Government expands genAI chatbot trial to 15,000 business users

The government has entered a new phase of its generative AI (genAI) chatbot trial, with plans to test the technology with up to 15,000 business users.

Users can ask the tool for advice on business rules, tax and support, with the chatbot linked to 30 of gov.uk’s business pages, such as “set up a business” and “search for a trade mark”.

The chatbot is designed to provide straightforward and personalised answers which collate information from potentially dozens of website pages.

The government’s in-house data scientists, developers and designers are building the experimental tool using OpenAI’s GPT-4o technology.

It said that results from the trial will determine the next steps, which could lead to larger-scale testing across the full government website, which is made up of 700,000 pages and attracts more than 11 million users every week.

After the first trial, which was conducted late last year, nearly 70 per cent of users agreed that the responses provided by the chatbot were helpful – where under 15 per cent disagreed.

The original pilot also showed that more testing and development was required to meet the high accuracy standards for advice and information on gov.uk

“Outdated and bulky government processes waste people’s time too often, with the average adult in the UK spending the equivalent of a working week and a half dealing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,” said science secretary Peter Kyle. “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.”

The government said that given the emerging nature of genAI, it is likely that the chatbot will still provide some inaccurate and erroneous results.

It says that this month’s trial will provide the information and insights necessary to make further improvements and develop the tool for larger-scale testing.