AI-Powered Storytelling

About The Episode:

In this conversation, Maria Kuntz and Tina Miller discuss the transformative role of AI in storytelling and communication within higher education, particularly at Arizona State University. Tina shares her journey of integrating AI tools into her team's processes, enhancing creativity and productivity, and developing proprietary AI models to support storytelling efforts. The discussion also covers the creation of a custom AI bot that mimics the voice of ASU's CIO, showcasing innovative approaches to leadership communication and the importance of using internal data for AI training. In this conversation, Tina Miller discusses the development of AI initiatives at Arizona State University (ASU), including the creation of an AI website and the AI Innovation Challenge aimed at engaging faculty and staff. She emphasizes the importance of human-centered storytelling in technology, the creation of a brand bot for compliance, and the accessibility of AI tools. The discussion also covers the varying levels of AI adoption in higher education and the future of AI storytelling, highlighting the need for multimodal approaches and immersive learning experiences.

Key Takeaways

• AI is a storytelling accelerator – ASU uses AI tools like ChatGPT, Grammarly, and proprietary models to streamline content creation while maintaining human-centered narratives.
• Leadership buy-in is essential – ASU’s AI initiatives thrive due to top-down support from university leadership, enabling scalable AI adoption across students, faculty, and staff.
• Custom AI tools can enhance brand consistency – ASU’s BrandBot ensures marketing and communications align with the university’s branding guidelines.
• AI storytelling should remain human-centered – Technology is a tool, but the focus should always be on people—how AI impacts students, faculty, and the broader higher ed community.
• Scaling AI requires structured implementation – ASU’s AI Innovation Challenge incentivizes faculty and staff to explore AI-powered solutions for student success, research, and workforce readiness.
• The future of AI in higher ed is multimodal – AI will enable immersive, interactive learning experiences that cater to a new generation of students.

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How ASU Embraced AI for Storytelling and Communications

Tina Miller's journey with AI at ASU began in late 2022, just as ChatGPT was making waves. Recognizing its potential, she encouraged her team to experiment with AI tools, requiring everyone to integrate at least two generative AI tools into their workflows. This early adoption positioned ASU as a leader in AI-powered storytelling. By 2023, ASU’s leadership fully embraced AI, with the university’s CIO, Lev Gonnick, placing Tina in charge of AI communications.

Her approach? Full immersion. Tina believes leaders must understand AI firsthand to guide their teams effectively. She emphasizes that AI is not about replacing human creativity but enhancing it—helping teams work smarter and faster while maintaining the authenticity of their stories.

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How ASU Uses AI to Enhance Creativity and Productivity

Tina’s team relies on multiple AI tools daily, including ChatGPT, Grammarly, and ASU’s proprietary AI platform, Create AI. One standout project is Tech Talks, a series of educational videos on AI concepts. By leveraging ChatGPT to analyze 70 pages of transcripts, the team efficiently generated scripts, saving hours of manual work.

Another innovation is SpinCycle, ASU’s custom AI-powered storytelling bot. Designed to analyze and repurpose past content, SpinCycle helps the team identify new angles, find gaps in coverage, and ensure consistency in messaging. By training the bot on two years’ worth of content, ASU can now streamline content planning and production, ensuring a cohesive brand voice across all platforms.

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AI-Powered Brand Management: The ASU BrandBot

With a vast institution like ASU, maintaining brand consistency is a challenge. To address this, Tina’s team developed BrandBot, an AI assistant that ensures all marketing and communication materials align with ASU’s branding guidelines. The bot, trained on ASU’s official brand standards, helps designers and writers verify compliance with university policies. While currently hosted on ASU’s ChatGPT-EDU platform, the team plans to migrate it to a more widely accessible platform in the future.

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The Role of AI in Human-Centered Storytelling

Despite the rapid adoption of AI, Tina stresses the importance of keeping storytelling human-centered. AI is a tool that enhances creativity, but stories should always focus on the people behind the technology. ASU prioritizes narratives that showcase how AI impacts students, faculty, and research. For example, the university highlights student hackathons, AI-driven research projects, and immersive learning experiences that blend AI with human expertise.

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Scaling AI Adoption Across 200,000+ Individuals

With 181,000 students and 20,000 employees, ASU’s AI strategy had to be scalable. The university tackled this by launching the AI Innovation Challenge, a program that grants faculty and staff access to ChatGPT-EDU licenses in exchange for AI-driven project proposals. This initiative has led to over 500 AI projects across teaching, research, and workforce development.

Additionally, ASU maintains ai.asu.edu, a centralized hub for AI initiatives, ensuring transparency and easy access to AI-related resources. The website continuously evolves, integrating faculty feedback and adding new guidelines as AI adoption grows.

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The Future of AI-Powered Storytelling in Higher Education

Looking ahead, Tina predicts that multimodal storytelling will dominate higher ed marketing and curriculum design. AI-powered, immersive experiences—such as ASU’s Dreamscape virtual reality biology labs—demonstrate how AI can enhance student engagement and learning. Personalized content, AI-driven tutoring, and interactive storytelling will become the norm.

ASU also aims to lead the charge in agentic AI, a new wave of AI that automates tasks and interacts dynamically with users. As AI technology advances, Tina and her team are focused on defining agentic AI for higher education and communicating its implications for students, faculty, and marketers.

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Advice for Higher Ed Leaders on AI Adoption

For leaders looking to integrate AI into their teams, Tina offers this advice:

1. Start small, but start now. Experiment with AI tools and encourage your team to do the same.
2. Focus on AI literacy. Stay informed by listening to podcasts, reading AI newsletters, and following institutions like ASU, Harvard, and Stanford.
3. Adopt a test-and-learn approach. AI is evolving rapidly—be open to experimenting and iterating.
4. Lead with confidence. Teams take their cues from leadership. A proactive, informed approach will foster AI adoption across your organization.

ASU’s AI journey serves as a blueprint for higher ed institutions looking to embrace AI without losing sight of their core mission—serving students, faculty, and the broader community through impactful storytelling and innovation.

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Enrollify is produced by Element451 — the next-generation AI student engagement platform helping institutions create meaningful and personalized interactions with students. Learn more at element451.com.

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