The University of Sydney will provide free, institution-wide access to OpenAI's ChatGPT Edu to all students and staff, the university announced, alongside a $1m commitment to an AI Sustainability Research and Innovation Fund.
The rollout will be staged, with capabilities progressively enabled and university data excluded from model training.
Vice-chancellor and president Professor Mark Scott said the university had a responsibility to prepare graduates, researchers and staff for AI-integrated work.
"It's our responsibility to graduate students who are well equipped for the modern world of work, provide our researchers with the tools they need to continue our globally competitive research, and make our University systems and processes easier to navigate for our community," Scott said.
The deal follows a similar move by UNSW Sydney, which last week announced a ChatGPT Edu rollout to more than 80,000 students and staff. OpenAI called the UNSW agreement its largest ChatGPT education deployment in the region and its first strategic education collaboration in Australia. UNSW's agreement also integrates generative AI foundations and Codex into course curricula, according to that announcement.
Sector-wide integrity concerns persist alongside adoption
The announcement comes as Australian education providers report rising concern about AI's effect on academic integrity even as adoption accelerates.
ReadyTech's AI & Innovation Benchmark 2026, a survey of 96 education organizations, found 43.8% expect AI-related integrity issues to worsen over the next two years, while about 73% already regard the issue as significant, very significant or critical. The same survey found 94.8% of organizations are exploring or already using AI, and 34.4% have a documented AI use policy.
Separately, Turnitin reported that 53.6% of Australian tertiary submissions run through its system between October 2025 and April 2026 used some form of AI, with 10% of those submissions containing more than 80% AI-written content. The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency shifted to a regulatory-led framework for generative AI in 2026, reflecting what the agency described as widespread student use of the technology and associated risks to assessment integrity.
The University of Sydney has structured its assessment model around this shift, separating supervised, secure assessments from open assessments in which AI use is scaffolded and permitted. Cogniti, the university's homegrown AI tutoring platform, will remain the preferred classroom tool for educators, with ChatGPT Edu supplementing its use, according to the University of Sydney.
"AI is rapidly reshaping the workforce our graduates will enter and our goal is to help all our students use AI effectively while ensuring they leave university with the human capabilities, the knowledge, skills, judgement, creativity, ethical awareness and adaptability they'll continue to need to thrive in the jobs of the future," Scott said.
Kiran Mani, OpenAI's managing director for the Asia-Pacific, said the university was investing in students' futures.
"Students have the curiosity and creativity to push the boundaries of what's possible with AI. Investments like this will help them graduate with the skills and experience to put those strengths to work and ultimately shape the future," Mani said.
Vice-president (Operations) Nicole Gower said implementation would be guided by the university's existing governance structure.
"Our implementation is being guided by the University's Responsible AI Framework which defines our principles and guardrails around the responsible use of AI, and provides oversight, governance and support for AI adoption across our institution," Gower said.
The university said the sustainability fund would draw on existing research expertise across engineering, science, medicine, business, law and social sciences to study AI's environmental effects, and would inform submissions to state and federal parliamentary inquiries into AI and data centers.