New York Post Unveils Hamilton AI Chatbot Powered by Google Cloud for Personalized News Discovery

New York Post launches "Hamilton" AI chatbot

Driving the news: The new chatbot and suite of AI products is named after the paper's founder, Alexander Hamilton. * The tools are meant to help readers discover more content and get more personalized and optimized recommendations, said Ariscielle Novicio, chief technology officer and senior vice president of product and digital strategy at New York Post Media Group. * Beginning Tuesday, users will see Hamilton across the New York Post and California Post Android and iOS apps. * Eventually, the company plans to expand Hamilton to its sites on the open web. Zoom in: Hamilton is an umbrella brand for AI-powered personalization features, including chatbot "Hamilton Search," personalized news briefing "Post Express," recommendation engine "Picked For You" and commentary and analysis discovery tool "Post Voices." * The tools pull current and archived editorial content from the New York Post and California Post newsrooms. * Hamilton itself doesn't produce original content or make any editorial judgments based on that content. How it works: The tools were been built using Google Cloud infrastructure, including its Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform and Gemini models. * The Post controls the editorial boundaries and product experience, while Google provides the underlying cloud infrastructure, models, search and recommendation capabilities, Novicio said. * Google Cloud's tech automatically powers the backend infrastructure that ensures newly published articles can be ingested, indexed and made searchable for Hamilton within seconds. * That makes it possible for users to receive hyper-personalized content recommendations whenever they open their apps. While Google Cloud works with many publishers to power secure backend tech infrastructure, this is the first time it's worked with a news partner in North America to power an AI chatbot, per Michael Clark, president of Google Cloud, North America. Between the lines: The arrangement is a standard enterprise cloud relationship, not a Google News partnership or an AI content-licensing agreement, per Novicio. * The Post pays Google for its cloud technology, and the relationship is separate from the publisher's relationship with Google Search. * While the Post's archive powers Hamilton, it is not licensing that content to train Google's general-purpose AI models through this agreement, Novicio confirmed. Zoom out: The New York Post's parent company News Corp. has taken a dual approach to working with tech vendors in the AI era. * While it's brokered lucrative licensing deals with companies willing to pay for its journalism, such as OpenAI and Meta, it's also taken legal action against companies like Perplexity that it accuses of using its content without permission. What we're wtching: More newsrooms are launching AI chat interfaces to improve engagement. * The Washington Post was early in introducing an AI chatbot to its site in 2024. * Time rolled out a chatbot later that year alongside its annual Person of the Year feature. * Gannett/USA Today and The Independent have partnered with ad giant Taboola to build their own custom generative AI search engines trained on their proprietary journalism.

The Post launches Hamilton - a new way to find and understand the news

The New York Post Media Group on Tuesday launched Hamilton, a free-to-use, personalized AI tool for the company's apps -- enabling audiences to talk to The Post the same way they'd chat with a friend. Powered by Google's Gemini, Hamilton is an innovative news experience that brings The Post's unmistakable voice to the era of artificial intelligence, and it comes as the publication gets ready to celebrate its 225th anniversary this fall. The tool, which is rolling out across The New York Post and The California Post apps, combines conversational search, personalized news digests, tailored recommendations and intelligent notifications into a single reader experience. Named for Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, who famously launched The New York Post in 1801, Hamilton reflects the organization's continued commitment to serving readers as they discover and engage with journalism. "For nearly 225 years, The Post has evolved alongside the way people consume news, from print presses to smartphones and now to AI," said Sean Giancola, Chief Executive Officer of New York Post Media Group. "Hamilton is the next evolution of that journey, creating a more personalized and conversational way for readers to discover, understand and engage with our journalism. It puts a personalized Post newsroom in your pocket, helping readers get to the stories they care about faster, go deeper on the topics they're following and discover more of the journalism that keeps them coming back every day." The app will now include an AI-powered, citation-backed conversational search experience that will transform Post reporting into an interactive dialogue. Readers can ask questions, explore developing stories through personalized follow-up prompts and instantly access sourced answers and related coverage from across The Post's newsroom. The app will also include Post Express, an AI-powered news briefing that delivers personalized digests throughout the day based on each reader's interests. Additionally, the app uses a personalized discovery engine that continuously learns from reader interests and behavior to surface the stories, topics and conversations most relevant to them. The app upgrade also highlights the voices and opinions that make the Post, the Post. With a feature called Post Voices, readers can swipe through cards that shout out the best one-liners from the columnists and contributors they read most. Overall, Hamilton -- which comes hot on the heels of the successful 2025 launch of The California Post -- will make no two app experiences alike. "Readers don't want more noise, they want more relevance and The Post has always been at its best when it meets readers where they are," said Keith Poole, editor-in-chief of New York Post Media Group. "Today, that means building experiences that help audiences discover, understand and engage with our journalism in entirely new ways," he added. "Hamilton allows readers to explore stories through conversation, creating a smarter and more intuitive way to navigate the news while maintaining the rigorous reporting, editorial judgment and unmistakable Post voice that set our journalism apart." According to Ariscielle Novicio, Chief Technology Officer of New York Post Media Group, "Hamilton is the result of rethinking how a modern news experience should work." "Working with Google Cloud and leveraging Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, we built a platform that can understand reader interests, personalize experiences in real time and create more intuitive ways to discover journalism. Our goal wasn't simply to add AI features. It was to make The Post smarter, more engaging and more relevant for every individual reader," Novicio added. With secure-by-design infrastructure, Hamilton is empowering The Post and its sister sites to keep pace with a non-stop, 24/7 newsroom. "New York Post Media Group is setting a new blueprint for global publishing by proving how news brands can leverage AI to deliver deeply personalized experiences that keep reader privacy and control at the center," said Michael Clark, president of North America, Google Cloud.