The Washington Post Launches "Ask The Post AI": A New Era in AI-Powered News Interaction

The Washington Post has an AI newsboy to answer all your questions

Like an interactive AI news anchor for Washington Post reporting The Washington Post has unveiled a new AI chatbot called "Ask The Post AI," which aims to answer user questions accurately by relying on the newspaper's content. The new AI chatbot follows the Climate Answers chatbot, which the publication released earlier this year. Unlike the climate journalism-focused Climate Answers, Ask the Post culls its answers from anything published since 2016. The AI uses algorithmic ranking to match answers to questions and ensure they are relevant. Like Climate Answers, the new AI chatbot enforces strict guardrails on how it responds. If there aren't any articles it defines as worth citing, it won't answer the question at all. That way, it avoids any compulsion by the AI to hallucinate or provide wrong answers. The AI will just say it can't answer at all. "This is the next chapter in building habits for our next generation of users," Washington Post chief technology officer Vineet Khosla explained in a blog post. "The changed search experience across the industry calls for us to meet the moment and meet audiences how, when and where they want to be served with an updated user experience." "Ask The Post AI" arrives as The Washington Post has seen an uptick in interest from readers on its post-2016 coverage. The heightened reader engagement combined with new AI tools might serve to draw in and keep new readers as well. Along with Climate Answers, The Washington Post has been testing several other AI tools, including AI-generated audio recordings of news articles and AI-written summaries of articles. There's an obvious appeal for streamlined information access that supplies reliable answers without long research in the archives. Similar tools will likely crop up at the intersection of AI and news media elsewhere. For instance, Meta and Reuters have partnered to supply Meta AI with information from Reuters articles.

The Washington Post's AI bot answers your questions now - no subscription required

'Ask The Post AI' delivers conversational responses, cites its sources, and, the newspaper says, is not vulnerable to hallucinating. When generative AI is discussed in relation to newsrooms, one typically thinks of the negatives, such as lawsuits or related issues with copyright, model training, or the threat of replacing reporters. However, some publications are embracing the technology, including The Washington Post, which launched its generative AI tool to optimize users' content consumption. Last week, The Washington Post debuted an experimental generative AI tool called "Ask The Post AI," which allows users to get conversational answers on any topic referenced in text news articles published by the newspaper since 2016. The publication refers to the tools as an initiative "built by news for news." Also: I changed 5 ChatGPT settings and instantly became more productive - here's how The bot displays the results in order of relevant reporting; if none exist, it won't populate anything. Then, a large language model will write a response to answer the question, although sometimes the answer may be pre-written. "The changed search experience across the industry calls for us to meet the moment and meet audiences how, when, and where they want to be served with an updated user experience," said Vineet Khosla, CTO for The Washington Post. In the new feature's FAQ section, The Post also explains that it has minimized the risk of hallucinations by training the AI exclusively on its own articles. Yet, the publication encourages users to cross-reference answers with the articles linked. To get started, visit the site and ask any question, whether news-related or more general, such as "How can I stop junk mail?" Click on one of the pre-populated questions or type in your own question to test it out. I asked, "What is the most populated city in the United States?" The results populated quickly, with two articles referenced, as well as a concise, conversational response that read, "The most populated city in the United States is New York City, with more than 8 million people." Neither the FAQ nor the announcement specifies who can access the tool; however, I was able to get the same results whether or not I was signed into my subscription. I could not click on the articles and read them without a subscription, which makes verifying the answer more challenging.