AI Assistant for City Services and Business Information
What it is for
Inform
- Provides information and access to services for NYC residents and businesses, focused on Business Services and 311 city service knowledge articles. Also covers childcare, career resources, and basic MyCity portal information.
Commerce
- Helps users with information on starting or operating a business in New York City, including permits, licenses, regulations, and other business requirements.
- Run by
- Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)
- Where
- No fixed location
- Kept
- No data retained
- Shared with
- Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
- Your copy
- You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do
What it is for
The MyCity Chatbot is an AI-powered assistant that helps New York City residents and businesses find information about city services and business requirements. It answers questions about permits, licenses, 311 services, childcare, and careers by drawing on official NYC knowledge articles. The chatbot uses Microsoft Azure AI and OpenAI's GPT-4o model, and no personally identifying information is collected from users. Note: this system was decommissioned in February 2026.
What it collects and what happens to it
Data taken in
About behaviour
Anonymized data
- Text queries entered by users on the MyCity portal. No identifying information is collected or disclosed — queries are treated as anonymous inputs.
Operational data
Anonymized data
- Official NYC Business Services content and 311 knowledge articles form the knowledge base used by the chatbot to ground its responses. Also includes basic MyCity portal information.
Processing
Language Models
- Powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o large language model hosted on Microsoft Azure AI. The model generates natural-language answers grounded in official NYC knowledge articles on Business Services and 311 topics.
Search & Retrieval
- Retrieves relevant passages from a curated index of Business Services and 311 knowledge articles to ground the language model's responses and provide references and links.
What it does
Creating (Generative AI)
Autonomous
- Uses OpenAI's GPT-4o large language model via Microsoft Azure AI to generate text responses to user queries. The system operates continuously and fully autonomously — no human reviews each response before it is delivered to the user.
Understanding (Semantic AI)
Autonomous
- Understands and matches user queries against Business Services and 311 knowledge article content to retrieve relevant context for grounding responses.
Outputs
Generated content
Anonymized data
- Text responses generated by the AI, including references and links, primarily based on Business Services and 311 knowledge article content. Responses are AI-authored and not attributed to specific city staff.
Run by
Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI)
- The Office of Technology and Innovation, Applications Department, is the NYC agency responsible for deploying and operating the MyCity Chatbot for residents and businesses.
Built by
Microsoft
- Microsoft provides the cloud-based Azure AI infrastructure and ChatGPT (GPT-4o) language model services that power the chatbot. Procured under a paid pilot arrangement.
EY
- EY is the professional services vendor supporting implementation and operations of the MyCity Chatbot.
Kept for
No data retained
- No identifying information is collected or retained from users. Anonymous text queries are processed at runtime but not stored as personal records.
- Duration: Not applicable — no identifying data retained
Shared with
Not available to me
- No identifying information is collected or disclosed. Users cannot access stored data about their sessions because no personal data is retained.
Stored
Not stated by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.
How to read the colours
Can it identify you?
- Anonymized data
- Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
- Pseudonymous data
- Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
- Identifiable data
- The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.
Who completes the loop?
- Human decides
- This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
- Human executes
- This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
- Autonomous
- This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.
Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity ChatbotOffice of Technology and Innovation, Applications Department, NYC. Year reported: 2025. Date first used: 2023/09.
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- AI registerNYC AI Use Cases Register — MyCity Chatbot
- Register entryPublished by the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation. Reference 41975730. This disclosure was drafted with AI assistance.Schema: ai@2026-05-06-beta
What you can do
Ask about this system
Questions go to the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation, not the vendor.
Your rights
- Right to Be Informed of AI UseUsers interacting with the MyCity portal are informed they are engaging with an AI-powered beta chatbot. The system is publicly labeled as AI-powered on the portal at https://chat.nyc.gov.
- Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThe NYC AI register publicly discloses that the chatbot is powered by Microsoft Azure AI and OpenAI's GPT-4o, grounded in Business Services and 311 knowledge articles. Users can review this disclosure at the NYC AI Use Cases register.
Risks and safeguards
- Societal & cultural harmthe chatbot may generate inaccurate or misleading information about city services, undermining public trust and potentially misdirecting residents seeking benefits or regulatory guidance.Safeguard: responses are grounded in official NYC knowledge articles and include references and links to authoritative sources, enabling users to verify information independently. The system is labeled as a beta product, signaling that outputs should be cross-checked.
- Loss of autonomyfully autonomous operation with no human review of individual responses means users may act on AI-generated information without realizing it could be incomplete or incorrect, limiting their ability to seek authoritative guidance.Safeguard: the chatbot provides references and links to primary NYC sources so users can access official information directly. The beta label signals the experimental nature of the system.