California Institute of Technology (Caltech)

For the Fall 2027 application cycle, Caltech requires all applicants to review its ethical-use-of-AI guidelines before submitting supplemental essays. Noncompliance with those guidelines may result in rescission of admission. This is an admissions requirement for applicants, not a coursework rule or an automatic sanction for enrolled students.

Respondents in conduct proceedings have the right to an advisor from the Caltech community (who may not be an attorney); Student Affairs staff, Board of Control representatives, and Conduct Review Committee members are trained to serve as advisors.

Students with disabilities in handbook processes may request reasonable accommodation from CASS. Complaint details need not be disclosed except insofar as they assist determination. Arrangements are individual and must be requested in a timely manner.

Undergraduate respondents offered the Early Resolution Option have 7 calendar days to decide whether to accept responsibility and waive a full Board of Control hearing, and may seek the support of a trained community advisor.

Under the Caltech Honor System, the Dean of Graduate Studies reviews graduate coursework violations (consulting the Graduate Honor Council), while allegations of research misconduct are handled separately by the Office of Research Compliance (ORC).

For Caltech Bi 1 (2026), generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Colab AI) are prohibited unless an assignment explicitly instructs students to engage with them on a per-problem basis.

Caltech Undergraduate and Graduate Deans, CTLO, and the Hixon Writing Center strongly discourage the use of AI-detection tools for student writing due to false positives, false negatives, bias, and unreliability.

Generative AI platforms are strictly not approved for long-term storage, official records management, or institutional data retention; all records requiring retention must be stored in approved Caltech systems.

IMSS guidance prohibits restricted or confidential Caltech information in consumer AI tools. The LLM Standards permit a specific IMSS exception with compensating controls; catalogue access alone does not establish sensitive-data approval.

AI agents operating in Caltech environments must be restricted to approved tools with explicit scopes and least-privilege credentials, and production tools must not allow arbitrary code execution without sandboxing.

For Caltech-data workloads, primary LLM inference must use Amazon Bedrock or other IMSS-approved platforms with no provider training on Caltech prompts/data, and custom training/fine-tuning must be performed on Amazon SageMaker or IMSS-approved secured environments.

Public, consumer, or unsanctioned GenAI tools are prohibited for Restricted or Confidential Caltech data unless IMSS issues a specific exception with compensating controls.

Violations may result in access revocation, removal of workloads and disciplinary actions per Caltech IMSS. Persistent violations are escalated to the CIO, CISO, OGC and appropriate governance bodies.

All AI traffic with Caltech data must use private networking (for example VPC Endpoints/PrivateLink or Direct Connect), with encryption in transit and at rest (TLS 1.2+; KMS CMKs). The examples are not an exclusive network list. Exceptions require Research Compliance Officer, CIO and CISO (or delegate) approval, compensating controls and an agreed sunset date.

LLM usage involving human subjects or protected research data must receive prior Institutional Review Board (IRB) and IMSS data-use review.

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Education is listed in the official Caltech IMSS AI tools catalog as Coming Soon at $216/user/year via PTA order in access.caltech; it is not yet available as a live verified campus service.

External LLM vendors (non-AWS) must execute a Security & Data Processing Addendum that explicitly prohibits provider model training on Caltech data.

All generative AI usage at Caltech should adhere to four institutional principles: prompt disclosure or referencing of GenAI tools and application plug-ins as applicable, data and information protection, content responsibility by the user, and the Caltech Honor Code. This guidance does not mandate a universal prompt-log format or tool-version record.

Caltech admissions advises applicants that a good rule of thumb for generative AI is that if a trusted adult shouldn't do it, AI shouldn't do it either.

Anthropic Claude Standard is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: conditionally allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Microsoft Copilot Web is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: officially endorsed.

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Windows 11 is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: officially endorsed.

Zoom AI Companion is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: officially endorsed.

OpenAI ChatGPT 5 is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: conditionally allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Anthropic Claude Standard / Premium is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Google Gemini Enterprise for Education Pro is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: conditionally allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Microsoft Copilot Web is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Microsoft 365 Copilot for Windows 11 is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.

Zoom AI Companion is listed for California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in an official university AI tools source. Derived availability: allowed. Derived endorsement type: institutionally licensed or procured.