Financial Times is testing a chatbot based on artificial intelligence called Ask FT, which can respond to questions asked by subscribers.
Similar to AI-powered chatbots like ChatGPT, Copilot, and Gemini, users can expect to receive a coherent response in natural language to any question they want to know.
The intelligent chatbot Ask FT relies on data published in the Financial Times over the years rather than ambiguous or legally constrained data.
When asked about Microsoft’s AI product manager, it provided an updated answer and referenced the news that circulated this week about the appointment of Mustafa Suleiman, the former DeepMind employee, as the head of the new AI team at Microsoft.
The robot stated, “Mustafa Suleiman currently manages the AI department and its consumer-focused products at Microsoft as the head of this department in the company, reporting directly to Satya Nadella. Suleiman came from Inflection AI to expand Microsoft’s focus on developing generative AI for personal consumer use.”
The robot provided answers consistent with the Financial Times articles from which the information was obtained, mentioning those articles at the bottom of the response, along with the timeframe in which those articles were written.
Hundreds of subscribers who subscribe to the FT Professional service tailored to professionals and institutions can access the chatbot.
Currently, Ask FT relies on the large linguistic model Claude developed by Anthropic. Ask FT can provide answers to questions about current events, such as the amount of funding Intel received from the US government under the CHIPS Act, as well as broad queries, like the impact of cryptocurrencies on the environment.
The chatbot gathers Financial Times records and summarizes information relevant to the references. Ask FT also answers questions that require research in the Financial Times archive.
The newspaper mentioned, “We conducted a full set of internal tests and used them to improve model guidance and build programming instructions, monitoring every question and its answer in this initial group of 500 individuals, as well as user comments.”
Only a few subscribers will be able to experience the AI-powered chatbot, as Ask FT is currently in a trial phase, with Financial Times continuing to test and evaluate it.
