Columbia debuts AI chatbot on city website | Mid-Missouri News [Video]

COLUMBIA — The City of Columbia has started rolling out an artificial intelligence chatbot on its website to assist citizens in finding answers to general questions. 

CoMo Chatbot is a machine learning program described on CoMo.gov as a virtual assistant in training.

“What it will essentially do is scour our whole city website in a very fast, efficient way,” Stephanie Brown, customer service manager of the City of Columbia contact center, said. “Right now, it may give back a general answer, so we want it to give a more detailed answer.” 

Because of the built-in machine learning, the program gets more efficient with each question asked.

“We want the public to train the chatbot if you will,” Brown said. “We’re kind of building it as it goes along, so it’s ever-evolving.” 

Columbia’s contact center began a soft launch of the program last week, beginning with basic city transportation information.

Now, the chatbot gives the user suggested prompts to use when opening the interface. These prompts are …