Time Inc. Launches AI Chatbot for Person of the Year Coverage

Time Inc. unveils new AI chatbot

Why it matters: By debuting the bot with one of its most popular stories of the year, Time Inc. will be able to gather chatbot engagement data from millions of global readers at once. State of play: The Time AI chatbot allows users to ask questions about the story, summarize it into digestible bits of different lengths, translate the text into different languages, or play audio versions of the copy. How it works: The chatbot answers questions based on Time Inc. editorial content and general knowledge embedded in the large language model (LLM) the chatbot is built on. Zoom in: Time Inc. hired Scale AI, a company that builds enterprise AI tools, to help create the chatbot. Zoom out: In the future, Time Inc. hopes to bring the tool to more stories and functions across its entire website, making its journalism more accessible globally, Time Inc. chief operating officer Mark Howard told Axios. At launch, the chatbot includes no advertising, but in the future it could become part of a sponsorship package offering. The big picture: Several newsrooms have begun experimenting with building AI chatbots, but they haven't had as much visibility as Time Inc.'s Person of the Year feature is likely to drive. What to watch: Time Inc. plans to start deploying the chatbot to more content across its website in early 2025, Howard said.

About TIME's AI Chatbot

Person of the Year is one of our most enduring franchises. Every year, we aim to name a Person of the Year -- the person, group, or concept that had the most influence on the world during the previous 12 months. With this year's release, we wanted to do something that reflected a recent change in how we interact with information and news. Our goal was to create an AI chatbot specifically designed to answer questions about TIME's Person of the Year -- past or present -- based on a curated body of verified TIME articles, other trusted sources, and the bot's built-in general knowledge. This chatbot is tailored to provide focused, reliable, and accurate responses while maintaining a safe and professional tone. It is engineered to prevent users from steering the conversation toward unrelated, controversial, or potentially biased topics. TIME's AI chatbot represents a significant step forward in using AI to enhance journalism. With its guardrails and focused content retrieval, the chatbot aims to deliver a safe, accurate, and engaging experience for readers. This tool exemplifies how innovation can support and amplify trusted reporting. Here's a closer look at how it works. What is TIME's AI chatbot? It's an interactive tool designed to help readers explore TIME's Person of the Year package. Powered by verified articles, the chatbot provides accurate, in-depth information about past and present Persons of the Year. Unlike general AI tools, it's purpose-built for meaningful, focused conversations about a single aspect of TIME's journalism. It combines accuracy, depth, and interactivity in a way that aligns with TIME's commitment to trustworthy reporting. By making Person of the Year coverage more interactive, the chatbot deepens reader engagement and accessibility. How do we ensure the chatbot provides accurate information? The system's responses are rooted in vetted content from TIME articles and other trusted sources, all in the service of adhering to rigorous journalistic standards. The goal is to avoid speculation and keep conversations within the scope of the chatbot's expertise. How does the chatbot handle misinformation? By limiting its source material to approved articles and sources, the chatbot minimizes the risk of spreading inaccurate or unverified information. If a question strays into controversial territory, it redirects the conversation to safer, fact-based topics. It politely shifts the conversation back to its core purpose -- exploring TIME's Person of the Year package. What kind of questions can readers ask? Readers can ask about a number of topics, including: Where does the chatbot's information come from? Its knowledge is drawn from the following: What safeguards are in place? The chatbot employs a dual-layer protection system: The chatbot system integrates several components, as illustrated below: Why use two models? A single model handling all tasks would face challenges due to prompt complexity. Large language models (LLMs) struggle to follow intricate, multi-layered instructions consistently. By dividing responsibilities between the primary chatbot and the guardrail model, the system maintains higher precision and reliability. The primary chatbot, based on the GPT 4o Mini model, is optimized to answer questions about TIME's Person of the Year based on curated content. The system prompt directs the chatbot to rely on the main article and supplementary articles when crafting its responses. In addition to TIME articles, the chatbot uses summarization and tool calling to retrieve relevant information dynamically: The guardrail model, also based on GPT 4o Mini, acts as a safety filter. Its system prompt defines the boundaries for acceptable inputs, ensuring conversations remain relevant and appropriate. For every user message, it outputs: Based on the safety score, the system either routes the input to the primary chatbot or delivers the guardrail's alternative response.