Tailored AI chat for a large university
The university where we did this project was very enthusiastic about AI, because they saw many opportunities to enrich education and because they understand that working with AI is an important skill for their students. But the risks were also clear...
No sensitive data in public AI
If everyone uses a public AI tool like ChatGPT, you no longer have control over your data. Personal data, research data, and sensitive business information will become part of public language models, and you don't know where, when, and how that information will reappear. So the university asked us for an environment where anyone who wanted to experiment with AI could experiment, but where the user could count on data security and privacy.
A question that made us enthusiastic, because here at Blis Digital, together with Microsoft, we had been thinking about how to use AI for education for some time. Technologically, we also knew we could do it because we had already built our own AI chatbot internally. We did this on the basis of Azure OpenAI, Microsoft's AI that uses the same language model as ChatGPT and is therefore just as powerful.
AI is going to help a lot of people, in many different occupations. But how exactly, we don't know yet. That's why you should start experimenting and experimenting now, but in a safe environment and between clear boundaries. — Albert-Jan Schot, CTO Blis Digital
AI chat in Microsoft Teams
Azure OpenAI is not a one-size-fits-all tool. It is a service that allows us to use AI in applications that we build ourselves. In this case, we chose to build a chatbot in Teams. Because within the university, Teams is where students, lecturers and other staff chat with each other and collaborate on files. We were able to easily add the AI to that. A second advantage is that security and access in Teams are arranged immediately, without additional development work.
This approach is also very cost-effective compared to licensing a product such as Microsoft Copilot. The only fixed costs for this bot are those for hosting on Azure. A user only needs access to Teams, and therefore no additional license, to use the AI.
Natural chat experience
The final result was a chatbot with the same natural chat experience as ChatGPT, but with the appearance of a Teams chat with colleagues or classmates. This way, no one has to learn new skills to experiment with AI. It is also possible to add the bot to a meeting or group conversation and get quick access to information. Don't search for a document on the intranet, but ask the AI, for example, “What is the procedure for posting a vacancy?”
The university has an influence on the tone of the answers and can control costs by choosing a cheaper language model or by imposing quotas. This can be done per chat as well as per user. And, most importantly, all entered data remains within the university's IT environment.
Future innovations
Having your own AI is also an investment in future innovation. For example, he gives you the opportunity to train models on your own data and set the limits of what the model does and does not do. Public models, for example, are useless for medical or psychology students because they block topics such as sexuality. A proprietary AI, especially for these faculties, solves that problem. By the way, Azure is also perfectly capable of working with models other than GPT. In order to save costs or to use certain unique features, some of the users can therefore also be transferred to a competitive or customized model.
Want to know more?
Do you want to work with AI and are your people ready to experiment with it? We'll help you get started quickly with a first, secure, AI chat and lay the foundation for the next step.
