OpenAI has announced the launch of a program called ChatGPT for Academic Researchers, which will provide members of the academic community with free access to its proprietary artificial intelligence models. The initiative is designed for scientists, mathematicians, and engineers from selected universities and research institutions.
The first phase of the program is scheduled to begin this summer and will cover an initial cohort of 10,000 participants. OpenAI said the program will then be gradually scaled up, reaching a total of 100,000 researchers by the end of 2027.
Participants will receive access to the GPT-5.6 Sol Pro model along with support from OpenAI specialists. Each researcher joining the program will also be permitted to invite up to four colleagues from their own institution to take part.
OpenAI described the initiative as part of a broader investment program worth more than $250 million aimed at supporting scientific research. The company also stated that participant data will not by default be used to train new AI models.
Separately, OpenAI had previously introduced a service called Prism for working with scientific publications. The service helps researchers verify citations, handle research formatting, and carry out other related tasks.
