Virtual Assistant/Chatbot Creation via Large Language Models, Natural Language Processing and GenAI
Our Virtual Assistant and Chatbot Creation service harnesses Large Language Models (LLMs), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Generative AI (GenAI) to build intelligent conversational agents. Through advanced AI, ML, and data science, we develop highly responsive virtual assistants and chatbots that understand and assist users effectively, enhancing public user interactions.
Features
- Provide assistance and information to the public and government employees
- Natural Language Programming (NLP) for customer service
- Agent LLMs to enable automated strategic planning, including PMESII analysis
- Coding Assistants to improve efficiency of engineers, including less-popular languages
- Only Technical Partner of OpenAI
Benefits
- Data insights and interpretation for different levels of decision making
- Expert team of data scientists with mathematics and physics PhDs
- Harness LLMs, NLP, and GenAI for advanced conversational capabilities
- Improve user experience with highly responsive virtual assistants and chatbots
- Utilise data science to continuously improve conversational agent performance
Pricing
£700 to £3,000 a unit a day
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 14
Service ID
2 4 8 3 2 3 3 9 5 6 3 0 5 5 5
Contact
Faculty Science Limited
Neil Smith
Telephone: 02071930738
Email: commercial.operations@faculty.ai
Service scope
- Software add-on or extension
- Yes, but can also be used as a standalone service
- What software services is the service an extension to
- Faculty are experienced working with infrastructure services provided by AWS, Azure, Google Cloud Platform, and other cloud suppliers
- Cloud deployment model
-
- Public cloud
- Private cloud
- Service constraints
- Faculty is cloud agnostic and can work within the client's VPC or run independently outside client infrastructure. Maintenance arrangements are discussed and agreed with clients during the on-boarding process.
- System requirements
- None
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
-
Normally, support for cloud and deployed services is agreed on a case-by-case basis during contract length. Faculty provides technical support on the schedule of the UK workweek, Monday to Friday, 9-5.
Post contract, we can offer a premium option for 24/7 support at an extra cost. For example, with a graduated response scheduling: Level 1 (fatal) issues (e.g. a large number of users prevented from working) have a response time of 1 hour. Level 2 (severe) issues have a response time of 4 hours, while Level 3 (medium) and Level 4 (minor) issues extend to 24 hours. - User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- No
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support
- Yes, at an extra cost
- Web chat support availability
- 9 to 5 (UK time), Monday to Friday
- Web chat support accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web chat support is accessible
- Upon agreed requirements,
- Web chat accessibility testing
- None.
- Onsite support
- Yes, at extra cost
- Support levels
-
Faculty provides technical support for our services on 24/5 basis as standard, with a premium option for 24/7 support.
For our services, clients receive a dedicated Faculty Technical Manager to support the on-boarding process. After on-boarding, Customer Support Engineers can provide proactive support. By default, support is provided via phone and e-mail.
Faculty provides a graduated response scheduling depending on the severity of the incident. Level 1 (fatal) issues (e.g. a large number of users prevented from working) have a response time of 1 hour. Level 2 (severe) issues have a response time of 4 hours, while Level 3 (medium) and Level 4 (minor) issues have a response time of 24 hours.
Standard support is provided at no extra cost. Enhanced support options can be agreed on a case-by-case basis. Support for other cloud and deployed services is agreed on a case-by-case basis.
Warranty: to be agreed with the buyer Support levels: - Starter: An account manager and online video calls with data scientists. - Enterprise: An account manager and on-premise data scientists and engineers. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
- We also provide onsite and online training and comprehensive documentation.
- Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
-
- HTML
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
All user data can be downloaded through an interface or requested from Faculty.
Faculty typically deploy within our clients infrastructure, so the data doesn't leave their secure network. In these cases no extraction is required.
If the solution is deployed in the public cloud then all client data is destroyed 90 days after the end of the engagement. - End-of-contract process
- Our contract will contain the product and services you can expect from us during our engagement, including any training or handover processes which will allow you to maintain our product if relevant.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Supported browsers
-
- Internet Explorer 11
- Microsoft Edge
- Firefox
- Chrome
- Safari
- Opera
- Application to install
- No
- Designed for use on mobile devices
- Yes
- Differences between the mobile and desktop service
- We can produce AI powered products that work on mobile and tablet devices according to the needs of the client.
- Service interface
- Yes
- User support accessibility
- None or don’t know
- Description of service interface
- When service interfaces are built, they will be accessible through any modern browser.
- Accessibility standards
- None or don’t know
- Description of accessibility
-
If needed:
- High contrast fonts
- Default use of viridis (colourmap suitable for individuals with colourblindness)
- Customisable font size
- Other as agreed with the client; if requested to accessibility standards - Accessibility testing
- None
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
- Our use of an API varies depending on the individual clients requirements.
