NYC's $500K Business Chatbot Axed After Repeatedly Dispensing Illegal Advice to Business Owners
Source: techradar.com ↗
NYC's half-million-dollar chatbot often gave out illegal advice and was 'functionally unusable'
New York City's AI-powered business guidance chatbot — which cost roughly half a million dollars — is being shut down by incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani after investigations found it routinely gave false and outright illegal advice to business owners seeking help navigating city regulations. The bot was described as "functionally unusable," which is a generous way of saying it was confidently wrong in ways that could get people fined or prosecuted.
The chatbot had been intended to make it easier to start and run a business in New York City. Instead, it demonstrated a remarkable talent for the opposite. Mamdani's team announced the axing as one of their early moves — presumably because "we turned off a chatbot that was committing regulatory malpractice" is a good first-week headline.