Your own AI assistant can use UC’s research.
Beta
This offering is in development. We are building it now and will open it first to a small number of people and teams. If you would like to be among them, write to John at john.magee@understand-culture.com.
What it is
You probably already use an AI assistant at work, such as Claude, ChatGPT or Copilot.
You can connect it to UC. From then on, when you ask your assistant something that involves another culture, it retrieves UC’s research and answers from it.
You do not need to open UC or remember that it exists. The expertise comes to you, inside the tool you already use.
How you set it up
You register on UC. Your account page shows you one web address. In your assistant, you open the settings, add a connector and paste in the address. Your assistant then asks you to sign in to UC and to allow the connection.
That is all. It takes about two minutes, and you do it once.
How it works
You are preparing a presentation for engineering leads in Munich. You ask your assistant how to structure it.
Your assistant sees that the question involves working with Germans. It asks UC for the research on the country Germany and the topic Persuasion.
UC sends back the research and a link to the page it comes from. Your assistant writes its answer from that research and includes the link back to the research. If you want to read the analysis and the evidence, you click.
If UC does not cover a country or a topic, it says so. Your assistant can then tell you that its answer does not come from UC’s research.
Why it helps
Left to its training an AI guesses. It repeats the etiquette tips and the stereotypes it has seen most often, and it agrees with the view you bring to it. With UC’s research in front of it, your assistant answers from material that researchers analyzed, wrote and checked.
What it covers
The research covers 65 countries and 30 topics. Germany and the United States are fully researched, with evidence under every statement. The other 63 countries were produced with AI assistance.
What your assistant sends
Your assistant sends UC two pieces of information, a country and a topic. It does not send your question, your messages or your documents. What you write stays with you.
Most assistants show you each call to UC and what it sent, so you can check this yourself.
For one person or a team
You can connect for yourself. A manager can also open a team account, pay for it and invite his team. Each member connects his own assistant.
The calls are charged to the team account, and the manager sees the total use. There is no contract and no procurement.
What it costs
You pay a fee for each call your assistant makes to UC. There is no charge per user and no subscription.
Your account page shows every call, what it cost, and your receipts. The fee per call will be published here before the Beta ends.
This is separate from Colleagues
Access under Colleagues lets you use the advisor on this site and read the research here. This offering brings the research into your own assistant. You can have either one or both.
For your IT department
Many companies decide which connectors employees may add to the company’s AI assistant. If yours does, your IT department may need to approve UC first.
UC connects through MCP, the Model Context Protocol. MCP is the standard way for AI assistants to connect to outside sources. The details are on How the connection works.