Chatbot helps Flemish voters make a decision for the upcoming elections

The aim of the smart device is to present information without political colouring

Regeringsrobot (Government Robot) is the name of a new chatbot available for free to Flemish residents. It’s an AI model that has been trained to answer questions about the work done by the regional government since it stepped into power in 2019.

The aim of the smart tool is to aid citizens in their decision-making process before they head out to the election booth on 9 June. The chatbot has been data-fed with all the documents issued by the regional government in the past five years and can thus give unbiased answers to questions about what the authorities have achieved.

What’s more, Regeringsbot can objectively place the work done by pitting the results against the pledges made by the government when the coalition agreement was signed. The conclusions are then left to human discretion to draw.

Impartial look at political work

The chatbot was created by a Leuven-based technology company called Data Minded.

When a user asks the robot a question about a topic, it looks up the government decisions that are most related to that topic, and briefly summarises the decisions using a Large Language Model such as OpenAI’s GPT-4,” said Kris Peeters, CEO of Data Minded, quoted by Belga news agency.

The tech company also explained that the robot has been programmed to add a source reference to the original documents. This means that users can always verify the answers themselves in case they have doubts.

The documents cover a wider range of topics, which have been categorized on the chatbot website. These include documents relating to things like Brussels, animal welfare, economy, climate, justice and education.

The chatbot, however, only speaks Flemish since this is the official language of the autonomous region of Flanders and all the documents are issued in that language.