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The Washington Post Launches AI Chatbot for Climate Questions

Author

Alicia Shapiro
July 09, 2024 • Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

A digital interface showcasing The Washington Post's new climate-focused AI chatbot called Climate Answers. The scene includes a chatbot interface with questions related to climate change like 'Should I get solar panels for my home?' and 'Where in the US are sea levels rising the fastest?' The background features The Washington Post’s logo and symbols representing climate change, the environment, and sustainable energy. The setting conveys the integration of AI technology with verified journalism to provide accurate climate-related information.

The Washington Post Launches AI Chatbot for Climate Questions

The Washington Post has introduced a new climate-focused AI chatbot named Climate Answers. This experimental tool is embedded within the outlet’s homepage, app, and articles, using the breadth of The Washington Post's climate reporting to address user queries about climate change, the environment, sustainable energy, and more. You can access it here.

Functionality of Climate Answers

Climate Answers can respond to questions like, “Should I get solar panels for my home?” or “Where in the US are sea levels rising the fastest?” by summarizing information from The Washington Post’s climate section, which dates back to its launch in 2016. The chatbot provides a summary and includes links to the original articles and relevant snippets it used for the answer.

Vineet Khosla, The Washington Post’s chief technology officer, highlighted the tool's integration with the outlet's innovative and original reporting: “Somewhere in the years and years of the data-rich reporting we have done, there is an answer buried in one of the things we have written.”

A response from The Washington Post's Climate Answers AI chatbot to the question 'How does eating meat contribute to climate change?' The response details the emissions associated with livestock farming, deforestation, and the use of fertilizers. It emphasizes the importance of consulting provided articles for verification

Image Source: WP Climate Answers

Technology Behind the Chatbot

Climate Answers is built on a large language model from OpenAI, but The Washington Post is also experimenting with AI models from Mistral and Meta’s Llama. To ensure accuracy and avoid misinformation, Khosla noted that the chatbot would not generate a response if it does not have sufficient information. “Unlike other answer services, we really are baking this into verified journalism,” Khosla explained. “If we don’t know the answer, I’d rather say ‘I don’t know’ than make up an answer.”

The Washington Post's Climate Answers tool displaying two articles related to climate change. The articles shown are titled 'Should our future food be genetically engineered?' dated May 13, 2024, with an image of agricultural workers, and 'How meat and milk companies are racing to ease your climate guilt,' dated January 22, 2024, with an image of a burger.

Image Source: WP Climate Answers

Expanding AI Use

This initiative is part of The Washington Post’s broader efforts to incorporate AI into its operations. The outlet has already implemented AI-powered summaries for some articles. While Climate Answers currently focuses on climate-related questions, there is potential for expansion to other topics. “We absolutely expect this experiment to extend and scale to everything The Washington Post does,” Khosla said.

Industry Trends

The Washington Post is not alone in leveraging AI chatbots. Earlier this year, the Financial Times began testing Ask FT, a chatbot for subscriber inquiries. Other publishers like News Corp, Axel Springer, Dotdash Meredith, and Vox Media have also engaged in licensing partnerships with OpenAI to enhance their content delivery through AI.