Amid Population Decline, Japanese City Turns To ChatGPT To Help Run The Government

ChatGPT has been making headlines since its debut. It has been used to complete assignments, write wedding vows and even compose rousing sermons for pastors and rabbis. Now, a Japanese city is also turning to the AI chatbot in a bid to see if the tool is worth all the hype. 

According to CNN, the city of Yokosuka in Kanagawa Prefecture announced this week that it will begin a one-month trial allowing each of its 4,000 municipal employees to use ChatGPT for administrative tasks. Citing a news release the outlet reported that all employees could use the AI chatbot to "summerise sentences, check spelling errors and create ideas".

"With the population decreasing, the number of employees is limited. However, there are many administrative challenges," Takayuki Samukawa, a public relations representative for Yokosuka's digital management department, told The Japan Times. 

"So we aim to use useful ICT [Information Communication Technology] tools, like ChatGPT, to free up human resources for things that can only be done in a person-to-person format," Mr Samukawa added. 

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Mr Samukawa also went on to say that the city plans to use the chatbot during its trial for tasks like summarising and drafting documents and developing copy for marketing and communications. 

While Yokosuka is the first city to give ChatGPT a chance, not every government has been as welcoming to the AI chatbot. Earlier this month, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT over data privacy concerns, becoming the first Western country to take such action against the popular artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot. 

The country's Data Protection Authority said US firm OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, had no legal basis to justify "the mass collection and storage of personal data for the purpose of 'training' the algorithms underlying the operation of the platform".