Thousands of small businesses across the country will be able to get help and advice through the UK government’s generative AI chatbot, as it moves to the next stage of testing this week – making it easier and quicker to find information on GOV.UK.

Up to 15,000 people will be able to ask the tool for advice on business rules and support, with the chatbot linked from 30 of GOV.UK’s business pages, such as “set up a business” and “search for a trade mark”. People with access to the trial can ask questions about tax and the support available to them. 

A team of in-house data scientists, developers and designers are building the experimental tool using OpenAI’s GPT-4o technology which aims to help people more quickly navigate complex advice to understand what matters to them. In response, they will receive straightforward, personalised answers that collate information that may otherwise be spread across dozens of pages.

The results from the trial will determine the next steps which could include potential larger-scale testing. This could ultimately lead to the chatbot being rolled out across the full government website, made up of 700,000 pages. The GOV.UK website attracts over 11 million users per week and is the best-known digital service in the UK according to YouGov.

The new trial comes as the Science Secretary’s department is shaping the new ‘digital centre’ of government to boost technology adoption across the public sector, taking a more experimental approach with emerging technology where appropriate as it does so.

Science Secretary Peter Kyle said:

Outdated and bulky government processes waste people’s time too often, with the average adult in the UK spending the equivalent of a working week and a half dealing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

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.

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.

Results from the trial, which will be published when they have been reviewed, will help to shape further development of GOV.UK Chat and pave the way for larger-scale testing.

After the first trial, which was conducted late last year, nearly 70% of users agreed that the responses provided by the chatbot were helpful – where under 15% disagreed. However, the first trial also showed that more testing and development was required to meet the high accuracy standards for advice and information on GOV.UK.

Because of the way generative AI technology works, the government cannot predict and fully control every response. However, the technology allows the tool to provide tailored responses to individual questions and specific challenges users might have.

Stringent safety measures and guardrails have been put in place, given the nature of this technology. Since the last test, UK government experts have added “guardrails” that help GOV.UK Chat detect which questions it should, and should not, answer. These include measures to prevent the chatbot responding to queries that may prompt an illegal answer, share sensitive financial information or force the chatbot to take a political position.

Experts on AI safety and safeguarding techniques at the AI Safety Institute (AISI) have also been consulted on this work.

User experience improvements have also been made, including the introduction of an onboarding process and accessibility improvements – as well as changes to increase the accuracy and completeness of the answers generated.

Given the emerging nature of this technology, it is likely that the chatbot will still provide some inaccurate and erroneous results. This month’s trial will provide the information and insights necessary to make further improvements and develop the tool for larger-scale testing that would, in due course, inform any decision to roll out the chatbot more widely across GOV.UK.

Notes to editors

A 2021 study found that UK adults spend an estimated 3 billion hours on government-related admin a year; equating to 56 hours per UK adult, per year.