Joliet Junior College in Illinois has partnered with the Phoenix-based technology services company Canyon GBS to launch a new higher-ed-specific enterprise AI assistant for faculty and staff. According to an announcement in April, the partnership makes Joliet one of the first community colleges in North America to deploy a generative AI assistant tool that is specifically tailored to the institution and ensures compliance with data privacy regulations like the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). Joliet is also Canyon AI’s first community-college client. The college’s President Clyne Namuo said the tool will allow the school to use AI for a variety of instructional and administrative purposes, and it features more data privacy guardrails than other open-source generative AI tools on the market today, such as ChatGPT. He said the goal of partnering with Canyon was to ensure the college uses AI responsibly.
