"I understand your bike was stolen. For this situation, you should contact the Los Angeles School Police Department. They have a Bike Patrol Team that might be able to help. "

A question about helping a friend with mental-health issues elicited a long list of possible contacts.

For now the district has put limits on the reach of the AI software — it has to stay within the district universe of information. A student, for example, would not likely be able to get a reference to a recent development in the war in Ukraine for a research paper, Carvalho said. But that door could be opened in the near future, he added, once district officials confirm that such an expansion would be safe to allow and lead to accurate results.

To harness the information and other learning platforms to work with Ed, L.A. Unified had to persuade its many education vendors to open the doors to their platforms — so that students and parents don't have separate paths, logins and passwords to reach different parts of the system.

Many vendors have business models that do just the opposite: create a closed ecosystem so that the client would have difficulty integrating with competing products.

Other elements of the effort: The chatbot is unavailable to students younger than 13. Filters flag obscene or insulting language for further review.

About 1,000 students have been testing the program since January. At their suggestion, the district added athletic team schedules and school food menus. Other practical information includes how soon the school bus will be arriving.

Animator Kevin O'Donnell worked on the voice, look and personality of Ed, who is represented as a sun with sunglasses.

For older students, "it is about that utility, but with the younger kids, we have to have a character that they love," O'Donnell said. "And if they do love it, then as they grow, they'll gravitate back to it." Ed tells young students that he loves them and that they're superstars. "I've always found that if your character really loves the kids, the kids — the younger kids — tend to love the character."

As the students get older, the voice and the relationship changes to that of a teacher or older mentor, added O'Donnell.

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