moodle-block_openai_chat

GPT-3 powered AI chat block for Moodle

This block allows your Moodle users to get 24/7 chat support via OpenAI's GPT-3 text-completion AI. The block offers multiple options for customizing the persona of the AI and the prompt it is given, in order to influence the text it outputs.

To get started, create an OpenAI account here. This plugin requries a commercial subscription via a paid OpenAI account. For more information on purchasing a subscription, please see the aforementioned link. Once a paid account is created, all you need to do is add the API key to the plugin settings.

This plugin uses the Completion API, where a prompt is given and the AI is asked to guess what might come next in the sequence. To read more about this API, and for tips on optimizing your prompt to get the output that you want, please look here.

Prompt format

Knowing exactly the format of the text sent to OpenAI can help users tailor their prompt for best results. In this plugin, the entire conversation transcript is sent every time a user sends a message, so that the AI is able to remember previous parts of the conversation. The "prompt" is placed at the top of the text, and then a back-and-forth transcript is added for each message. For example, if the prompt is set to the default ("Below is a conversation between a user and a support agent for a Moodle site, where users go for online learning:"), the User's name is set to "User" and the AI's name is set to "Agent," the text sent to the AI might look like this:

Below is a conversation between a user and a support agent for a Moodle site, where users go for online learning:
User: Hello?
Agent: Hello, how can I help you?
User: Yes, I need help updating my email in Moodle.
Agent: 

The above is assuming that a few messages have already been exchanged between the user and the AI as transcribed above. As you can see, each time the AI is asked to respond, the prompt is given, followed by a transcript of the entire conversation so far, with each party clearly labeled. Note how the prompt ends with "Agent: ". This indicates to the AI that the text it generates must be a logical response from the Agent based on the existing conversation.

The user is able to customize the prompt added to the top of the transcript, as well as the names of the parties of the conversation. See below for more information on plugin settings.

Global block settings

The global block settings can be found by going to Site Administration > Plugins > Blocks > OpenAI Chat Block. The options are: - OpenAI API Key: This is where you add the API key given to you by OpenAI - Completion prompt: Here you can edit the text added to the top of the conversation in order to influence the AI's persona and responses - Agent name: This is the name that the AI will use for itself in the conversation - User name: This is the name that will be used for the User in the conversation. Both this and the above option can be used to influence the persona and responses of the AI.

Individual block settings

There are a few settings that can be changed on a per-block basis. You can access these settings by entering editing mode on your site and clicking the gear on the block, and then going to "Configure OpenAI Chat Block"

• Block title: The title for this block
• Show labels: Whether or not the names chosen for "Agent name" and "User name" should appear in the chat UI