A Graduate Center Initiative
AI Infrastructure for CUNY, by CUNY
The CUNY AI Lab is a faculty- and staff-led initiative that develops and maintains AI tools for teaching, learning, and research. We prioritize privacy, transparency, and thoughtful integration of AI into academic work.
Guiding Principles
Privacy by Design
We use providers that don't retain or train on user data
Transparency
We prioritize open-weight models that can be examined and understood
Environmental Accountability
Tools include visibility into computational costs
Criticality
AI literacy over AI dependency
Access at a glance
One application covers everything the Lab runs. Approved members sign in with CUNY Login.
CAIL Sandbox
Leverage our chat platform to experiment with open-weight models and prototype custom models of your own for teaching, research, and critique.
Open Sandbox →Lab tools
Build academic sites in Site Studio; conduct research tasks in Agent Studio; use media tools for transcription, image description, PDF remediation, and OCR; or get help drafting an AI use disclosure statement.
View tools →API keys
Create keys for the Lab's model API endpoint to use in your own tools, projects, or any OpenAI-compatible services.
Read guide →Teaching with AI? Apply for a class, then share an invitation link your students use to sign up. No individual applications needed.Apply for a class →