Thousands of small businesses are to be offered help and advice through a new government generative AI chatbot which moves to the next stage of testing this week.
The chatbot is designed to make it quicker and easier to find the right page on the governments gov.uk website.
Up to 15,000 people will be able to ask the tool for advice on business rules and support, with the chatbot linked from 30 of GOV.UK’s business pages, such as “set up a business” and “search for a trade mark”. People with access to the trial can ask questions about tax and the support available to them.
A team of in-house data scientists, developers and designers are building the experimental tool using OpenAI’s GPT-4o technology which aims to help people more quickly navigate complex advice to understand what matters to them. In response, they will receive straightforward, personalised answers that collate information that may otherwise be spread across dozens of pages.
The results from the trial will determine the next steps which could include potential larger-scale testing. This could ultimately lead to the chatbot being rolled out across the full government website, made up of 700,000 pages. The GOV.UK website attracts over 11 million users per week and is the best-known digital service in the UK according to YouGov.
The new trial comes as the Science Secretary’s department is shaping the new ‘digital centre’ of government to boost technology adoption across the public sector, taking a more experimental approach with emerging technology where appropriate as it does so.
Science Secretary Peter Kyle said: “Outdated and bulky government processes waste people’s time too often, with the average adult in the UK spending the equivalent of a working week and a half dealing with public sector bureaucracy every year.
“We are going to change this by experimenting with emerging technology to find new ways to save people time and make their lives easier, as we are doing with GOV.UK Chat. With all new technology, it takes time to get it right so we’re taking it through extensive trials with thousands of real users before it is used more widely.
“This is an essential part of our ambition to use AI to improve public services in a safe and reliable way, making sure the UK government leads by example in driving innovation forward.”
