FAQs

What is Illinois Chat?

Illinois Chat is a friendly course-assistant platform. Professors (and anyone else, really) can upload documents like syllabi, PDFs, videos, and more; students can then ask questions about the coursework and get fast, cited answers. It's open source, easy to use, and backed by the Center for AI Innovation (CAII) at NCSA, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

How do I get started?

Upload your docs — PDFs, PowerPoints, Word files, or even videos — or connect a website crawl or Canvas course, and you're ready to go. See the Quickstart and the video walkthroughs.

What happened to uiuc.chat?

The community instance at uiuc.chat is migrating to the official campus-supported instance at chat.illinois.edu. Chatbot creation on uiuc.chat has been disabled. If you have an existing chatbot there, see Migrating from uiuc.chat.

Are there any costs associated with using it?

The platform is free to use. If you want to use commercial models such as OpenAI's, you supply your own API key and pay the provider directly for usage. Free NCSA-hosted open models are also available.

Is there a community or support available?

Yes. For questions and support, contact the team at genaisupport@mx.uillinois.edu. Bug reports and feature requests are welcome on GitHub.

Is it secure?

Data is stored securely on university-managed and cloud infrastructure, and your documents are never used to train models. As with any research platform, avoid uploading data you are not authorized to share.

Can I run it myself?

Yes — the entire platform is open source (Apache 2.0) and ships with a Docker Compose stack. See Self-Hosting.

How can I stay updated on new features?

Follow the release blog and watch the GitHub repository.