{"id":565718,"date":"2026-02-04T13:17:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:17:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/565718\/"},"modified":"2026-02-04T13:17:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-04T13:17:10","slug":"nycs-new-mayor-is-killing-the-citys-faulty-sketchy-chatbot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/565718\/","title":{"rendered":"NYC&#8217;s New Mayor Is Killing the City&#8217;s Faulty, Sketchy Chatbot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>New York City\u2019s previous mayor, Eric Adams, commissioned a (<a href=\"https:\/\/abc7ny.com\/post\/ai-artificial-intelligence-eric-adams-nyc\/13922640\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">reportedly<\/a>) $600,000 chatbot for business owners that was found to provide inaccurate and downright illegal information.<\/p>\n<p>The swift banishment of the chatbot was part of an effort to save money to shore up the city\u2019s budget. Even if it saved zero dollars, though, it seems like a public service to just get rid of the thing.<\/p>\n<p>Farewell, NYC chatbot<\/p>\n<p>Underpinned by Microsoft\u2019s Azure AI system, Adams\u2019 administration rolled out the chatbot in 2023 and almost immediately found itself a magnet for criticism over wasted funds and passing out downright misinformation.<\/p>\n<p>An <a href=\"https:\/\/themarkup.org\/artificial-intelligence\/2024\/03\/29\/nycs-ai-chatbot-tells-businesses-to-break-the-law\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">investigation<\/a> by The Markup and The City found that the chatbot was advising landlords on how to discriminate against Section 8 housing tenants and telling business owners that they\u2019re legally allowed to skim tips off their employees.<\/p>\n<p>Zohran Mamdani, who took office as New York City\u2019s mayor on January 1, 2026, quickly killed the \u2018bot, named MyCity Chatbot. \u201cThe previous administration had an AI chatbot that was functionally unusable. It was costing the administration around half a million dollars,\u201d he said at a January 28, 2026, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/mayors-office\/news\/2026\/01\/mayor-mamdani-details--adams-budget-crisis-\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">press conference<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat, in and of itself, is not something that can bridge this kind of a gap, but it\u2019s an indication of the ways in which money has been spent while refusing to account for the actual costs of what these programs are.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This is one example of government working quickly, as the MyCity Chatbot is officially no more. Whereas once you could access the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\/main\/error\/chatbot-maintenance\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">chatbot here<\/a>, now the page leads only to a message that reads, \u201cThe Chatbot beta test has ended. Please go to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyc.gov\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">NYC.gov<\/a> to find NYC government information. It serves as the primary online portal for residents, businesses, and visitors to access city services, information, and agency resources.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New York City\u2019s previous mayor, Eric Adams, commissioned a (reportedly) $600,000 chatbot for business owners that was found&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":565719,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[691,24995,5229,738,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,242,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":["post-565718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-ai","tag-ai-chatbots","tag-america","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-tech","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116012558023943970","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565718","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=565718"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/565718\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/565719"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=565718"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=565718"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=565718"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}