AI Assistant enhances digital experience at the University of Auckland

Waipapa Taumata Rau, University of Auckland, has emerged as an early adopter of artificial intelligence (AI) in Aotearoa New Zealand, weaving the technology into teaching, research and operations. While pioneering any new technology requires experimentation, the University’s approach to AI implementation has been careful, considered, and collaborative.

It’s involved staff from across the University collaborating with each other, and with trusted partners with subject matter expertise. The result has been the creation of solutions that have been internationally recognised as best practise.

The University of Auckland was recently named the recipient of an award for operational excellence in information technology in recognition of its AI Assistant. The assistant provides 24/7 answers to University-related queries for students, staff and the public. The award was given by the Council of Australasian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), which brings together University and Research Institutions from across Australasia and the South Pacific.

Without any formal promotion, the assistant now facilitates over 9,000 conversations and 60,000 searches each month, initiated by users from around the world and in multiple languages. The University is now seeing more interactions through the AI Assistant than incoming phone calls.

In developing its chatbot, the University’s Enterprise AI team addressed problems head on. They wanted customers to be able to quickly and easily find the information they needed to navigate the University.

The Enterprise AI team aimed to address common digital experience challenges, such as fragmented information spread across 90+ University digital domains. Previously, many users were forced to email or phone for answers during business hours, which isn’t always convenient or the best experience for a digital-native generation. Recent studies have noted the rise in Gen Z of telephobia – fear or anxiety around making and receiving telephone calls.

The solution? A retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) assistant powered by expansive, up-to-date University knowledge. It offers accurate, conversational responses, making it easier for users to navigate the University on their own terms.

Matt Poole, Enterprise AI Manger says the cross-functional team at the University working on the AI Assistant has been key to its success. A wide range of staff from across campus in IT, organisational development and student experience roles collaborated to bring together knowledge and experience. An example is the University’s AI designers, who helped ensure the tone of responses generated was informative and friendly.

External partners included IBM as a provider, with IBM Watson as the platform that the AI assistant was built on, and ElementX AI – a spinout from the University of Auckland Business School’s Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), who aim to make cutting edge AI accessible to businesses around the world.

“Our external partners have also been superb. IBM keep us cutting edge and we’ve been lucky enough to partner with ElementX AI for 5 years now. Together we’ve built a lot of capability and learnings in semantic search, AI governance, iterative deployment, and cohort-based personalisation.”

This is the second award for this project. The University’s Enterprise AI team also won the Tertiary ICT Excellence Award for Technology Delivery which celebrates projects that land safely, work at scale and deliver value quickly.