Board probes AI chatbot plan for venicegov.com; vendor says agent will be 'grounded' to city content

Board members raised questions about the role and safety of an optional AI agent proposed for the redesigned city website. Dr. Davis asked whether the city would train or control the AI and how citizens should be informed about AI use. Granicus representatives said AI would be optional for visitors and would be explicitly grounded to Venice’s site content to avoid drawing answers from other jurisdictions.

“As an important thing about AI, AI can answer from anywhere in the world, or we can ground the AI… And we're gonna ground the AI to our website,” a Granicus representative said, stressing that the product would be trained on content provided by the city and supplemented by some staff-curated FAQs. The vendor also described a separate user-acceptance testing track for the AI so the board and staff can evaluate responses before public launch.

Board members sought clarity on how frequently the AI component is requested by other cities and whether the city would provide prewritten answers for common questions; Granicus said AI interest is high among municipal customers and that staff-driven FAQs would be part of the system to reduce risk. The board discussed offering both the AI agent and traditional search/FAQ paths so users could choose their preferred method of finding information.