Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) has partnered with CloudMile to enhance its student virtual assistant and AI chatbot, Lyon Bot.
"We are transitioning from an intent-based Natural Language Processing chatbot to a GenAI chatbot for student housing inquiries to enhance flexibility, scalability, and user experience," said Mr Ng Kee Haur, deputy director of Enterprise IT, Centre for IT Services at NTU. "While GenAI can handle complex, unstructured queries, there is still a role for the intent-based chatbot in specific scenarios. This hybrid approach allows us to balance efficiency with precision."
GenAI chatbot
Initially introduced in 2020, NTU has upgraded Lyon Bot into a GenAI-powered system with CloudMile. It claims to employ multi-layer processing to retrieve information in real time from multiple centrally managed data sources.
It aims to deliver faster, more accurate responses to student inquiries by integrating Google's Gemini large language model (LLM). As a result, the chatbot has boosted engagement while streamlining administrative tasks and saving the university over 14 days of manual work each month.
"With the new AI-powered chatbot, we are currently saving around 14.5 days' worth of work every month," said Alvin Ong, chief information officer of NTU. "This allows our staff to focus on tasks that require human insight and creativity."
Educational transformation
 CloudMile, with its customised consulting services and system integration, has been instrumental in helping NTU build a stable and scalable AI conversational framework, providing the expertise and support needed for this transformative project.
"The transformation of NTU's Lyon Bot is a testament to our commitment to enhancing human-computer interaction through AI. CloudMile will continue supporting institutions and enterprises in leveraging AI for innovation excellence," Jeremy Heng, managing director of Southeast Asia at CloudMile, commented.
