AI chatbot Sam answers users’ questions on scams and frauds

• In February 2019, the AI chatbot named ‘Sam’ was launched on three USA.gov webpages.
• The chatbot helps users in addressing their questions related to scams and frauds.

USA.gov, the official online portal of the U.S federal government, has launched an artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot named ‘Sam’ that is capable of answering users’ questions on scams and frauds.

The big picture

USAGov in a blog post stated that they contacted 32 people via contact center and Facebook and learned their experiences with scams. The USAGov team then conducted two workshops to make these conversations actionable.

“We spoke to 32 people, who shared their experiences with scams. They didn’t just tell the facts about reporting the scam. They also spoke about their emotions and motivating factors for reporting,” the blog read.

The first workshop

• In the first workshop, the team collected noteworthy comments from the 32 individuals and noted them on sticky notes.
• They then grouped similar comments together and identified the top three concerns:

• Identifying the right place to report a scam,
• Identifying if something was a scam, and
• Identifying out how to recover the lost money.

The second workshop

• In the second workshop, the team outlined ideas to address the above-mentioned top three concerns.
• After which, the idea of AI-powered chatbot that helps users in addressing their questions related to scams was formulated.

Worth noting

• In February 2019, the AI chatbot named ‘Sam’ was launched on three USA.gov webpages.
• In over a month the ‘Sam’ had over 4,000 users, and 78% users have successfully asked their question and gotten an answer.