How the FT developed an AI chatbot

Emma Roth and Quentyn Kennemer of The Verge look at the artificial intelligence chatbot developed by the Financial Times using content from its articles.

Roth and Kennemer write, “It can provide responses to questions about current events, like how much funding Intel received from the US government under the CHIPS Act, as well as broader queries, like the effect of cryptocurrency on the environment. The tool then gleans the FT’s archives and summarizes the relevant information with citations.

“Ask FT will also answer questions that require deeper digging into the FT’s archives. When asked how YouTube started, it correctly responded that it was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim in February 2005.

“‘We did a whole bunch of testing internally and use that to refine how we instruct the model and how we construct the code,’ Jayne says. ‘In this first group of 500, we are tracking every question and response, as well as the user’s feedback.'”

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Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.