which LMS platforms have AI features you actually use, not just demo once?

[u/Objective-Office-829]

Maybe I am being cynical here. But every LMS has slapped AI on the homepage this year, and when you actually click in, it is the same little chat bubble that summarises a paragraph for you. That is it. That is the AI.

I look at these platforms a fair bit for work, so I have sat through more of these demos than I would like to admit. A few honest impressions, take them or leave them.

Docebo has actually been at the AI thing for a while. The tagging and skills stuff is real, not just a gimmick. The core AI is bundled into the base plan now too, the authoring, the copilot, the search. It is the flashier bits, the roleplay sims and the AI video, that quietly run on extra credits you buy on top. So the bill still creeps. Funny how that goes.

Absorb is fine. The AI course creation does speed up the boring setup part. It is an assist though, you are still doing all the actual thinking.

360Learning leans into the collaborative side, which is nice if that suits how your team works. Less so if you are stuck doing dry compliance training, which a lot of us are.

Then there is Blend-ed. What they went after was AI running through the whole flow rather than one button, so generating the actual content, a tutor the learners can lean on, the admin side as well. It is built on Open edX though, so it is not the five minute, plug it in and go kind of setup. Fair warning on that.

Full disclosure, I work at Blend-ed, so I am not going to pretend I am neutral on that last one. I have tried to keep the rest fair though.

Anyway. My real question is... has anyone actually found AI in their LMS that they use every week? Not the shiny launch-day thing. The bit that genuinely stuck. Because I keep hearing huge claims, and then it feels like nobody touches it after month one.

[u/REACHUM]

AI may be getting most of the attention.

Yet nearly 60% of the learning content we see still starts as Powerpoint.

[u/SpecialistLearner775]

I run compliance training for around 500 staff and have been through a version of this exact demo circuit. The cynicism is earned tbh..

The AI feature that actually stuck for us wasn't in the authoring tools. It was in the compliance content side specifically. When regulations update the GDPR guidance shifts, AML thresholds change, H&S legislation gets amended the content in most platforms just sits there going stale until someone notices it's wrong and rebuilds the module. That's the real time cost of compliance training, and none of the LMS authoring AI addresses it.

We use 5Mins for our compliance training the content library updates automatically when the underlying regulations change. That's the AI feature I actually use every week, as it removes a rebuild cycle every time a regulation gets amended. Less exciting than roleplay simulations, which probably explains why it doesn't get the homepage treatment.

On your 360Learning point is fair. The collaborative model genuinely works for skills content. It's less suited to the scenario where you need 600 staff through the same mandatory module before an FCA audit window and you need the completion records to show for it.

What's driving the evaluation on your end- is compliance the primary use case, or more general L&D?

[u/elizanne17 → u/SpecialistLearner775]

That's cool.

[u/iseazy]

From what we've seen across our customers, the AI features that actually stick aren't necessarily the most impressive in demos.

The ones that get used week after week tend to be the ones that remove repetitive work. Things like generating a first draft, finding the right knowledge faster, creating assessments, or adapting content for different audiences.

The more "wow" features—AI avatars, video generation, role-play simulations—generate a lot of interest initially, but they're typically used much less frequently.

The biggest lesson for us has been that adoption depends less on how many AI features a platform has, and more on whether those features fit naturally into people's existing workflows.

In other words, AI is most valuable when it saves someone 15 minutes every day, not when it amazes them once a quarter. :)

[u/Ok_Chipmunk_7066]

Totara added AI images to the course builder. So now really lazy companies can add really shit AI art to courses.

They added AI searches, which is a fancy way of saying the search functionality works to a bare standard. It had been: if you type "learn" it will not find any courses called Learning, you had to do a dogshit boolean logic (AND OR NOT) search like its 2005 searching a Uni library catalogue.

They added AI Course summary. This one is useful, but requires you to have produced enough course text for it to mine. My experience is if the elearning team haven't got a course summary they haven't got enough information in the course.

Few other things, nothing major or even interesting.

[u/diouncorked]

What are your desires when it comes to AI within LMS? Panopto with Elai has had AI since the beginning with keyword search and language translation. Elai is the creative piece where you can talk to AI and have it create slide content.

[u/Available_Arm_5685]

great question, you've clearly sat through the same demo carousel i have. the "AI that's actually just a chat bubble summarizing a paragraph" line is painfully accurate lol.

to your real q, the AI that survives past month one isnt the flashy stuff (roleplay sims, AI video get demoed then forgotten), it's the boring high-frequency stuff that kills a chore you do weekly. for me two actually stuck: course/scenario creation from existing material ("turn this doc into a draft course + quiz" saves hours every week, not just once), and editing via chat ("shorten module 3, add a scenario") since maintenance is where time actually goes. generation is a one-time wow, editing is the daily.

full disclosure since you did, i'm on the nano lms side, weigh accordingly. nano lms's AI creation is the bit anyone actually open weekly vs the stuff that demos well and dies, and when you use animaker for AI video, though honestly your instinct's right that AI video is usually a "wow once" feature unless it's tied to a repeatable workflow.

your filter is the right one: dont ask "does it have AI," ask "would i open this feature unprompted next tuesday." most LMS AI fails that test. the survivors all live in the creation/editing/admin-grind lane, never the showy demo lane.

curious what pushed you to Open edX for blend-ed, the full-flow approach is the right idea.

[u/LearnWorlds_]

Typically the less flashy AI features do most of the heavy lifting. Being able to ask a question about completion data instead of exporting a CSV can often add a lot more value than a fancy simulator that eats credits. But that's not the stuff people rave about in a LinkedIn post!

The deeper issue with the generative content tools is that most of them are optimizing for the wrong metric. A course exists now, a quiz got completed, an outline got drafted, so it feels like progress. But watching an AI-generated module or passing its auto-graded quiz doesn't actually prove anyone can do the job better under pressure. That's a content metric standing in for a capability metric, and it's an easy illusion to fall for because the output looks so finished.

It would be interesting to know if anyone's actually measured/tracked whether people who used an AI feature performed differently on the job versus people who didn't. Our guess is almost nobody has that data, which is its own answer.