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- Open API (also known as Swagger)
- HTML
- API sandbox or test environment
- Yes
- Customisation available
- Yes
- Description of customisation
- Faculty specialise in the design, build and implementation of custom AI systems. Therefore customisation is possible to the client needs as needed and agreed.
Scaling
- Independence of resources
- We leverage autoscaling technology and individual users can request dedicated infrastructure to guarantee performance.
Analytics
- Service usage metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
- The service we provide is fully customisable and we will work closely with clients to develop the relevant metrics for their needs. The designated way in which to provide service metrics is product dependant. The "Reporting Types" are indicative and may vary per service/product.
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
- Regular reports
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Developed Vetting (DV)
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
-
- United Kingdom
- European Economic Area (EEA)
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Supplier-defined controls
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Encryption of all physical media
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
Data importing and exporting
- Data export approach
- Users can export their data directly through the Faculty's user interface or request it from Faculty.
- Data export formats
-
- CSV
- ODF
- Data import formats
-
- CSV
- ODF
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Data protection within supplier network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
- 99% uptime
- Specific SLAs are agreed with new clients and documented in the contract - Approach to resilience
- Available upon request.
- Outage reporting
- Service outages are reported via email alerts.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication needed
- Yes
- User authentication
-
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
- Faculty administrator access to the servers hosting Faculty services is permitted only by public key based SSH, with password authenticated access prohibited by the server configuration. Faculty administrators' private SSH keys are not shared, and are stored on computers in the administrators' physical possession and which use full disk encryption. Repeated failed SSH login attempts to a single server cause the host attempting to login to be blocked at the firewall level, mitigating brute force attacks.
- Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- Management access authentication
-
- 2-factor authentication
- Public key authentication (including by TLS client certificate)
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google Apps)
- Username or password
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- User-defined
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users contact the support team to get audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- User-defined
- How long system logs are stored for
- User-defined
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- British Assessment Bureau
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 23/2/2023
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- N/A
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- No
- Cyber essentials
- Yes
- Cyber essentials plus
- Yes
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Information security policies and processes
-
We align to ISO27001:2022 including all relevant policies, those policies include: Access Control Policy Jan 8 2024
Asset Management Policy Jan 8 2024
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plan Jan 8 2024
Code of Conduct Jan 31 2023
Cryptography Policy Jan 8 2024
Data Management Policy Mar 2 2023
Human Resource Security Policy Jan 8 2024
Incident Response Plan Jan 8 2024
Information Security Policy Feb 21 2024
Information Security Roles and Responsibilities Jan 8 2024
Operations Security Policy Jan 8 2024
Physical Security Policy Jan 8 2024
Privacy Compliance Policy
Risk Management Policy Feb 21 2024
Secure Development Policy Jan 12 2024
Third-Party Management Policy Feb 7 2024
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
- Configuration is classified as Restricted data and is asymmetrically encrypted with the OpenPGP standard (RFC 4880), using 2048 bit RSA keys protected with strong passphrases. The passphrases to these keys are stored in HashiCorp Vault, accessible only to Faculty administrators with individual passphrases, hosted on a server with an encrypted storage device and accessible only via public key authenticated SSH.
- Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
- We identify potential threats to Faculty systems through a combination of external penetration testing, internal vulnerability management (where applicable), weekly patching of servers, and following best practices relating to data security. We subscribe to information security mailing lists for security updates and use external providers to keep us informed.
- Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
Faculty's infrastructure has a suite of automated tools that monitor and alert on user and application behaviour. All alerts get escalated to the engineering support team.
We classify alerts into 3 severity categories.
- Severity 1: Direct impact to the reputation of Faculty or its clients. 1 hour response time.
- Severity 2: Potential downtime for a subset of users. 24 hour response time.
- Severity 3: No direct impact on users. 2 business day response time. - Incident management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Incident management approach
-
In cases of suspicious activity on Faculty's systems, such as a user accessing from a distant geographic location, or high bandwidth downloads, Faculty administrators will immediately disable the credentials of the user in question as the first action, preventing all further access to the by that user. All logs, servers, and databases will be retained to permit later examination as required.
Faculty administrators will investigate the nature and scope of the incident in order to apply necessary remediations to our infrastructure, and communicate this to Faculty management.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)
Public sector networks
- Connection to public sector networks
- No
Social Value
- Social Value
-
Social Value
- Fighting climate change
- Covid-19 recovery
- Tackling economic inequality
- Equal opportunity
- Wellbeing
Fighting climate change
As a founding member of the “Tech Zero” taskforce, a climate action group for tech companies, we’re deeply committed to reducing both our own operational Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and driving pro-environmental change/commitments across wider industry through setting ambitious but achievable targets for members of our action group:
• We publish our Carbon Reduction Plan on an annual basis and commission “Supercritical”, an external carbon foot-printing company, to bi-annually calculate our baseline tCO2e “Scope 1-3” emissions. We emitted 591 tonnes CO2e in 2022, 2.05 tCO2e per employee, comparing favourably to baseline average of ~5.5 tonnes per employee at similar technology companies. We also balance by purchasing carbon removal offsets, actively removing carbon from the atmosphere.
