Citizens information website reports 20% fall in traffic as people look to AI for answers
Traffic to the Citizens Information website dropped by almost 20% after search engines began to give “AI summaries” to what was being looked for, but such models often give “outdated and inaccurate” information, an Oireachtas committee has heard.Graham Long, chief executive of the Citizens Information Board, said his body had developed its own AI tool to try to give users accurate information on topics such as welfare payments and tax, but said such technology could not replace an in-person interaction.“AI doesn’t compare in any way to what we get back from person-to-person interaction,” he said.The artificial intelligence committee has heard from public bodies on the rollout of AI programmes in the public sector, including Revenue and the Department of Foreign Affairs, which uses its own AI tool in the passport service called 'Ask Finn'.In the case of the Citizens Information Board, Mr Long said the 19% drop in website traffic it experienced last year began to occur in March, and coincided with search engines such as Google beginning to roll out AI summaries to searches made by users.He said while it was already working on an AI tool, this development was a “major driver” to creating a tool that people “would want to use”.“It was apparent with the speed of the decline that people wanted to use AI to search for information,” Mr Long said.Its “Ask CI” tool has fielded almost 3,000 questions across 1,300 session so far, with the areas of interest corresponding to what people usually search for on its website.Fielding questions from Fine Gael’s James Geoghegan, he said other sources aside from Citizens Information that feed into AI summaries generated by search engines would have outdated or inaccurate information.He said it would be “worthwhile” to work with Google to make sure accurate information appeared in these AI summaries, but “we haven’t pursued it as much as we should”.Meanwhile, the committee heard from Revenue it does not use AI to make “tax-related decisions”, but it has used AI internally for a long time.Secretary-general and member of the Revenue board Ruth Kennedy said there was “absolutely efficiencies” to be gained from AI, and it may result in the redeployment of staff in future but “that will all take time to understand”.
