Kategorie: ‘KI’
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.
Ritchy: The IT- ServiceDesk’s AI Chatbot
Source: Own Illustration
With approximately 45,000 students, around 10,000 employees, and a steadily growing number of digital offerings, the IT-ServiceDesk receives a wide variety of questions every day: from setting up Wi-Fi and software access to special services for research and teaching. In order to process these efficiently and promptly, the IT Center has recently started testing a modern solution: Ritchy – an AI-supported chatbot that assists users of IT Center services. In this article, we show how Ritchy works, what makes it special, and what advantages it offers.
KI:connect.nrw – Generative AI for All Universities in North Rhine-Westphalia
Source: Own Illustration
We have already told you about RWTHgpt in our previous posts. Due to the success of RWTHgpt, RWTH Aachen University decided in the summer of 2024 to make the infrastructure used at RWTHgpt available to other universities throughout the state in the future. This led to the creation of the KI:connect.nrw project, funded by the Ministry of Culture and Science.
Ask Better, Answer Better: Prompt Engineering with RWTHgpt
Source: Own Illustration
Since the introduction of RWTHgpt at RWTH Aachen University, many people have been asking themselves: How can I use RWTHgpt – and how do I ask the right questions? Because if you want good answers, you have to ask good questions. This is exactly where prompt engineering comes in: the targeted formulation of inputs (prompts) in order to obtain the most helpful, relevant and high-quality results possible from the AI model.
AI Explained Simply: Overview of the Most Important Terms
Source: Own illustration
Artificial intelligence (AI) has long been part of our everyday lives. It assists with translating, helps with online searches or answers questions in the form of chatbots.
You can find more information about AI in this blog under the tag KI.
But what exactly is AI and how does it work? To better understand this, we asked RWTHgpt, our AI-supported chatbot. Who, if not him, could better explain how AI works? In the following graphic, RWTHgpt describes itself:
