OpenAI partners with FWISD on ChatGPT for teachers. Questions remain

OpenAI is partnering with Fort Worth ISD to bring ChatGPT into teachers’ day-to-day work — a move some educators say could save them hours but that also raises questions about student privacy, training and how the district will monitor its use.

OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, a generative artificial intelligence chatbot that can answer questions, draft text and help users complete tasks based on written prompts.

OpenAI announced Aug. 26 that Fort Worth ISD is among 55 school systems across 20 states joining a new wave of ChatGPT for Teachers partnerships. The company says the tool is free to verified K-12 educators through June 2028 and that data shared in district-managed workspaces is not used to train its models by default. Information used to train an AI model can influence what the system produces later, raising privacy concerns if sensitive information is entered. In schools, that could include students’ grades, test results, disability information or other protected records. The partnerships also include training, support for district leaders and ongoing guidance.

While OpenAI described FWISD as a partner, the district characterized its involvement as being in the “early stages of exploring opportunities” to use ChatGPT.