Artificial Intelligence is undoubtedly reshaping how we work, teach, and learn. MyGPT Builder is a platform offered in the Duke AI Suite of tools, which enables faculty, staff, and students to create and manage customized AI assistants that can streamline tasks, provide 24/7 support, and extend the reach of your expertise. In this post, we will introduce you to AI assistants, share Duke-specific use cases, and walk you through the essential steps to building one. We will also point you to resources and ways to get support.
What is an AI Assistant?
Put simply, an AI assistant is a specialized tool built on top of an AI model (like GPT-5). They can be tailored to your needs, assisting with tasks such as answering student questions about course materials, summarizing committee reports, or managing repetitive administrative tasks.
These tools combine the general reasoning ability of AI with context, rules, and resources that you provide. That means you can provide your assistant with knowledge bases (documents, policies, FAQs) and instructions on how to act, what tone to use, and what tasks it should perform. In other words, you can shape it into a focused helper for a specific purpose.
Unlike a general AI chat tool, your assistant can:
- Draw from your specific content (ensuring relevance and accuracy)
- Support repetitive or time-consuming tasks (like answering questions about your syllabus or website)
- Be tailored to your audience, whether students, colleagues, or staff
You end up with a tool that works in the background, answering questions and saving you time!
Why Build an AI Assistant at Duke?
It’s important to understand that building an AI assistant is NOT about replacing your expertise–it’s about amplifying it. You may consider building one for a variety of reasons. For some, the main appeal is efficiency. An assistant can take on routine tasks such as drafting job descriptions, formatting data, or answering frequently asked questions, which can free up your time to work on higher-value work. For others, continuous access may be the goal. An AI assistant can provide students or colleagues with guidance at any time, extending support well beyond office hours. Another advantage is customization. AI assistants can be grounded in Duke-specific resources, policies, and practices. Finally, think about scale. An assistant enables you to support many at once without overextending yourself.
An AI assistant is not a substitute for you. It has limits, and managing user expectations is a crucial part of employing one. The best assistants complement your work by handling repetitive tasks, and they leave space for your expertise to shine.
Use Cases for AI Assistants at Duke
Here are a few real-world examples of how Duke faculty and staff might put AI assistants to work. These are meant to inspire but are in no way exhaustive.
Administrative Tasks — A department chair managing a job search could use an assistant to:
- Draft timelines for search processes
- Write job descriptions
- Generate interview questions
- Summarize meeting notes
Academic Unit Support — Departments can build assistants to serve students by:
- Answering common questions about the major
- Suggesting courses based on student interests
- Sharing career outcomes of alumni
Research Teams — Assistants can help researchers by:
- Summarizing focus group transcripts
- Formatting and organizing data
- Drafting preliminary insights from qualitative results
Instructional Support — Instructors might build assistants to:
- Guide students in reflecting on exam performance
- Offer tailored study strategies
- Provide practice questions and tips for improvement
All of these use cases help you focus on what matters most in your area of expertise, while taking care of the more repetitive, routine tasks behind the scenes.
Why Should I Use MyGPT Builder?
There are many platforms for building AI assistants. What makes MyGpt Builder especially valuable is that it is both NetID-protected and designed for collaboration. This means that you can share your assistant safely with a department, class, or team, while ensuring that only authorized Duke users can access it. You can also collaborate with colleagues to refine and co-manage an assistant.
Essential Steps to Building an AI Assistant
The process of creating an AI Assistant can seem complex, but MyGPT makes it accessible. You don’t even need to know how to code; just a clear purpose, some patience to iterate, and a solid understanding of prompting.
Here are the key steps:
- Define the Purpose by asking yourself:
- What problem will this assistant solve?
- Who will use it?
- What should it be able to do?
- What should it never do?
Example: An assistant for graduate students that formats citations from URLs.
- Write a System Prompt, the DNA of your assistant. It tells it who it is, how to behave, and what to prioritize.
- Define the assistant’s role
- Establish tone and personality
- Specify step-by-step behaviors
- Set boundaries on what it must avoid
Pro tip: Use prompt libraries like Harvard’s System Prompt Library, More Useful Things, or PromptHero for inspiration.
- Build a Knowledge Base by uploading documents or text-based resources (under 10 MB each in MyGPT Builder) so your assistant has trusted content to pull from. Examples: syllabi, policies, FAQs, guides.
- Iterate and Refine: Try real questions, see how the assistant responds, and refine your prompt. It’s similar to onboarding a new colleague, where ongoing feedback and iteration improve performance over time.
Looking Ahead
Building and AI Assistant in MyGPT Builder is an exciting opportunity for Duke faculty, staff, and students.
This process allows you to extend your teaching beyond the classroom and office hours, streamline your work, and experiment with the future of education. We encourage you to explore, experiment, and share what you create with others in the Duke community. You never know, maybe your AI assistant will become the next innovative AI tool others build on.
Duke University provides a variety of AI tools to the campus community, as well as resources on effectively and responsibly integrating AI into teaching, learning, and research. Learn more at https://ai.duke.edu/ai-tools/.
Resources and Support
Want to dive deeper? Explore these resources:
- Building an AI Assistant with MyGPT Builder Workshop materials (August 8)
- The Duke AI Suite
- Access MyGPT Builder
- Explore an AI Assistant created by our team. In the DukeGPT drop-down menu, you’ll find Canvas Designer, a tool that supports instructors in developing effective Canvas courses grounded in strong instructional design principles.
Need help? We’re here for you:
- Join virtual AI Office Hours every Wednesday, 10 – 11 am via Zoom
- Email lile@duke.edu for 1:1 support from Teaching Consultants
- Contact OIT AI Suite Support at aisuitesupport@duke.edu for technical help
