You're not the only one who isn't sure
In a survey of Canadian post-secondary students run by Academica Group in February 2026, 58% said they were allowed to use generative AI in at least some way for their coursework, and 30% said they were not. The other 12% didn't know whether it was allowed at all.
That uncertainty makes sense. The rules often change from one course to the next, and sometimes from one assignment to the next.
Who decides: your course, not the AI
Check the rules for the specific course and ask the instructor if they are unclear.
So, before you start:
- Read the syllabus and the assignment instructions for anything about AI.
- Ask your instructor if they don't say, and ask in writing if you can, so you have the answer.
- Follow the strictest rule that applies. If the course allows AI for brainstorming but not for writing, that's the line.
No tool, Uncook included, changes what your course allows. If AI isn't allowed, don't use it.
Why keep a record of your AI chats
When AI is allowed, some instructors ask you to say how you used it, or to hand in the conversation. Even when nobody asks, a copy helps:
- You can show your process: the questions you asked, what you kept, what you rejected.
- You can find things again: the source the AI pointed you to, the explanation that finally made sense.
- You're not depending on the chat staying there. A chat can be deleted, renamed or hard to find a month later.
If your course or your institution asks for a record, follow their format. A clean copy of the chat is a good place to start.
A share link isn't a record.
A ChatGPT share link opens the chat on a public page that anyone with the link can read, and it doesn't work for chats that are too big to share. A file stays with you, and you choose who sees it.
Three ways to save a chat
Print to PDF from the browser. Open the chat, press Ctrl+P (or Cmd+P on a Mac) and choose Save as PDF. Free and built in, but on a long chat the PDF often comes out messy, with the page's buttons and side panel included.
Export all your data. In ChatGPT, Settings, then Data controls, then Export data: you get a link by email to a .zip of your whole history. Complete, but heavy if you need one conversation.
Export one chat with Uncook, below.
The faster way: Export, in Uncook
With the Uncook extension, open the chat in ChatGPT, click the Uncook icon and choose Export. Pick PDF, Markdown or plain text: you get the chat itself, clean, your messages and the answers, without the page around them.
It's free, PDF included, and it doesn't count as a task. It runs in your browser: the chat isn't sent to our servers. It works on long chats too, and on chats from Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, Mistral Vibe (ex-Le Chat), Gemini Notebook and Google AI Studio.
This is about chats in your own account, on the AI's website. If your school gives you an AI through a university account, check with your school how to keep a copy.
Questions people ask
Does a saved chat prove I followed the rules? No. It shows what was said in the chat, nothing more. Whether your use of AI was allowed depends on your course's rules, so check those first.
My instructor didn't say anything about AI. Can I use it? Ask. Rules differ from one course to the next, and your instructor is the one who decides. Until you have an answer, don't assume it's allowed.
Is Export free? Yes. Export is free, PDF included, and doesn't count as a task.
Start fresh,
without starting over.
Add to Chrome
Export runs in your browser, through the extension. The chat isn't sent to our servers, and nothing is kept on our side.
We don't keep the conversations you bring. When you click Send to Uncook in the extension window, the extension sends the chat from your tab to our servers, encrypted, for up to 30 minutes, and we delete it as soon as your Uncook page opens it. What Uncook makes from it is kept as a task, for as long as our Privacy page says. Neither your chats nor your tasks are used to train AI models.