Kategorie: ‘KI’
Artificial Intelligence Meets Virtual Reality
Source: Kühlem et al., 2025
Whether in digital learning spaces or virtual museum tours, virtual reality (VR) makes an important contribution to immersive learning. In this context, users can interact with virtual teachers. At RWTH Aachen University, research is being conducted into how these conversations can be made as realistic and natural as possible.
KI:connect.nrw – In Use Throughout the State
Source: Own Illustration
A lot has happened since our last post on the KI:connect.nrw project. More and more universities in North Rhine-Westphalia are joining the project, which enables state-wide, data protection-compliant, and legally secure access to generative AI via the central web application KI:connect.
Why Acceptance Research is so Important in IT
Source: Freepik
IT systems have become an integral part of our everyday lives. They simplify work processes, enable communication, and drive digital innovation. And yet, many IT projects fail not because of technical hurdles, but because they are not accepted by users. This is precisely where acceptance research comes in.
KI:connect.nrw: 2025 in Review
Source: Own Illustration
We have reported on KI:connect.nrw several times on this blog, most recently in October when it reached a milestone of over 350,000 potential users at universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. Now we look back on the year 2025, in which KI:connect.nrw has developed from a pilot project into a statewide AI infrastructure that covers almost the entire university landscape in North Rhine-Westphalia.
WestAI: Review, Exchange, and Outlook – An Overview of the Consortium Meeting
Source: WestAI
The AI Service Center WestAI, funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMFTR, formerly BMBF), is one of four nationally funded AI service centers in Germany and is a central point of contact for applied artificial intelligence in North Rhine-Westphalia. The center aims to accelerate the transfer of AI research into practical applications and, in particular, to provide small and medium-sized enterprises and research teams with low-threshold access to modern AI technologies.
In this blog post, we take a look at the current role of WestAI, summarize the most important results of the latest consortium meeting, and provide an outlook on the further developments planned for the coming years.
Basic AI Supply in North Rhine-Westphalia: How the IT Center Is Contributing With KI:connect.nrw
Source: Own Illustration
Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly at universities in North Rhine-Westphalia. To ensure that they are well positioned in the long term, common technical foundations and responsible solutions are needed.
A new paper by Digitale Hochschule NRW (DH.NRW) describes precisely this approach. It shows how basic AI services can be established for all universities in North Rhine-Westphalia.
AI Governance & Ethics – A Responsible Future
Source: Freepik
AI-supported applications are changing the way we work, learn, and conduct research. Whether it’s text generation, data summarization or automated data analysis, AI-supported applications can simplify many work processes and open up new opportunities. This also applies to research, teaching, and administration.
Ritchy Explained – How the Chatbot Works & How to Get the Most Out of It
Source: Own Illustration
In our last post, we introduced you to Ritchy, the IT-ServiceDesk’s AI-powered support chatbot. If you’re not yet familiar with Ritchy, we recommend reading the first post first. There you can learn more about the background and development of the chatbot.
When you select the support chat function on our IT Center website, in IT Center Help, or directly in RWTHmoodle, you can now choose whether you want to chat with Ritchy or with the IT-ServiceDesk staff. But if you’ve been wondering how Ritchy works in detail, we have the answer for you in this post.
KI:connect.nrw – On the Path to 350,000 Users
Source: Own Illustration
In our first post, we introduced the launch of the KI:connect.nrw project. The aim of the project is to provide universities in NRW with a privacy-compliant and customizable way of using generative AI via the central webinterface of KI:connect. In the meantime, there has been significant progress: The following five universities are now successfully connected and are actively using KI:connect:
- FernUniversität in Hagen
- Fachhochschule Aachen
- Hochschule Ruhr West
- RWTH Aachen University
- Technische Hochschule Köln
This means that KI:connect is now available to more than 170,000 students and staff in the fields of study, teaching, and research.
AI-Tech MeetUp NRW 2025 in Bochum
Source: Own Illustration
On Monday, September 22, 2025, the AI-Tech MeetUp NRW — a collaboration between the state projects Open Source-KI.nrw, KI:edu.nrw, and KI:connect.nrw—took place at Ruhr University Bochum with a focus on (generative) artificial intelligence. We, as the IT Center of RWTH Aachen University, were also represented at this exciting event as participants and project partners.
