During this week’s “State of the City” address, Ogden Mayor Ben Nadolski introduced the public to “Archie” — a new AI powered web assistant.

“When I ran for mayor, I ran against a man who had a really good idea,” Nadolski said as part of the address. “He called it ‘3-1-1.’ He said, ‘Our city needs to have a customer service interface built on AI, built on innovation, that answers the questions that people have for us. In so doing, we can better serve them and we can start to gather data and information, in our spirit of innovation, to find out what it is people want from us.'”

The system takes its name from the Ogden Arch across Washington Boulevard and appears as a small button on the bottom right of the Ogden City website ready to try and answer users’ questions. The chatbot was created by Citibot LLC of Charleston, South Carolina.

“This mines all of the information from our website and puts it at your fingertips,” Nadolski said. “If there’s answers on our website and in our systems, this will find it for you and put it at your fingertips.”

A press release from the city further elaborated on the new chatbot.

“Archie combines advanced generative AI and machine learning to handle a wide range of resident needs,” the release said. “With support for 75 languages, it is also a valuable tool in creating an inclusive and accessible community. Residents can access Archie’s web chat from the City’s website (www.ogdencity.gov) by clicking the chat icon in the bottom right corner of their screen. They’ll be welcomed with a friendly message, ready to assist them in navigating city resources and submitting requests.”

The release adds the service is not just constrained to the city’s website.

“Residents who prefer texting can begin by sending ‘Hello’ to (888) 232-2724, where Archie will respond with helpful guidance,” the release said. “If further assistance is needed during the interaction, Archie can easily escalate requests to city staff for personalized support.”

Ogden City Communications Director Mike McBride told the Standard-Examiner on Friday that Ogden is the first in the state with Citibot’s tech, but similar examples have been operating in other cities.

“There are other cities that have a similar product, such as Provo and Herriman,” he said. “Their products operate a little differently on the back end, where Archie scrapes our entire website weekly in order to ‘learn’ the answers that are being asked by users. Furthermore, Archie provides service in more than 70 languages.”

He said that the chatbot, which launched on the website on Wednesday, has had a smooth rollout.

“Our internal team has been testing it since early December and are excited that users will have 24/7 access to information,” he said. “We have a log of questions or inputs from users, and the resulting answer from the bot, and it is mostly effective in providing correct answers.”

While the new technology has impressed those who put it together, McBride reminded the public that Archie isn’t necessarily magic.

“This technology is not perfect but it is certainly progress in leaps and bounds,” he said. “Archie only scans Ogdencity.gov for information. It does not glean information from any other source besides our pages so the answers it provides are a direct reflection of the content that is live on our site. In many cases where Archie is providing inaccurate information, we are finding that the source of the answer is either dated or very similar in language. This has triggered internal processes to update and consolidate information to streamline this service and to take action to avoid inaccurate responses.”

He added it also has a few limitations.

“The bot does not scan PDF documents or images,” he said. “An example of what someone may look for is a meeting agenda. It will not provide an answer to what is on the agenda if the only source is the pdf document. It will however provide the link to the agenda page of our website.”

McBride said this comes at a time when AI is finding its way into city operations in an increasing capacity.

“The city is in the process of finalizing our AI policy,” he said. “We are also very close to having enterprise accounts with ChatGPT for Directors and Executive Director use. It is key that in using any AI product, that when using it as a tool for productivity that the accuracy and impact of final product is the full responsibility of the individual producing these documents or projects.”

For more information, visit https://www.ogdencity.gov/.