Today, Monday, March 30, through an Open Letter addressed to the Minister of Education, Religious Affairs and Sports, Ms. Sofia Zacharaki, 22 civil society organizations and experts, including Homo Digitalis, requested official information regarding OpenAI’s programs “AI for Greece” and “Education for Countries” in Greece.

As we note, in September 2025 the Ministry announced the signing of a memorandum of cooperation with OpenAI במסגרת the “AI for Greece” program, without any prior open and transparent consultation with educators, students, parents, or relevant civil society organizations.

Moreover, the Ministry silently refused to respond to a formal request for access to relevant documents submitted by Homo Digitalis, despite the fact that it concerned critical issues such as the protection of students’ and teachers’ personal data in the use of ChatGPT Edu in public schools.

According to available information, the program is being piloted in 20 public secondary education schools and is unfolding in three stages. The first stage involves teacher training (October 2025 – November 2025), the second the use of AI tools by teachers themselves (December 2025 – February 2026), and finally the third the introduction of AI tools into the learning process and their use by students (March – June 2026).

In recent weeks, OpenAI has been at the center of international attention due to its cooperation with the U.S. Department of Defense, raising questions about the potential uses of its technologies beyond U.S. borders, particularly given the lack of clear positioning on issues such as the collection of data from citizens of third countries for surveillance purposes.

At the same time, while discussions at the European Union level intensify around digital sovereignty in the era of artificial intelligence—favoring transparent, auditable, and independent solutions—Greece appears to be moving in the opposite direction. The choice of closed, commercial systems by technology companies such as OpenAI in sensitive sectors like education raises further concerns.

In our open letter, we outline a landscape with more questions than answers regarding the introduction of artificial intelligence into Greek schools. We call for clarification on how the two OpenAI programs in Greece are interconnected, which schools are participating and based on what criteria they were selected, and whether this choice promotes equality or risks exacerbating existing inequalities.

At the same time, we highlight the need to clarify what the use of ChatGPT Edu in the classroom means in practice and whether alternative, transparent, and auditable solutions based on the principles of free and open-source software were considered.

Finally, the issue of personal data protection remains central, as we pose critical questions to the Minister regarding what data is being collected, the purposes of its processing, and the private entities managing it.

You can read the full text of the letter here (EL).