If you are evaluating Totara LMS, the AI question usually comes up in the second meeting. Someone on the committee has seen a competitor demo an AI coach or a skills graph, and wants to know what Totara has in its place.
The short answer: Totara has a small, practical set of AI features aimed at the people who build and run learning, plus a machine learning recommendations engine that has been in the platform for some time. It does not have a learner-facing AI tutor, and it does not infer skills automatically. What it offers in exchange is control over whether AI runs at all, which account it runs on, and which content it can see.
This guide covers every AI capability Totara documents, how AI is switched on, what it costs, and the questions a regulated organisation should ask before enabling it.
It helps to separate them, because they work very differently.
Think of it as the difference between a colleague who reads the room and a contractor you call in. The recommendations engine reads the room: it watches activity inside your own Totara site and suggests what to look at next, without sending anything out. The generative features are the contractor: when someone asks for a summary or an image, Totara sends a request to OpenAI and brings the answer back.
That distinction matters most when your privacy office asks where the data goes, so it is worth holding on to through the rest of this page.
These are Totara's own feature names. Each is optional and configurable, and all of them are managed from the Manage AI page in site administration.
Works inside Totara's Weka content editor. A course author or a learner creating a resource can summarise existing text, generate a new block of text from a prompt, or generate an image without leaving the editor. Typical use: a first draft of a course description or introduction, which a person then reviews and changes.
The same image generation as a dedicated tool, available anywhere Totara supports an image upload, including course settings. Useful for giving a large catalogue a consistent visual look without a design request for each course.
A facilitator uploads a file and Totara generates an informal quiz from it, with auto-generated questions. It sits alongside resources and surveys in collaborative workspaces. It is designed for low-stakes reflection and spotting knowledge gaps, not for graded or compliance assessment. For certification and recertification, Totara's formal quiz and completion tools remain the right tools.
Totara reads the information held on a course and recommends tags to add to it, drawn from your existing tag list. It does not invent new tags, and where tags exist in several languages it suggests them in the user's preferred language. On a large catalogue, consistent tagging is what makes search and recommendations work, so this is a quieter feature with an outsized effect.
Part of Totara Perform. It helps learners create SMART goals by walking them through a series of guided questions and drafting a goal that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound, which they can edit or accept.
The recommendation engine behind the Recommended for you block in the learning catalogue. It supports courses, micro-learning, workspaces, and programs and certifications where self-enrolment is enabled. It draws on interaction data, user profile attributes, content metadata and what is trending across the site.
According to Totara, this engine processes data within the Totara environment and does not send it to an outside provider. Site administrators choose which model it uses, including whether user profile data is considered at all.
AI in Totara is opt-in, and more so than the phrase usually implies.
The generative features are not part of a standard Totara installation. They are delivered as separate plugins that your Totara partner installs, and they need an OpenAI API account before they will do anything. Once installed, an administrator enables individual features and sets role-based permissions, so you can, for example, give course authors the form assistant without giving it to every learner.
Totara is candid that these plugins are early-stage. Its developer documentation describes them as evolving features, delivered separately from the core product so they can keep pace with AI, and not built to the same development and support standards as the core platform. For most organisations that is a reasonable trade for content drafting and tagging. It is also a good reason to keep AI away from anything that decides a compliance outcome.
There is no AI credit meter and no per-action charge from Totara. The generative features run on your own OpenAI account, so you pay OpenAI directly at its published rates for the usage you generate.
Two qualifications, so the picture is complete:
Compared with platforms that meter AI per generated lesson or per minute of video, this model tends to be cheaper for light use and more predictable to budget. It is less convenient if you want a large AI feature set working on day one.
For a health system, a regulator, an association or a public body, these are worth answering in writing first.
Stated plainly, because it will decide some evaluations:
If your brief leads with any of those, weigh it honestly. If it leads with control over data, cost and configuration, Totara's approach is a strength rather than a gap.
Does Totara have AI? Yes. Totara documents six AI capabilities: the AI form assistant, standalone AI image generation, AI knowledge check-in, AI course tag recommendations, the AI goal assistant in Totara Perform, and AI-powered recommendations in the catalogue.
Which version of Totara includes AI? The generative features first shipped in Totara 19.1 in July 2025 and are available as AI plugins in Totara 20, the current major version. The underlying OpenAI integration arrived in version 18.8.
Is AI included in a standard Totara installation? No. The generative AI plugins are installed separately by your Totara partner and require an OpenAI API account.
Does Totara work with AI models other than OpenAI? The packaged features are built for OpenAI. Totara states that integrations with other providers can be built as partner customisation.
How much does AI in Totara cost? Totara does not charge per AI action. You pay your model provider for usage on your own account. Custom AI work, such as a bespoke learning assistant, is priced by your partner as a project.
Does the recommendations engine send data outside Totara? According to Totara, no. The recommendations engine processes data within the Totara environment. The generative features are different, because they send requests to OpenAI.
Is AI available on TotaraGov? Not at present, according to Totara. TotaraGov is certified to FedRAMP specifications, which do not currently include the OpenAI integration.
Can we turn AI off after enabling it? Yes. AI features are managed individually from the Manage AI page in site administration, and can be enabled or disabled per feature.
Bring a course or a policy document and we will show you each feature working on it, and tell you where it will not help. If Totara is not the right fit, we will say so.
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Totara, Totara Learn and Totara Perform are trademarks of Totara Learning Solutions Ltd. OpenAI is a trademark of OpenAI. Lambda Learning Inc. is a Totara Platinum Partner.