We are featured again on kirjastot.fi, with good news!
Below is the English translation of the Finnish news post published on Kirjastot.fi on 25 July 2025
Kyyti Libraries’ AI trial succeeded – the service will be made permanent
At the beginning of March, the Kyyti Libraries’ home page launched a chat service intended for a limited trial period. The service operates entirely autonomously, powered by artificial intelligence.
The chat was trained to answer every question related to transactions and customer relations at Kyyti Libraries—practically in any language. It can provide up-to-date information about Kyyti Libraries’ services and events and can also recommend events tailored to the questioner’s wishes regarding location, content, target audience and timing.
The experiment, which ended in June, aimed to evaluate the AI’s capabilities, the functionality of the service, its costs and the demand for it.
Because of the new and unfamiliar features associated with the pilot, the chat service was not actively marketed. The designers’ imaginations turned out to be wilder than reality: the uncertainties did not materialise. Instead, Kyyti-Chat is reliable, gives correct information and is easy to use. Since the training phase, library staff have not had to intervene in its operation at all. No support requests have been needed, and no user manuals have been requested.
The service keeps itself up to date and aware of everything happening in the libraries.
The service has been embraced naturally. Despite minimal marketing, it is used quite extensively. On average, about thirty conversations are held every day of the week, during which three questions are asked. Each month the chat provides 2,500–3,500 answers. Since publication, it has already delivered roughly 16,000 responses.
Thanks to its positive reception, the quality of its answers and its low overall costs, Kotka City Library has signed an agreement to continue the service. Kotka Library will remain responsible for all development and costs as part of the library’s AI strategy.
The chat service meets the requirements of EU data-protection and AI regulations. Ethical aspects of AI were also considered in its design. The service makes no decisions on anyone’s behalf, does not require user identification and does not use or request personal data. It falls under the EU AI Regulation’s “Minimal-risk” category. The bot is also a kind of local service: the software and its servers are located in Google’s data centre in Hamina.
Further information:
Mikko Vainio, tel. 0 400 935 923