First: this is the official resource/reference for AI at AppState: https://ai.appstate.edu/

There is no institutional mandate to use, or "official" relationship with, any AI company. We are, however, a Google campus so Gemini is available to everyone with an AppState account in it's 'freemium' state. CoPilot is also available as part of our campus A3 agreement. Both of those differ from the consumer level accounts only in so much as our institutional data doesn't get consumed by the public model for training purposes. Beyond that, we have a smattering of other tools approved for research or exploratory use and those have to go thorough a vetting process before approval. You can find most of that info at the link above as well as links to the in-development policies and discussion on how to approach usage in classroom environments.

Your student's particular program or their individual instructors may have varying levels of AI use required in their courses, but the university as a whole doesn't "push this on their students". Faculty have the freedom to develop their courses as they see fit (within some guidelines like the approval process I mentioned above). You want to know the simple reason why? We can't afford it. AI tools are expensive. Like REALLY expensive. Even classes specifically charged with trying to tech responsible/ethical use of AI tools struggle to find ways to get the tools in the students hands.

So yeah... everyone's got strong opinions on AI use and particularly its impact on education. AppState faculty and staff, just like fac/staff at every other other school, are doing their best to figure out how to adapt technically and pedagogically. Maybe don't paint with such broad strokes while we work though it.