UK government trials chatbots in bid to bolster small business support

The UK government is running a private beta of a new chatbot designed to help people set up small businesses and find support.

The generative AI chatbot, based on OpenAI’s GPT-4o technology, will be tested out by up to 15,000 business users, after earlier trials went well.

GOV.UK Chat is linked from 30 government business support pages, including 'set up a business' and 'search for a trade mark'. Users can ask questions about tax and the support available to them.

Technology secretary Peter Kyle said the use of chatbots could markedly improve efficiency and enable the government to provide timely support for small businesses across the country.

"Outdated and bulky government processes waste people’s time too often, with the average adult in the UK spending the equivalent of a working week and a half dealing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

"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."

If this trial goes well, it could ultimately be rolled out across the full government website, made up of 700,000 pages. This attracts over 11 million users per week and is the best-known digital service in the UK, according to YouGov.

"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," said Kyle.

"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."

During the first trial, nearly seven-in-ten users said the chatbot was helpful, with only 15% disagreeing.

However, the trial did throw up some problems with accuracy, generating a number of 'hallucinations'. Some of these were “challenging, or abusive, or even seductive”, according to Paul Willmott, chair of the government’s Central Digital and Data Office

Since then, developers behind the chatbot said it's improved significantly. The team has been working with subject matter experts at HMRC to score the accuracy of the chatbot's answers, assess AI answers against example answers written by content designers, and monitor for inaccurate or inappropriate answers and investigate any they find.

There's now also a message included in the onboarding process explaining the risk of inaccurate answers to users, and a link underneath every answer so that users can check the source guidance.

"Unlike ChatGPT, GOV.UK Chat is designed to draw on GOV.UK as the source of its answers,” according to Sam Dub and Josh Davey of the development team. “This means we can ensure it’s always using the most up-to-date guidance, and users can trust the answer comes from government."

There have also been improvements aimed at preventing the chatbot from giving harmful responses such as illegal answers, the sharing of sensitive financial information, or the adoption of a political position.