Official Statement on ASU Atomic

Approved by the UCWAZ Executive Committee and released publicly on May 21, 2026.

United Campus Workers of Arizona CWA Local 7065 calls on Arizona State University (ASU) to abandon the ASU Atomic project in its entirety. 

In early April, ASU “soft-launched” a new AI course builder and chat-bot called ‘ASU Atomic’ (Inside Higher Ed, 4/29/26; The Chronicle of Higher Education 5/1/26). Any person with an active, valid ASU email address could pay a $5 monthly fee to have this bot build a course, complete with modules, quizzes, and other materials in a matter of minutes. The content is pulled from unknowing ASU faculty’s existing coursework and lecture materials without their consent, and oftentimes out of context of the source material(s).

Existing AI technologies are built on stolen and underpaid labor, be it that of the creators of original content scraped to build large language models (LLMs) or workers in the global south who do the critical work of tagging and categorizing data for AI systems to use. ASU Atomic is merely an extension of this practice. Because of the lack of consent from faculty and instructors and the bot’s subscription model, ASU Atomic should be investigated for Intellectual Property rights violations and wage theft. 

The development of ASU Atomic is not the first time ASU has decided unilaterally to adopt AI tools and systems without comprehensive input from impacted parties, namely: faculty, staff, and students. Perhaps the most egregious example of this is the university’s decision to enter into a contract with OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. ASU's management is pursuing a vision of higher education that devalues its workers and provides students with inferior instruction. This is part of a broader effort by university management and ABOR to implement AI systems that negatively affect everyone in our Arizona universities and colleges. We cannot stand idly by as labor is stolen and student educational outcomes are abandoned. 

We call on Arizona State University management to:

• Establish and adhere to an oversight and governance process committee comprised of faculty, staff, and students regarding ASU Atomic and all other contracts with AI companies (new and existing);
• Arrange a faculty opt-in process for the use of any faculty-generated materials used to train AI or used by AI to produce new materials;
• Provide fulsome and transparent information about the budget and finance for ASU Atomic (including how much has already been spent, projected revenue, consideration of who receives revenues, etc.) and all other AI-related contracts and projects at ASU.

In solidarity, 

Your Union, United Campus Workers of Arizona CWA Local 7065

To read or download the statement as a PDF, click the button below.