News & Alerts

Pitt Digital provides students, faculty, and staff with access to a suite of institution-approved AI tools through Generative AI@Pitt, built around equitable access and privacy protections. The tools are one part of a broader, University-wide approach to responsible AI that includes the AI Coordination and Development Committee — announced by Provost McCarthy in February — as well as the Pitt AI-Scholar Teacher Alliance (PASTA), a faculty-led monthly forum that has grown to more than 140 members since its launch in 2023.

What are Pitt students actually saying about AI? A faculty research team spent the spring of 2025 finding out — and Pitt Digital was proud to support their work.

Before surgeons perform knee replacements, they need to know exactly how the patient’s knee is aligned. That means manually placing markers on an X-ray of the patient’s full leg from hip to ankle and measuring the precise angles that will guide the procedure. It’s a task that must be done for every patient, takes roughly 15 minutes each time and must be completed by a surgeon whose time is among the most expensive in medicine.

Pitt Digital partnered with the Department of Pathology's Computational Pathology and AI Center of Excellence (CPACE) to secure a grant from Dell Technologies for new servers and data storage systems that will support AI-powered disease detection and diagnostics. The infrastructure will enable CPACE to analyze medical images and data at greater scale, advancing work in areas such as earlier cancer detection, faster clinical decision-making, and training the next generation of health care professionals to use AI responsibly.

The team took advantage of Pitt Digital’s partnership with Anthropic. “Finding that signal is like finding a needle in a haystack,” Dickerson said. “We were able to use Claude so that we knew when we needed to point the antenna to hopefully catch the astronauts’ signal.”

As generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) becomes part of daily life, more people are asking: What does this mean for the planet? Maybe you’ve seen headlines about data centers consuming a lot of electricity and water.

At Pitt's March 19 town hall, CIO Mark Henderson addressed questions about the Anthropic and AWS partnership, emphasizing that the University is offering the community choices while highlighting the potential benefits as AI increasingly becomes part of daily life. Henderson explained that Anthropic was chosen for its commitment to security, transparency, and ethical AI development — positioning Pitt as a national model for responsible AI deployment in academia.

Before healthcare researchers can analyze patient data, they face a critical obstacle: removing all protected health information (PHI) to protect patient privacy. This de-identification process isn't just a formality; it's a legal requirement for research under HIPAA.

Pitt is expanding student access to Claude for Education as part of Generative AI @ Pitt, a Pitt Digital initiative providing students, faculty, and staff with secure, vetted generative AI tools for teaching, learning, research, and administrative work. Rather than requiring a single platform, the University is offering multiple options — including Claude for Education, Google Gemini, Google NotebookLM, Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, and PittGPT — to give the Pitt community flexibility while ensuring consistent privacy and data protections.

Pitt is setting a national precedent for AI in higher education through its partnership with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services, which provides students, faculty, and staff with access to Claude for Education. Pitt is the first university to embed the platform into its own AWS cloud infrastructure, enabling the University to build custom, secure applications at an institutional scale. Claude for Education uses Socratic questioning to help students reach solutions on their own and can support work across disciplines—from humanities research to data analysis to health sciences. 

It’s the time of year when you’re probably making big plans to change your life — and we’re no exception. But our new year’s resolution doesn’t require you to overhaul your morning routine or purchase a gym membership. Instead, this year, we’re resolving to work smarter with the tools we already have.

Electronic health records use proprietary reference codes that vary from hospital to hospital, creating a significant barrier for medical researchers trying to share and analyze data across institutions. Christopher Horvat, a Pitt critical care medicine professor, brought this challenge to Pitt's Cloud Innovation Center, where a team developed an AI-powered solution. The tool automatically maps proprietary codes to standard dictionaries and converts the data into a universally shareable format—potentially transforming how hospitals collaborate on research.

Pitt has announced a new Hub for AI and Data Science Leadership (HAIL), which will serve as a coordinating center to connect AI innovation currently siloed in individual classrooms and departments across the University. The hub aims to take a practical approach to making AI accessible and career-relevant for students while listening to employer workforce demands — complementing Pitt's ongoing rollout of Claude for Education.

Good prompts matter because they can save you time, headache, and tokens — the behind-the-scenes “currency” of generative AI. While most of us have chatted with a GenAI tool, you might need some tips to level up your prompt game. Here’s everything you need to know about what makes prompts work and why getting it right is so important.

The newest Generative AI @ Pitt tool is now available to all faculty and staff with student access coming soon. Claude for Education is designed to go beyond simple answers to deepen understanding and spark learning — you know, what we do here at Pitt. 

Pitt Digital is working with the University's Office of Human Resources to implement a digital assistant on the OHR website. This chatbot helps employees by providing quick and efficient access to HR information and resources, streamlining the process of addressing inquiries and enhancing communication.

The University has launched Claude for Education for faculty and staff through a one-year partnership with Anthropic and Amazon Web Services. CIO Mark Henderson emphasized that faculty retain full authority over AI use in their courses, and Pitt Digital will continue supporting additional tools including PittGPT, Google Gemini, and Copilot. Student access will be added starting during winter recess.

Generative AI can feel like a colleague, a trusted assistant, or even a confidant. Its responses are so humanlike that it’s easy to forget you’re talking to a machine. But the truth is, unlike when you’re speaking with a real person offline, the information you provide a GenAI tool may be read by someone else, saved where you can never delete it, or even repeated to another user.It can be difficult to navigate the web of information and misinformation surrounding GenAI and how it uses your data. So, let’s bust some of the most common GenAI myths to help you chat with confidence.

Between finals, year-end work deadlines, gift shopping, travel planning, and everything else life throws your way, the holidays can feel less like a break and more like another project to manage. Good thing the Generative AI @ Pitt tools are expert project managers that can help make the logistical holiday chaos a little less overwhelming.

You've done all the readings. Highlighted the important parts. Took detailed notes. Then, you’re suddenly trying to squeeze in a 3 a.m. study session but your study group is sound asleep. That's where NotebookLM can help. It’s your always available study buddy that’s not like other GenAI’s.

A strange side effect of generative AI is hallucinations, or when a GenAI tool confidently delivers completely made-up information. Maybe you asked for a works cited page and received citations for articles that don’t exist. Or you’re given a plausible-seeming statistic that turns out to be fake. Whatever way these hallucinations come up, it can be hard to tell what’s true and what’s a believable lie.

The University of Pittsburgh is collaborating with Anthropic and AWS to offer Claude for Education to students, faculty, and staff, as part of a broader discussion on AI's role in academia. This initiative was highlighted during recent campus dialogues emphasizing the importance of AI in enhancing educational experiences. By integrating Claude, Pitt aims to foster critical thinking and personalized learning, reflecting its commitment to using innovative tools to advance its academic framework.   

Pitt is deploying Claude for Education to assist students and faculty, marking a unique rollout as the first university to integrate this AI model with Amazon Web Services. The tool will serve as a learning companion for students, helping with assignments and critical thinking, and will also support faculty with research and course material development.

Pitt has been tapped by AI company Anthropic for a first-of-its-kind partnership. Pitt is the first university in the country to ink an institution-wide agreement for an Amazon Web Services-integrated Claude for Education, a version of Anthropic's large language model designed for academic use.

Your favorite Generative AI @ Pitt tools are even more powerful than you might think. Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat is now built directly into your Microsoft 365 apps and Google Gemini can help you from the sidelines of your web browser. No switching to a separate platform, no need to upload your document in one place and make changes in another. The AI assistance is right where you need it, waiting for you to use it.