When software engineering and data science professor Dr. Chih Lai first heard that his employer, the University of St. Thomas, was considering purchasing and rolling out an AI chatbot, he was intrigued.
Intrigue became inspiration as Lai realized there would be no reason to purchase anything.
“When I really thought about it, I knew we could build something ourselves,” Lai said.
Within a month, Lai developed the prototype for TommieBot, the university’s new generative artificial intelligence chatbot. Two years later, the university is integrating the chatbot across its digital infrastructure, leveraging the innovative tech to enhance the Tommie experience.
Prospective students can ask TommieBot about academic majors. Current students and faculty can ask TommieBot questions about university policies and events. Staff can ask TommieBot to troubleshoot technical issues and streamline daily tasks.
“TommieBot is the beginning of a new era of how Tommies interact with a computer,” said Jihun Moon, who helped develop TommieBot as a graduate student and who now serves as the university’s AI Innovation Fellow. “I can’t say exactly when or how it will happen for everyone, but AI is changing our relationship with technology.”
TommieBot pulls information from St. Thomas public webpages, policy documents and knowledge bases to quickly give users accurate answers to a wide range of prompts. Fueling that quick – and uniquely accurate – process is a strong dose of Tommie ingenuity.
Lai and Moon worked together to develop a completely new way of sifting through digital information. Known as retrieval augmentation generation, or RAG, TommieBot’s RAG technique features a distinct combination of algorithms that, so far, have proven more accurate than other major chatbots on the market.
“AI innovation is happening at breakneck speeds, including right here on campus,” said Jonathan Keiser, associate vice president of academic technology and innovation at St. Thomas, and a co-lead on the TommieBot project. “It’s a great testament to Professor Lai and Jihun that they were creating their own RAG technique, long before it was even known as RAG across the field.”
Scaling TommieBot from a prototype to a fully functional and accessible campuswide tool has come with its share of challenges. To meet them, the researchers have relied on the expertise of several university departments to ensure TommieBot is visually appealing, accessible to all users and is capable of performing at scale.
The entire process has been a remarkable hands-on experience for the St. Thomas community, improving AI literacy and inspiring new collaborations.
“When you force yourself to work on these difficult problems, you learn a lot, and that’s where you also encounter solutions,” Lai said.
The TommieBot team has worked with the School of Engineering, Dougherty Family College and the Office of International Students & Scholars to debut the chatbot on their websites or infuse it into workflows. And more partnerships are on the way.
“TommieBot has helped us become an artificial intelligence leader on the technical side of literacy and enablement, but also the nontechnical side as we offer possibilities to overcome barriers across campus,” Keiser said.
In the coming months, TommieBot will be integrated with the university’s ClassNavigator tool to help students plan their semesters more efficiently. Students will be able to ask TommieBot, through typed prompts, to recommend classes that meet degree requirements and fit within their schedule.
With its early success, TommieBot already has a campus buddy. Tommie Tech AI Search is another new tool, implemented by Innovation and Technology Services (ITS), which allows users to ask questions in natural language about tech issues.
Championing these new tools and serving as the central hub for AI-related activities at St. Thomas, is the new Institute for AI for the Common Good. The institute oversees in-house research and development, and identifies new opportunities for collaboration.
“TommieBot represents the kind of innovation that aligns perfectly with our mission at St. Thomas,” said Eddy Rojas, executive vice president and provost for St. Thomas, and whose office manages the institute. “By building our own AI chatbot, we’re not only embracing emerging technology – we’re shaping it in a way that serves our values, protects our data, and empowers our community.”
TommieBot’s in-house development has already saved the university thousands of dollars, with those savings to compound in years to come. However, leaders believe the chatbot’s real value lies in its ability to build awareness, foster experimentation with generative AI, and strengthen robust AI literacy across campus.
“Yes, we’ve developed a more capable, less expensive solution ourselves, but we’ve also used TommieBot to encourage the entire St. Thomas organization to lean into this space,” Keiser said.
