Experimental Research Tools: The Washington Post Launches “Ask The Post AI”
From The Washington Post:
Today, The Washington Post debuted “Ask The Post AI” a generative AI tool leveraging the publication’s deeply-sourced, fact-based journalism to deliver summary answers and curated results directly to users.
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The experimental tool leverages news articles published by The Washington Post’s award-winning newsroom since 2016, ranking the results based on relevancy. To uphold the integrity of the reporting, a threshold for scoring relevant reporting for any given question has been set (i.e. if the tool doesn’t readily find a relevant article – even if one is published – an answer won’t be served).
Learn More, Read the Complete Launch Announcement
Direct to Ask The Post AI
From the Ask The Post AI FAQ
How do you prevent “hallucination” or mistakes?
Ask The Post AI may not always function exactly as we hope — which is why we are asking you to confirm the results with the published articles. That said, by limiting the search results to our published work, we are ensuring that every piece of information synthesized by the AI is based on work previously published by The Washington Post newsroom. Second, if the tool doesn’t readily find sufficient reporting to provide a response, it won’t serve a reply.
Still, no generative AI experience can entirely eliminate or prevent the risk of mistakes or “hallucination,” a technical term that refers to the AI misinterpreting the underlying texts upon which it is basing responses. We will work to continuously improve this product.
Read the Complete FAQ
Filed under: Awards, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.