CreateAI offers the ASU community ways to make AI work for them

Originally published in ASU News; republished in The AI Journey at ASU, AI in motion (vol. 4)

Across Arizona State University, artificial intelligence has moved beyond discussion. It is now designed, tailored and activated by the people who rely on it every day.

ASU launched CreateAI across the university in 2025 to place custom intelligence directly in the hands of faculty and staff. The flagship AI tool kit enables users to craft, refine and share experiences aligned with their courses, research and daily operations.

Today, more than 20,000 ASU employees have access to CreateAI, and they have already created over 7,000 experiences inside the platform, from simulated patients for medical training to conversational language tutors.

ASU positioned itself as an early leader in AI innovation, including partnerships with industry giants such as Amazon Web Services and OpenAI. Developing the in-house tool further helps the university meet the demands of AI at scale while addressing cost, privacy and capability.

Faculty from fashion to biochemistry leverage CreateAI Builder

One of the key features of CreateAI Builder is access to more than 50 large language models that power the experience, including industry leaders such as AWS Nova, OpenAI GPTs, Google Gemini, Meta Llama and others. Ready-made templates also help faculty customize their academic content.

One of the most widely adopted templates is Syllabot, an AI chatbot that helps students quickly find answers to common course questions, such as due dates, assignments and grading policies. To date, there are nearly 1,000 active Syllabots in use at ASU.

This semester, more than 300 W. P. Carey School of Business faculty members were trained and empowered to build their own Syllabots to implement in future courses.

“The reality is that AI must be embedded in everything we do,” said Ohad Kadan, Charles J. Robel Dean and W. P. Carey Distinguished Chair in Business. “Tools like AI bots are not just conveniences — they are transforming how we teach, learn and operate. By integrating AI into the educational experience, we are preparing our students for a business world where AI is ubiquitous and essential to how work gets done.”

Other notable CreateAI Builder examples are underway across the university:

• Mentorship. Steve Salik, a clinical associate professor in the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, is building AI mentors for his students. These chatbots are embedded in his course to enable mentor-like discussions. “It casts the students into an internship role,” Salik said, adding that the goal is to practice their professional communication skills.
• Biochemistry research. Neal Woodbury, vice president at ASU Knowledge Enterprise, is using CreateAI Builder in his upper-level biochemistry course, taught in The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Students developed code to analyze large datasets. Ultimately, they developed models to identify potential protein sites linked to side effects in well-known cancer treatments.
• Fashion. Naomi Ellis, pictured below, is an instructor with ASU FIDM, a school within the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. Students enrolled in her AI in Fashion course spend the semester building their own AI experiences — from a brand bot to a sustainable shopping guide. Ellis notes her goal is to support AI-ready graduates. “This makes them more prepared than any other fashion student,” Ellis said.

CreateAI Builder project highlights include

• Technical accounting writing assistant. AI writing assistant that provides real-time, conversational guidance to help students refine their technical accounting writing and articulate complex ideas effectively. The tool offers structured feedback, suggestions, and guided revision tips, helping students produce higher-quality work and apply consistent writing standards across courses. Owner: Maria Rykaczewski, School of Accountancy.
• Check in coach. An internal conversational assistant that guides both self-evaluations and manager evaluations. The Check-in Coach helps users articulate achievements, clarify goals, draft feedback and prepare for development conversations through an intuitive, conversational flow. At launch, over 9,900 users prepared for performance check-ins with guidance from Check-in Coach. Owner: Renette Makanoeich, Office of Human Resources.
• AI portfolio reviewer. Reviewing student portfolios manually is time-intensive. This AI-powered reviewer evaluates student portfolios against rubrics and generate structure evaluation output to support faculty review and provides a consistent first assessment so faculty can continue to provide their feedback. Owner: Bobbi Woods, University College.
• APA citation reviewer. This AI assistant is being designed to provide real-time, structured feedback on APA 7th edition formatting before submission. The bot reviews citations, references and document structure, guiding students step-by-step to identify and correct formatting errors. This approach builds student autonomy and reduces reliance on faculty or online reference tools. Owners: Matthew Keating, Kim Day, Debbie Hagler and Celia Coochwytewa, Edson College of Nursing and Health Innovation

CreateAI Platform offers purpose-built AI experiences

The CreateAI Platform enables teams to design enterprise-level AI solutions. For example, one team at the John Shufeldt School of Medicine and Medical Engineering is developing a series of AI avatars. Jordan Coulston, assistant dean of clinical education, is helping to lead the effort.

“We see AI as a tool we can use to expand the clinical education offered within our medical school,” Coulston said.

The AI avatars are designed to simulate patient-provider interactions. An agentic workflow called Case Creator is used to build the complex patient-case scenarios, with multiple agents working in sync to create a patient’s medical background, current condition and previous clinical appointments.

Related: Meet the Sun Devils driving AI innovations at ASU

Once a patient case is created, the team uses multimodal AI systems across video and audio to develop realistic avatars that simulate standard patient encounters, including emotional responses. The system then uses AI to generate an evaluation that scores an interaction across 25 unique areas.

“Our goal is to leverage these avatars to give us a level of scale,” Coulston said. "The learner has a need, we prompt a patient into existence, and there they are, ready to help the student learn.”

On the horizon

What comes next may be even more ambitious. The team behind CreateAI — the AI Acceleration team within ASU Enterprise Technology — is developing the building blocks for a personalized AI experience with a single interface where a student could ask about an assignment, check on financial aid, find campus hours and email a professor, all without switching platforms or starting over.