UVA Copilot Chat by Microsoft is the first, enterprise-wide AI tool available to staff, faculty, and students who have a central, academic-licensed Microsoft 365 account.
UVA Copilot is a chat-based GenAI service that accepts text, image, and voice-to-text prompts and accesses real time information on the internet. Copilot is maintained by Microsoft and is a secure platform where UVA information can be entered.
Identified use cases for UVA Copilot in University Advancement work include, but are not limited to:
- Communication template drafting
- Notes or story summarization
- Idea and content generation for campaign, event, initiative, etc.
- Research on general audience segment preferences or topical affiliations
- Code refactoring and refinement
User Stories
I build models that help [the College] foundation analyze donor behavior and enhance donor experience. Copilot's capacity for conversation between human-user and AI on ideas, alternatives, and their consequences is a tool I plan to utilize for any sophisticated model I build or want to enhance in the future.
Kyle Mackey
Senior Data Analyst, The College Foundation
After spending hours in the weeds on a research project, I shifted to writing an email to explain my findings to stakeholders. I turned to CoPilot to help me write the email. I crafted prompts to address my needs without providing any PII. The result was a neat and professional email. I was able to use some of the word choices and organizational structure…I found it very helpful.
Megan Randall
Senior Researcher, Prospect Management, Research, & Analytics
I used Copilot to help me craft copy and create illustrations for the [Darden] Alumni in the Media webpage…I only used [it] to refine and elaborate on my ideas. I asked it to rephrase my bullet points and convert them to paragraph text. However, I found that creative idea results were unsatisfactory when I asked Copilot more general prompts [without context or details].
Agatha Malina
Assistant Director, Advancement Digital Communication Design, Darden School of Business Foundation
Copilot has revolutionized my coding experience. Its detailed line-by-line explanations have helped me refine my code and helpful in creating documentation. Plus, the relevant links it provides make learning new concepts a breeze.
Anil Malviya
Business Intelligence Analyst
First Step
Before you start utilizing UVA Copilot, make sure to read and become familiar with the AI Responsible Use Guidelines and Terms of Use established by the UVA Information Technology Services (ITS) department. These conditions state that “Sensitive” data may be used in chat prompts. “Highly Sensitive” data, however, as explicitly defined in the University Data Protection Standards, cannot be included in chat prompts.
Please also recall that all active members of the UVA Advancement Community agreed to the Staff Non-Disclosure & Confidentiality Agreement, in which a pledge was made to sustain our roles and responsibilities around confidentiality and proper data handling.
Access
Use the following site link to access and use UVA Copilot Chat: https://in.virginia.edu/genai.
On the opened site page, click the first “UVA Copilot Chat, by Microsoft” login option at the top and use your official UVA credentials linked to an enterprise Microsoft 365 account to sign in once prompted (e.g. computingid@virginia.edu).
NOTE: To access UVA Copilot Chat, your UVA Microsoft account must have the central A5 academic license issued by ITS. Accounts with another license type or provisioned by a separate tenant—such as UVA Health, Darden, and Law—are not part of the A5 academic license.
Darden and Law: you may access your school’s Copilot by logging in with your area’s academic credentials (e.g. computingid@lawschool.virginia.edu and computingid@darden.virginia.edu).
Ensure Security
To ensure you are within our UVA Copilot account (and not a personal or other Copilot account) and that your data is secure, please look for (1) your UVA ID (email address) indicating that you are logged into your UVA M365 account and (2) “Protected” badge as pictured below.
Remember, if you have individually signed up for a GenAI account, you are personally responsible for what happens with that account. UVA’s licensed Generative AI tools provide data protection that does not exist when using individually licensed tools. Do not use University data, except for data classified as “Public,” with AI tools that have not been appropriately contracted and licensed with the necessary data protections as these data could be exposed to others and/or used to train AI models.
Please review additional considerations in ITS' UVA Responsible Use Guidelines.
Some language and images have been copied or adapted for UA needs from the UVA ITS GenAI homepage.
For more information on the wider rollout of AI across Grounds, please visit https://in.virginia.edu/genai.