• We work alongside the UK Government’s Sustainable Business Council to help tackle climate change by determining the best path to achieving net-zero and boosting green investment.
Using AI for decarbonisation is one of our core external business priorities as a firm, with our dedicated ‘Energy Transition & Environment’ unit leading AI builds with projects from energy-source transition for National Grid to optimising tidal power generation.Covid-19 recovery
During the pandemic, we supported our clients and staff, including the UK Government's COVID-19 programs, leveraging our expertise in AI and Data. We adopted and have continued to offer our employees hybrid working and flexible hours prioritising people in our return-to-office planning with funded office equipment and sustainable travel support. We regularly engage our workforce through “temperature-check” surveys , workshops and company ""all hands""
To support COVID-19 recovery, we maintain workplace policies for efficient and safe remote working, encourage anonymous reporting channels and track hybrid working effectiveness. We have wellbeing policies in place to support all aspects of physical and mental health. Our data science fellowship mobilises PhDs and academics to become industry experts, contributing to a skilled, data-literate workforce.""
During the pandemic, we are proud to have supported the NHS England with the Early Warning System utilising AI to forecast demand for critical resources, and recognised as Best Healthcare Analytics Project for the NHS by the Health Services Journal Partnership Awards in 2022.Tackling economic inequality
As a leading company in the tech sector, we have a responsibility to train and recruit from groups that traditionally have found it difficult to find work in our industry.
• Faculty are signatories to the Armed Forces Covenant; we offer AI resettlement opportunities to Serving and transitioning Service Personnel.
• Our Fellowship programme has trained 100+ female professional data scientists, with diversity a key objective (last year’s intake was 46.7% female, treble the industry average. It won the Princess Royal Training Award in 2022.
In addition, we believe that to get the best out of staff, they must feel rewarded and be free from financial stress.
• All Faculty’s staff earn comfortably more than the real living wage.
• We benchmark salaries yearly against industry averages for individual roles and groups within the company (gender, age groups, ethnicity)
• Individual pay is also reviewed by the senior leadership team during the performance management process to ensure equal opportunity, with annual pay adjustments
• Our major suppliers (cleaning and office support) pay their staff London living wageEqual opportunity
Faculty is deeply committed to promoting equal opportunity by identifying and tackling inequality in employment, skills and pay and supporting in-work progression for under-represented groups (e.g. gender/ ethnicity/disability/neuro-diversity). For example, given the lack of female representation within our industry, we have introduced a range of schemes aimed specifically at overcoming inequalities and barriers to hiring and retaining women in tech:
• We have active ‘Women in Data Science’ and Neuro-diversity staff communities, plus an accelerated development programme for female technologists. Female staff are promoted 2.6-months more quickly on average.
• For hiring, our staff are already 40% more gender-diverse than industry average, and we adopt name-blind hiring practices and mandatory mixed interview panels.
• Our Fellowship programme has trained 100+ female professional data-scientists, with diversity a key objective (last year’s intake 46.7% female, treble industry average). It won the Princess Royal Training Award in 2022.
• We are founding members of SheCanCode and 01Founders, supporting data-science
We will build on experience delivering existing initiatives to amplify the social value created in the delivery of any project, thereby taking more proactive steps to build technical skills amongst under-represented groups (including women, minority ethnic, and disabled) and ensure mixed teams with fair development opportunities in the contract itself.Wellbeing
We offer a range of wider resources, including:
• 30+ Mental Health First Aiders trained to create a resilient peer support network.
• External counseling available for all staff, with an enhanced package for sensitive projects.
• Free health insurance and 20 active funded clubs/societies promoting health and wellbeing, and subsidised gym membership.
• Mental health days focused days at work such as where we provide massages.
• A safe/quiet space at the office designated to allow peace and calm for any employee that needs it.
• Proactive monitoring of excessive hours and an 'unlimited leave' policy, as well as the flexibility of a hybrid working model.
We have robust processes aligned with CIPD’s Mental Health at Work standards and use a voluntary reporting framework for transparent workplace health and wellbeing. These processes include:
• Confidential communication of health issues and accessing support.
• Proactive monitoring of excessive hours.
• Regular one-to-one meetings with managers.
• Weekly anonymous checks on workloads and stress levels.
As specialists in our sector, we understand the impact of wellbeing and have a comprehensive approach to support our teams, including:
• Regular mandatory external staff counseling.
• Clear internal support structure with weekly wellbeing check-ins.
• Dedicated secure working areas to encourage discussion and limit unnecessary exposure to sensitive matter.
Our approach also addresses common sector issues, such as physical problems from excess screen time and disproportionate mental health issues.
Pricing
- Price
- £700 to £3,000 a unit a day
- Discount for educational organisations
- No
- Free trial available
- No