on Jesuit values.

James Freericks, a physics professor who obtained a license, said while the program introducing ChatGPT is a step in the right direction, the university still does not offer sufficient access to AI tools. 

“I do think making access to the right level of tools in LLMs is going to be necessary if Georgetown wants to continue to be able to contribute to research at the same level as peers, because everyone else will have this kind of access — usually substantially better than what we’re currently given,” Freericks told The Hoya. 

Andrew Bennett, the government department chair, who is not enrolled in the program, said he finds ChatGPT is more capable than Gemini in some tasks. 

“Gemini integrates well with other Google products, while ChatGPT appears to be stronger at reasoning, coding and writing,” Bennett wrote to The Hoya. “I am not sure what data protections Georgetown has arranged with ChatGPT. Personally, I mostly use Claude, as do many academics. All of these have pretty powerful free versions, at least for now.”

After the Gemini announcement, students and faculty were split over AI’s role at Georgetown. Some expressed optimism, while others voiced ethical concerns surrounding AI usage.

Freericks said the gap in capabilities between Gemini and other AI programs, including ChatGPT, has widened since then.

“These other companies are updating their models, and they’ve gotten substantially better,” Freericks said. “I have not seen that with Gemini. So Gemini’s usefulness — unless they actually will update it — it’s becoming less and less useful because it just takes so much more work to get it to do something correctly than it does with more advanced models.”

As Georgetown looks to bolster its AI presence, it has expanded its AI-related curricular offerings, including a professional degree and a College of Arts & Sciences certificate program.

Desh Girod, a government professor who opted into the program, said the pilot program is helping his class understand AI chatbots’ abilities. 

“One thing I noticed is that ChatGPT has some way of scraping the web for news updates on a schedule,” Girod wrote to The Hoya. “In my class, we’re focused on understanding the current moment across many perspectives, so this might be a very useful tool for students.”

“I hope that it helps us understand how it can improve or inhibit learning, so we can have thoughtful conversations about responsible use,” Girod added.

Nathan Schneider, a computer science professor who enrolled in the program, said that while he hopes the pilot program can assist in research, he believes undergraduate courses will have limited uses for it.

“Generally, we have several labs in the Computer Science and Linguistics departments doing research on core aspects of these technologies,” Schneider wrote to The Hoya. “In terms of everyday practical use, I find that students in my lab are much better acquainted with these tools than I am, and that coding is an important use case for their work.”

“I want to see whether it will help me automate tasks like certain kinds of coding and data analysis,” Schneider added. 

Nathan Edwards, a biochemistry professor who enrolled in the program and is looking to obtain licenses for his students, said expanded AI access requires students to understand the tool’s ethical limitations.

“There is a tension there between tools which help the students learn and tools which help them avoid learning,” Edwards told The Hoya. 

“Trying to balance that essentially requires the students to behave responsibly and to value their own learning when potentially they could avoid doing so,” Edwards added.

Freericks said the university should explore expanding access to AI tools for more members of the Georgetown community.

“Making sure people who need it, researchers who need it, will have access to the highest level models should be a priority that goes into their planning for how they’re going to invest in making these tools available to members of their academic community,” Freericks said.

“They should be planning now for what they’re going to do to make the best available models accessible to the people who need it, who are pushing research frontiers,” Freericks added.

ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR

Your donation will support the student journalists of Georgetown University. Your contribution will allow us to purchase equipment and cover our annual website hosting costs.