Telli: Lower Saxony brings AI chatbot to all schools immediately

All public schools in Lower Saxony can now use the AI chatbot named “Telli,” which has been optimized for teaching. Lower Saxony initially tested Telli with 30 schools and 4 study seminars before it was released for statewide use.

Open-source solution

The AI chatbot Telli for schools has been developed since 2024 as part of the cross-state AIS (Adaptive Intelligent System) project by the Institute for Film and Image in Science and Education (FWU) and implemented with technical service providers. The AIS project, in turn, is funded as part of the Digital Pact for Schools. Due to a procurement error, the tender for the project had to be repeated, which led to delays in the original schedule.

Telli is an open-source solution and is provided in Lower Saxony via the media library of the Lower Saxony Education Cloud (NBC). Telli is connected to various language models. According to FWU, all systems are operated on servers within the EU, and usage data is not passed on to third parties or used for AI training. This makes its use compliant with data protection regulations and distinguishes it from commercial chatbots. In Lower Saxony, the following underlying language models can be used via Telli: GPT-5, GPT-5-mini, GPT-5 nano, Llama-3.1-405B, Llama-3.3-70B, Mistral Nemo Instruct.

The Lower Saxony Minister of Education, Julia Willie Hamburg (Greens), explained at the official launch: “With Telli, we are advancing the responsible use of artificial intelligence in Lower Saxony's schools. Students must be prepared for a daily life in which AI is ubiquitous. For this, our teachers must also have access to powerful AI models. With Telli, we enable the use of AI in a data protection-compliant manner for lesson preparation and across subjects for individual learning.” According to Hamburg, the AI can be configured, for example, in German lessons so that Telli serves as a writing coach for the discussion of “Woyzeck” and provides students with feedback. During this time, the teacher can dedicate more time to individual support.

Since the rollout, information material has been made available to teachers in the Lower Saxony Education Portal. In addition, teachers can take advantage of further training offers on artificial intelligence from the Lower Saxony State Institute for School Quality Development (NLQ).

Cooperative project, expansion of use

The federal states of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Bremen, Brandenburg, Hesse, North Rhine-Westphalia, Schleswig-Holstein, and Saarland are also making Telli available to all their schools. Bavaria, Saarland, Schleswig-Holstein, and North Rhine-Westphalia had most recently announced statewide uses. Bremen had started comprehensive use first.

(kbe)