The Financial Times has developed a new AI chatbot called Ask FT, which utilizes decades of the outlet’s published information to provide natural language answers to subscriber questions. The chatbot, available to a few hundred paid subscribers in the FT Professional tier, is powered by Claude, a large language model developed by Anthropic. It can offer responses to a wide range of queries, from current events to historical topics, and provides citations for the information it retrieves from the FT’s archives. Despite its potential, the tool has shown some inconsistencies, such as including outdated information in its responses. The FT is actively refining the chatbot based on internal testing and user feedback, with plans to track every question and response from the initial group of 500 users. While the chatbot is still in beta, the FT aims to ensure its accuracy and usefulness before making it more widely available. The FT’s chief product officer emphasizes the importance of smart evolution and avoiding mere novelty in adopting new technologies, highlighting the outlet’s commitment to meeting evolving needs while maintaining quality and relevance.
