Project Profile
Questions about NCSA’s work in artificial intelligence?
Volodymyr Kindratenko
Director, Center for AI Innovation
kindrtnk@illinois.edu
AI Architecture
Illinois Chat, an official artificial intelligence (AI) software tool of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, has launched for the Fall 2025 semester and is available for anyone on campus. In partnership with the Office of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) and Illinois Computes, NCSA developed Illinois Chat to offer large language model (LLM) abilities to the entire campus community.
More Than a Chatbot
This campus-developed tool allows users to create personalized LLM-based chatbots – similar to commercial options like ChatGPT – but with more control over their functions and content, meaning more security and less risk. By utilizing their own data focused on their intended audience, users can implement Illinois Chat to act as a 24/7 teaching assistant for professors, scrape campus websites to find needed resources or help organize research data.
Immediate Impact
CAII and the Healthcare Innovation Program Office at NCSA have also partnered with Vyriad to implement Illinois Chat into the platform, providing broader access than Vyriad can currently mobilize to enable the review of relevant virus-related or virus-adjacent literature. Donald B. Gillies Professor in Computer Science Vikram Adve and his team have also utilized Illinois Chat effectively at AIFARMS.
Read More
Illinois Chat launched for campus community article.
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