Upgraded Chatbot AI (summer 2024)

A major upgrade to the AI of the Frase chatbot is coming in the summer 2024 for CivicPlus customers! 

We are replacing our current AI with large language model (LLM) capability. 

And this means two important things:

1. Improved recognition: Traditional AI systems from the 2010's lack the expansive understanding of language that an LLM has. These LLMs were first made public in 2021, and the AI's elevated ability to understand language was apparent. With better recognition of human language, AI responses will be correct (or on the right track) more often, and the bot will need less training from its municipality admin.

2. AI writing the answer in the bot: Our current bot can find the proper page and serve that within the chatbot, showcasing a bit of information from that page. However, unless the response is trained, the resident may still have to navigate to the page, and locate the information on that page.

The LLM, though, can gather information from one or more pages, and then write out the answer in the chatbot itself. This immediate answer ability helps residents much faster, clearly differentiating it from search where residents may still have to find the necessary information on the website's page.