ISEG Lisbon's Generative-AI Chatbot for Admissions and Student Services

On 27 June 2025, ISEG – Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, part of Universidade de Lisboa, launched a generative-AI chatbot built over six months with Portuguese firm Noesis on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI platform. It answers prospective and current students' questions about courses, admissions, tuition fees, Erasmus mobility and scholarships in natural language, 24 hours a day, and is described by the university as Portugal's first such deployment by a higher-education institution.

The system deliberately does not learn autonomously from user interactions, drawing instead on a curated, human-validated knowledge base "to ensure total control over response consistency and reliability," per the launch announcement. Noesis's own case study reports up to a 60% reduction in repetitive enquiries reaching staff, alongside 24-hour multilingual support.

The 60% figure comes from the technology vendor, not an independent audit, and no published data yet covers query volume, user satisfaction or effects on admissions or enrolment outcomes — the deployment is barely a year old. Independent Portuguese business press (Jornal Económico) corroborates the launch and design but not the impact figures.

Read the full analysis: https://www.ulisboa.pt/noticia/iseg-lanca-chatbot-pioneiro-com-inteligencia-artificial-generativa