Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
Singapore
Singapore
Schools and training providers are racing to meet the surge, with some seeing interest for custom AI courses rise by up to 200 per cent in the last three months.
AI agent Merlin in use at an emergency call centre in Singapore.
This audio is generated by an AI tool.
SINGAPORE: From hospitals to homes, Singaporeans with little to no coding experience are increasingly building powerful artificial intelligence tools that automate tasks, support learning and reshape their daily routines.
These users range from frontline healthcare staff who developed a patient service assistant, to parents who have designed bots to help their children with homework.
Enrolments for some custom AI courses have soared nearly 400 per cent since 2023, with experts telling CNA that these customised bots – which they say are quick and easy to build – are becoming the norm.
With Singapore’s national AI programme promising it can be “as easy as making a PowerPoint,” schools and training providers are racing to meet the demand.
For 37-year-old Dinithi Jayasekara, a common parenting struggle – helping her son with his Chinese homework – sparked an unconventional solution: Building an AI tutor.
Using plain English prompts describing her nine-year-old son’s age, reading level and love of comics, she created a Custom GPT model in under two hours.
With the bot’s help, she is now able to guide the boy to draw his own comics and make learning Chinese an enjoyable experience.
“You don’t need to have lengthy coding knowledge or a very big understanding of how AI works … and you don’t need any technical knowledge,” said Ms Dinithi, a research fellow at Singapore University of Technology and Design’s (SUTD) Lee Kuan Yew Centre for Innovative Cities (LKYCIC).
“You just need to have decent English, and as long as you can give simple instructions to the GPT, it will work for you, and you can always keep improving your GPT.
“It’s almost like having a personal tutor at home,” she added.
At SUTD, nearly 400 leaders have been training to build such custom AI solutions.
Some institutes that recently introduced custom AI courses have also seen interest soar in the last three months. 
SUTD has seen a 200 per cent spike in demand, for example, while demand at three other course providers – Aventis Graduate School, CuriousCore and Vertical Institute – rose by 115 to 168 per cent.
Over at Singapore General Hospital (SGH), a chatbot named Chatty Charlie has become the most widely adopted custom bot in the hospital’s history.
Developed by frontline staff and launched in August last year, the AI tool helps to manage patient arrivals and emergencies. It has carried out more than 4,000 conversations to date.
A fifth of the hospital’s 10,000 staff use AI helpers daily like Chatty Charlie and Ask Phoebe, which mainly retrieve information and have helped to transform many tasks.
“Quite often in the early days, when we (demonstrated these tools) to people, there’s always a wow reaction,” said Mr Jonathan Tan, senior manager of artificial intelligence and automation at SGH’s Future Health System.
These bots can speed up work by five times, according to the hospital.
Mr Tan noted that an AI project is traditionally a big undertaking that requires expertise in data science and “some amount of budget”.
“But I think with the advent of these kinds of Gen AI tools, anyone can create customised AI chatbots … People are able to create bots in a matter of days and test it and roll it out to their colleagues,” he added.
“So, we can see much faster cycles, and they can iterate and improve on it much faster.”
People should not look at such technology as mere tools but use it as partners, said LKYCIC director Poon King Wang, who is also the chief strategy and design AI officer at SUTD.
“The most creative way to use it actually starts with human input, either your imagination or something that you drew yourself or a concept that you actually develop yourself based on your experience. And AI helps you in several ways,” Mr Poon told CNA.
“One, it helps you to articulate those ideas better, because as you debate, discuss with it like a partner, you can actually make the ideas more robust.
“Secondly, because of the generative capabilities of AI, you can actually prototype your ideas.”
AI is also fast reshaping Singapore’s public service.
Nearly four in five public officers – about 122,000 out of 154,000 officers – now use the government’s AI chatbot to help them with writing, research and coding.
The bot, called Pair, was launched in 2023 and developed by the Open Government Products team at the Government Technology Agency (GovTech).
Newly released data for the second quarter of 2025 showed a 20 per cent jump in active users from the first quarter, with about 64,000 a month now.
Meanwhile, at emergency call centres across Singapore, an AI agent called Merlin is helping to boost productivity.
Developed by ST Engineering, it is capable of understanding Singlish and the Singaporean accent. An hour of report crunching work can be done in just 12 minutes, while engineers may now solve four requests a day – up from three previously.
“Through the use of this tool, routine tasks are automated; the user can focus a lot on the higher value tasks,” said Mr Tan Boon Leong, head of DeepBrain at ST Engineering.
“More importantly, we actually embed these agents as part of the user’s work processes and workflows, so that it becomes seamless and easy to interact – which translates to enhanced user experience.”
Experts say AI agents work best in tech-heavy roles like software coding and data analysis, where people create tools to help themselves.
But they stressed the importance of deploying AI responsibly, especially as custom tools may fail or behave unpredictably. Personal data should be kept safe as well.
“It’s important to educate the executives, have an AI steering committee,” said Mr Tomithy Too, an instructor for advanced computing for executives at the National University of Singapore’s School of Computing.
“(These are) the tribal chiefs within the organisation who are responsible for some of the outcomes and security concerns.”
Ms Deepika Giri, associate vice president at technology consultancy IDC Research, said young users need to be able to “question and validate” the information they get from AI models, as too much dependency on AI in making even simple decisions can harm their problem-solving skills and creativity.
“Just interacting with AI could impair the way they interact with real humans … and I think because of these pitfalls, it’s really important for us to tell kids who use AI that it’s only a tool. How they use the tool is really important,” she told CNA’s Singapore Tonight programme.
While more advanced tools let anyone build AI agents that reason and act, without the need for coding, Mr Too said having some coding skills allows users to unlock even more power.
He noted that one of the most difficult aspects of AI tools, for example, is instructing it on reaching a precise outcome.
“Natural language is not very good at this but if you understand some programming, instructions can be a lot better,” he added.
“You have to learn at least some computer science, at least some programming knowledge, so you’ll be much more effective. Spend 10 days then you’ll be 10 times more effective.”
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