The owners of the Aalto.fi website aimed to create a generative AI assistant that:

• Serves users in their preferred language,
• Composes a single answer from different pages, regardless of the language of the content (not all content is translated),
• Provides source references to the content pages, and
• Significantly enhances the findability and user experience of understanding the information.

Aalto University’s leadership has encouraged staff to actively and responsibly experiment with and use AI. In this project, responsibility has been reflected particularly in the precise validation of answer quality and in a secure implementation model using the capabilities and best practices of the Azure cloud.

Generative AI generally provides varying responses, making it challenging to lock in exact answers. Aalto’s IT and communications services, the research development services of the School of Science, and Modirum Platforms (Cloudriven)sought a cross-lingual, vector-based search solution where the language model can produce high-quality responses by combining content from several pages that match user input.

Reaching the desired level of quality has required active experimentation, identifying “incorrect answers,” critically reviewing and updating source material, and configuring the technical solution to correct findings. In other words, smooth cooperation between content management and technology has been essential to achieve the desired solution.

Robert Salven, the owner of the Aalto.fi website, has been impressed with the results. “When we first saw ChatGPT, we immediately thought that generative AI could significantly improve information retrieval on the Aalto.fi site by combining information from multiple pages and compiling it into a short, easily understandable answer for users. We were surprised at how quickly we were able to create a testable chat functionality and how well it answered our questions even in the testing phase. The difference is huge compared to the previous user experience, where I had to open several pages based on search results to form a complete view.”

“It has been exciting and enjoyable to work on this project with Antti and the Modirum Platforms (Cloudriven) team, and it was nice to see how well the collaboration with Siili Solutions went when we started working on embedding the interface into the Aalto.fi site,” Robert added.

According to Cloudriven’s Antti Martikainen, “This project has been very interesting for us. Azure’s OpenAI and AI search services have proven their capabilities, and the service returns high-quality responses from large data sets. Power Platform, in turn, has brought clear added value to the testing process.”

The solution was developed securely using Microsoft Azure’s services, leveraging GPT models available through Azure’s OpenAI service and AI search. The new search experience is enabled by a vector database in the background, which builds language-independent semantic layers into the search index. Based on the user’s input, the system retrieves related semantic content from the database and uses identified keywords.

Aalto University’s Drupal partner, Siili Solutions, was also involved, integrating the GPT experience into the Aalto.fi site in a way that feels natural to users.

The collaboration continues, and practices related to updating and maintaining the AI assistant are being refined for this project.

About Aalto University

At Aalto University, science and art meet technology and business. We are building a sustainable future by achieving breakthroughs in our key areas and at their intersections. At the same time, we inspire future change-makers and create solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. Our university community consists of around 13,000 students and over 4,500 staff, including 400 professors. Our campus is located in Otaniemi, Espoo.