VirtuOwl is an Artificial Intelligence that has been developed to serve as a first line of support helpdesk assistant for the Drew community. It was developed by, and is still being trained by, the CampusWorks/Drew University User Experience (UX) Team.

People First AI

What Is People-First AI? People-First AI is an approach where artificial intelligence is designed with human-centered priorities, focusing on enhancing user experiences, ethical considerations, and improving accessibility. This philosophy aims to ensure that AI tools like VirtuOwl work to assist people in meaningful, empathetic ways, prioritizing user well-being, and addressing concerns such as transparency, fairness, and privacy in the AI's operation. VirtuOwl is designed not to replace our technicians, but to enhance the experience for both the technician and the customer. For technicians, VirtuOwl helps by addressing common issues and providing basic troubleshooting  support. For customers, this empowers them to handle more tasks independently, improving their self-service  capabilities and leading to faster solutions.

Goals: 

  • To provide basic support for our clients in an easy, efficient, and satisfying experience.
  • To increase our proficiency in ticket processing by reducing the number of support tickets.
  • To shift the work effort of our UX team from answering tickets to human interface for business function.  We believe in human-first AI.  Machines perform repetitive functions so that humans can perform individual and unique human functions.
  • To support the work of R0B0SQRL and take that work to the next level.  
  • To maintain and reinforce the mission and values of the CampusWorks University Technology team’s mission and values (feel free to ask VirtuOwl about those).

Is VirtuOwl Accurate & Secure?

As with any AI, VirtuOwl improves through use, feedback, and tweaking its behaviors. Compared to past iterations, it’s far more helpful and likely to give you an accurate answer. However! VirtuOwl can still ‘misunderstand’ or, in an effort to provide something, hallucinate. If you’re unsure, please always feel free to reach out to us. As far as security goes, VirtuOwl is fully air-gapped from the Drew Network and is no risk to Drew. We’d advise against sharing Personally Identifiable Information. If VirtuOwl cannot find the answer to your question in it’s  training, it will defer to ChatGPT’s (which is not always completely right about how we do something here at Drew!)


VirtuOwl is a customized AI built using ChatGPT and trained specifically to function in support of CW/UT’s documentation.  The VirtuOwl team used a Python-based scraper to collect all of our public documents in Confluence (known as U-KNOW at Drew).  The scraping was then put into JupyterLab where it was transferred to Markdown.  The Markdown was then “fed” to VirtuOwl for training purposes.  The VirtuOwl Team also has a methodology for capturing developed knowledge (corrections, errors discovered, etc.) back into Confluence.

We have tailored some of its tone and behavior, and are continuing to monitor responses and feedback provided by those testing VirtuOwl. 


How Do I Use It?

You will need a ChatGPT account (free or premium).  Make sure you are logged in and then visit: https://bit.ly/VirtuOwl. 

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