Diving Into The Royal Navy’s AI-Powered Recruitment Tool

The Royal Navy is trialling Atlas - a real-time, AI-powered digital human designed to guide potential recruits through the joining process, with a particular focus on the Submarine Service.

Developed alongside WPP Media’s Wavemaker UK - with which it has worked for over a decade - Voxly Digital, and Great State, Atlas uses a large language model (LLM) trained on verified Navy knowledge.

Candidates can ask questions by voice or text and receive spoken or captioned answers, alongside videos and other supporting content. The avatar will be tested at events and integrated into the NavyReady app and the Navy’s eCRM programme.

Atlas builds on Wavemaker’s long-running AI innovation work with the Royal Navy. Its earlier recruitment assistant has already handled more than 460,000 questions, generated 89,000 expressions of interest and reduced the load on live-agent teams by 76 per cent.

The Navy hopes Atlas will offer younger candidates a more accessible way to explore roles and understand life as a submariner - part of its broader test-and-learn approach to recruitment innovation.

We spoke with Caroline Scott, head of e-CRM and innovation at the Royal Navy, and Rozzi Merrington, head of applied innovation at Wavemaker UK, to find out more about the initiative.

First, can you explain how the two of you work together?

Merrington: I lead Applied Innovation at Wavemaker UK. Our department sits alongside client strategy teams, and the Royal Navy has been one of our longstanding clients. We’ve worked closely with Caroline, Paul and their team for years on their innovation roadmap, especially around AI. That work actually began pre-pandemic - over Zoom, exploring how younger candidates’ expectations were shifting and the need for 24-hour support during the recruitment journey.

Scott: It’s been a long process of test-and-adjust. Because we’re part of the Ministry of Defence, anything we build must operate within tight governance. Our new avatar, Atlas, is plugged into an LLM that is fully contained within the Royal Navy careers website. Atlas can only answer questions that draw on approved information in our careers section - nothing from the open web. We’re using it initially in the “Expression of Interest” phase, mainly for Submariner candidates who often have very specific questions. We’re also trialling it at events, where some people prefer not to approach a recruiter directly.

The pilot helps us understand what questions candidates ask, what we can’t yet answer, and whether Atlas is genuinely helpful. And crucially: it will never replace human recruiters. It’s a co-pilot, there to support out-of-hours queries or questions younger people might be embarrassed to ask, not to make decisions for them.

How did the virtual recruitment work begin?

Merrington: Our first major project together was the virtual recruitment guide on the Navy’s website. This was before commercial-grade LLMs existed, so we built something as close as possible. Since then, we’ve continually refreshed and improved it. When the full LLM version launched last February, performance leapt - user satisfaction is around 93 per cent, and it has now answered over 400,000 questions from about 160,000 people. It fills the gap for quick questions, sensitive questions, and inclusivity questions - anything from halal diets to being the only woman on a ship.

This collaboration is weekly and ongoing. Each year we look at new technologies and how they could help solve the Navy’s more complex recruitment challenges. The Atlas pilot is the latest evolution of that work.

So Atlas isn’t replacing the virtual guide, but sits alongside it?

Merrington: Correct. The virtual recruitment guide still lives on the website. Atlas uses the same brain, but the avatar interface is being tested separately in a ring-fenced environment so we can learn before scaling.

And that’s why you’re launching it specifically for the Submarine Service?

Scott: Yes. Submariner recruitment is niche and requires specialist knowledge. This pilot lets us see whether the avatar interface is useful before applying it to the wider careers website. We’ll monitor what kinds of questions come up; are they mostly about submarines, or about the Navy in general? That will help us decide if a broader rollout makes sense.

Merrington: It also gives scalable access to submariner expertise. There aren’t many specialist recruiters, so we interviewed submariners and recruiters to enrich Atlas’s knowledge for this specific audience.

Is this the first conversational avatar in UK government?

Merrington: As far as we know, yes. The first conversational digital human publicly available in government. Younger audiences are used to conversational interfaces via gaming or newer AI tools, but a moving, emoting digital human for a national institution is a big leap. That’s why the pilot approach is so important.

What challenges did you face building it?

Scott: Governance is always the first hurdle. The initial LLM integration - years ago - was the hardest part. This pilot is easier because Atlas simply plugs into the model we already built and approved. And it’s tightly ring-fenced: if someone asks, “What’s your favourite colour?”, Atlas replies, “I am an avatar and don’t have personal preferences.” He can’t stray outside the authorised knowledge.

We review what he’s answering every week, just as we do with the website AI. Anything he can’t answer routes straight to a live agent or phone number.

Merrington: Technically, we split it into ‘the brain’ and ‘the face.’ The brain already existed, aside from additional Submariner training. The face required much more refinement. Even though generative AI can now create hyper-realistic digital humans, the avatar is only as good as the training footage. If the subject blinks too often in the footage, the avatar will blink too often. We had to fine-tune that.

The second technical challenge was reducing lag. Unlike many avatars that rely on pre-generated videos, Atlas must generate responses and animate them live. Getting that down to a natural conversational pace was a major task.

What recruitment targets are you working towards?

Scott: Our annual targets run into the thousands and shift depending on need, but submariners are always a priority because it’s such a specialist area. For Atlas, success initially means improving the conversion from Expression of Interest to Application. At events, it’s about how many candidates tick ‘submariner interest’ after speaking to Atlas. In the application phase, it’s whether we help people progress more smoothly.

Merrington: And from our side, it’s whether Atlas can outperform the benchmarks of the existing LLM, plus the depth of insights we gain. Are people using voice? Are conversations changing sentiment? Are we shifting consideration? The qualitative insight is as valuable as the hard metrics.

Could Atlas ever become the public face of Navy recruitment - on posters or TV?

Scott: That’s not the ambition right now. Above-the-line work will always use real serving personnel. Atlas has a very specific job: supporting people once they’re already engaged with the recruitment journey. Could you one day see him in a bus shelter answering questions in real time? Maybe. But for now, he’s a recruitment aid, not a spokesperson.

Merrington: Authenticity is central to Navy communications. Real people tell the story best. That’s why Atlas, although based on a real Submariner, has been designed as a neutral persona, so he can speak for the whole service. AI is there to fill gaps in access and scale, not to replace people.