What is AI?
- Fiona Pratt
- Jul 23
- 3 min read
What is AI? (…and what’s this ROVO thing everyone’s talking about?)
Unless you’ve been living under a rock – and not even a smart rock with WiFi – you’ve probably heard the term AI. Maybe you’ve played around with ChatGPT. Maybe you’ve rolled your eyes at the hype. Maybe you're wondering when someone’s going to explain it without sounding like a sci-fi film script.
So here’s your friendly breakdown. No buzzwords. No fear-mongering. Just straight-up answers.
🤖 So, what actually is AI?
Artificial Intelligence is simply about getting machines to mimic human-like thinking. Not consciousness. Not world domination. Just smart problem-solving.
And the most powerful type of AI right now? Large Language Models (LLMs) – like the ones behind ChatGPT, Google Gemini, GitHub Co-pilot… and yes, even ROVO.
These models have been trained on massive amounts of text – we’re talking everything from Wikipedia to open source code to books and public websites. They don’t "know" things the way we do, but they’re incredible at predicting language and context. You give it a prompt, it gives you back a response that sounds shockingly human.
🧠 Wait… so are all these tools just ChatGPT in disguise?
In a way, yes – and no.
Tools like ChatGPT (built by OpenAI) laid the groundwork for this new era of language-based AI. What’s happening now is that companies are building on top of that foundation. They're taking the raw power of models like GPT-4 and adding specific wrappers, integrations, workflows, and domain knowledge to make it useful for particular teams or industries.
For example:
GitHub Copilot uses an LLM to autocomplete code for developers.
Google Gemini integrates AI into Google Workspace, surfacing info and writing drafts.
And Atlassian’s ROVO? That’s where things get especially interesting.
🧩 So… what is ROVO?
ROVO is Atlassian’s AI-powered teammate – a virtual assistant that lives inside the tools your team already uses: Jira, Confluence, Trello, Bitbucket, and more.
But it’s more than just a chatbot or a glorified search bar.
Here’s what ROVO can do (and why it matters):
📝 Summarise content instantly – No more slogging through 40-page Confluence docs or giant Jira threads.
🔍 Surface relevant knowledge – ROVO looks across your entire workspace to find what you need, fast.
📎 Context-aware recommendations – It knows your team’s history, workflows, and tickets.
📚 Break down silos – Someone wrote a brilliant page six months ago that solves today’s problem? ROVO finds it.
🤖 Action suggestions – Based on what it sees, it can suggest next steps, updates, and ideas.
It’s like having that one teammate who knows everything, remembers everything, and is never too busy to help.
💼 Why does this matter for teams?
Because we all want to be spending less time searching for stuff and more time doing the stuff that matters. ROVO gives teams a serious productivity lift by:
✅ Reducing duplication of work✅ Helping new hires get up to speed faster✅ Eliminating “tribal knowledge” that disappears when someone’s off on holiday✅ Making it easier to focus and collaborate across distributed teams
🛠️ And this is where Sourcesense comes in…
As an Atlassian Platinum Solution Partner, we help teams bring ROVO (and AI more broadly) into their workflows in a way that’s:
🔧 Technically sound🙋♀️ Human-friendly📈 Scaled to deliver actual value – not just cool demos
We can walk you through:
What ROVO looks like in your setup
How to roll it out to teams without disruption
Best practices for using AI inside Atlassian tools
How to make sure you’re getting ROI, not just another login
Rovo uses OpenAI LLMs (GPT) as well as open-source (Mistral, LLaMA) and third-party hosted LLMs (Claude, Gemini), to provide personalised and contextual insights as well as optimise latency across Rovo Search, Chat and Agents. The LLM providers Atlassian use do not use your inputs and outputs to improve their services. More information on this can be found here: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/atlassian-engineering/hybrid-llm
🚀 TL;DR:
AI is no longer the future. It’s now. ROVO is Atlassian’s very clever assistant that helps your teams work smarter.And if you want to get ahead of the curve (without accidentally breaking your workflows), Sourcesense can help.
📩 Want to see how ROVO fits into your team’s toolset? Get in touch – or let your AI assistant remind you to.
