In order to improve the effectiveness of measures taken by the state bodies of the Russian Federation to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus, Southern Federal University launched on its website https://www.sfedu.ru/ a virtual assistant-informant (chat-bot) based on the IBM AI solution Watson Assistant for Citizens, available in the public cloud.

Due to the use of the new information service, the University’s staff and students, as well as website visitors, will be able to quickly receive the official, specialized and verified information on COVID-19, including measures taken by the University to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection.

The virtual assistant, configured with the assistance of IBM Services, understands natural language questions and communicates with users in a written dialogue format. Artificial intelligence helps the assistant to improve from its own experience using machine learning, neural networks and reference databases located in the public cloud of IBM. After all, the more the virtual assistant interacts with people, the better it understands them and more accurately responds. In the initial state, the assistant contained in its knowledge base 100 dialogue scenarios and over 1,500 typical questions, including those provided by SFedU.

"In the future, Southern Federal University plans to expand the thematic diversity of questions by including responses of the Government of the Rostov Region on measures to counter the spread of coronavirus infection and to present this service on its web resources," said SFedU rector Inna Shevchenko.

“Virtual assistants are very suitable for both mass and personalized informing citizens, while they are actively searching for answers and tips to combat COVID-19,” said Iris Jeba, CEO of IBM in Russia and the CIS. “We welcome the initiative of SFedU to use IBM’s advanced AI technologies presented in the public cloud and hope it will help the University in the further development of information interaction with its audience.”