One year later: CreateAI Builder expands access across ASU

When it comes to technology, one year can make a remarkable difference.

Last year at the Agentic AI and the Student Experience summit, Arizona State University’s AI Acceleration team announced the launch of CreateAI Builder to all ASU faculty and staff. Just one year later, the AI Acceleration team returned to the main stage to host another interactive workshop on Tuesday, Oct. 20, sharing how CreateAI Builder has grown, how it’s scaled, what impact it’s had, and what the team has learned over the past 365 days.

The numbers tell part of the story. More than 57,000 people have used CreateAI, with weekday daily users increasing by 52%. The platform now has 4,325 builders, including staff, students, and faculty, a number that has doubled over the past year.

Builders now span 42 university units, including all 17 ASU schools and colleges, allowing individuals to address challenges without waiting for centralized development resources.

The CreateAI Builder platform's growing presence in classrooms demonstrates how AI is becoming part of ASU's teaching and learning experience.

This fall, CreateAI tools are being used in 715 ASU classrooms, serving more than 42,000 enrolled students. This is following an August launch that made the CreateAI tool available to all 200,000 university students – 37,000 students have used it in the fall 2026 semester.

The AI Acceleration team has discovered that faculty adoption increases when AI tools fit naturally into existing assignments. Students, meanwhile, have shown enthusiasm for simulations that allow them to engage in challenging conversations. “Practicing hard conversations for their intended career path is something they really appreciate,” said Ayat Sweit, head of AI Product on the AI Acceleration Team.

Different approaches to faculty engagement have also proven effective. Some colleges rely on instructional designers to develop multiple tools, while the W. P. Carey School of Business trained more than 300 faculty members who then evangelized their knowledge of the tool across the school.

The CreateAI platform hosts automated workloads and includes CreateAI Builder, a no-code builder. Sweit explained it like this: “Think of it like automated workloads. CreateAI platform is the Costco to purchase in bulk, and the no-code builder is more geared towards single consumers, your regular grocery store.”

The infrastructure has processed 26 million messages through automated workloads, demonstrating how ASU is supporting applications ranging from individual classroom activities to sophisticated research and automation.

Accessibility remains central to that approach. A single login, the absence of individual licensing requirements and low operating costs have helped reduce barriers to adoption. This year, model costs averaged approximately eight cents per student across CreateAI projects.

Looking toward 2027, the team plans to focus on personalized memory to help AI tools better understand and respond to individual students' needs.
The next phase aims to connect information that currently lives across separate university systems.

“For students, that brings together a lot of disparate information and data across their classrooms, financial aid and tickets they just submitted to IT, and puts it all in one place to help support them.”

For ASU, the next chapter of CreateAI Builder is about more than expanding access to AI. It's about making that technology increasingly useful, accessible, and responsive to the students, faculty, and staff it serves.

“This is a tool to support human beings better,” said Roger Kohler, the AI Acceleration team’s Director of AI solutions and architecture. “We're not looking to replace humans. We're looking to support and build and find that creative potential that humans have.”

The workshop included demos of AI agents and even gave attendees the chance to download CreateAI Builder and design their own project using the technology.