Purple Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)


What Purple Is

Purple is UW’s generative AI tool to support teaching, learning, research, and daily operations across all UW campuses. Purple will help you work smarter, faster, and more creatively, all while ensuring that UW’s values of trust, integrity and responsible innovation remain central. 

What Purple Is Not

Purple is designed to help with a wide range of questions, from quick campus information to general guidance. When topics involve health, mental wellbeing, money, or legal concerns, Purple can offer broad information, but do not use Purple as a substitute for professional advice.

Purple is also not an emergency resource and does not make official University decisions. When something is personal, time sensitive, or needs expert support, Purple can help guide you to the campus people and services best prepared to assist you

Purple isn’t live to everyone yet, but it’s coming very soon. Read on to learn more about Purple.

On this page:

Getting Started

  • Anyone except those working with UW Medicine Data. Purple is not approved for any UW Medicine Data. 
  • What if I’m a UW Medicine employee? Use UW Medicine Chat, which works like ChatGPT but in a secure environment. It allows UW Medicine Data with certain limitations outlined in the Appropriate Use Policy.
 

Purple can help you generate a wide range of content, including:

  • Writing & Communication: Emails, documents, reports, quizzes, debates, and more.
  • Creative & Ideation: Brainstorming, storytelling, exploring approaches to planning and strategy.
  • Technical & Coding: Code generation, debugging, database design, workflow automation.
  • Data & Analysis: Data interpretation, budget planning, research assistance.
  • Learning & Support: Tutoring aides, and academic writing support.

Just a web browser. Purple is web-based and works in any modern browser.

Purple can help with a wide range of University activities including:

  • Teaching: Aiding in streamlining course content creation, coordinating assignment feedback, brainstorming student tutoring support.
  • Research: Literature reviews, data analysis assistance, research writing support, support for drafting request for proposals.
  • Administrative Tasks: Support for drafting documents, meeting summaries, workflow automation.
  • Study assistance: Writing help, academic guidance.
  • Creative Projects: Support in content generation, brainstorming, design assistance.

Purple can help support instructors with:

  • Teaching materials: Support tasks such as creating lesson plans, quizzes, test questions.
  • AI integration support: Support with ideas on how to use AI in instruction.
  • Promoting AI literacy: Aiding in understanding AI capabilities, limitations, and responsible use.
  • Academic tasks assistance: Aiding in research, drafting, refining, and editing.

Prompting is the method of instructing the AI to produce relevant and accurate outputs by providing clear context, expectations, and instructions. Good prompting bridges the gap between AI knowledge and user needs, improving response quality and usefulness.

Use the PACE framework to help Purple understand what you want to accomplish and deliver tailored results:

  • Problem: Define the issue to solve.
  • Action: Specify the task for the AI.
  • Context: Provide necessary background info.
  • Expectations: Set output style and quality criteria.

Proper Use of Purple

Responsible use of Purple means staying within these important boundaries:

  • Refer to the Generative AI Guidelines from UW-IT.
  • Respect security controls and access only authorized data.
  • Use Purple only within the UW's approved infrastructure.
  • Do not try to bypass safety guardrails or “jailbreak” the model. Just as you wouldn’t try to bypass UW NetID authentication or any other UW security controls.
  • Be aware of hallucination, bias, knowledge-cutoffs, and other limitations inherent in all LLMs and generative AI applications.

The rule of thumb is: when in doubt, ask!

Purple is not approved for any UW Medicine Data.

UW Medicine has UW Medicine Chat, which works like ChatGPT but in a secure environment. It allows UW Medicine Data with certain limitations outlined in the Appropriate Use Policy.

Instructors may set specific rules about using AI tools in their courses. Students should always review the course syllabus and applicable departmental guidelines before using Purple for coursework.

Support and Training

Yes! There are live Zoom trainings with AI experts and weekly office hours. Review the AI Calendar and attend.

Yes! Find Purple documentation on our website here.

  • You can join the AI community of Practice with your Net ID to connect on AI topics. It provides opportunities for collaboration, peer support, and sharing best practices.
  • Review full calendar of AI events here.

For a list of approved tools, enter “AI” in the search field in the UW Software Catalog.

Use the Purple support form for technical issues.

Technical Information

Yes, Purple is web-based and should work on mobile devices through your browser, though the experience may be optimized for desktop use.

The Purple web page is the best place to get the latest news and updates about Purple.

Use the Purple support form and we will help!