In November 2025 Aspire Education Group GmbH took on the coordinator role for ASSIST-AI, a twenty-four month Erasmus+ programme building an AI-supported virtual assistant to help autistic adults acquire social skills and participate more fully in society. This September the consortium meets in Bastia for its second transnational project meeting.

A deliberately constrained design

ASSIST-AI is not a chatbot with a diagnosis attached. The assistant provides structured guidance and controlled dialogue (guiding questions, example-based support, limited decision pathways) rather than open-ended tutoring or a human-like advisor.

It is also emotionally neutral by design. The consortium removed emotional-modelling scenarios such as consoling a friend, and the assistant does not measure or interpret the emotional states of users. That is partly technical and partly regulatory: the EU AI Act places limits on emotion recognition, and the consortium chose to design inside them rather than around them.

The test of an inclusion technology is not whether it works in a lab. It is whether the organisations already doing the work can pick it up and keep going after the funding stops.

What the scenarios actually cover

Scenarios map to four official categories and stay resolutely practical: budgeting and financial literacy in simplified form, public transport and ticketing, asking for help in structured environments such as a station or service desk, and managing delays or sensory-heavy environments.

Who is doing the work

Six organisations across six countries. Aspire Education Group GmbH coordinates as grant holder and sole recipient of EU payments, reporting to the German National Agency, BIBB. Patricia Lamour MBE is legal representative; Viv Ahmun leads work package one on project management and implementation, and the scenario-validation outreach.

  • IRIPS (France), technical and scenario design lead on WP2
  • Federación Autismo Andalucía (Spain), autism sector partner
  • Bursa Uldağ University (Turkey), university and technology transfer
  • SDSN (Belgium) and AMAE (Portugal)

What happens in Bastia

Review of the scenario curriculum against partner feedback, the first demonstration of a functional build, validation methodology sign-off ahead of user testing, and dissemination planning for the 2027 multiplier events.

The programme runs to 31 October 2027. Between now and then the work moves from design into the hands of the adults it is built for, which is the only place its value can be established.

Written from Aspire Education Group project records. For enquiries about this work, get in touch.