What Sandy Springs' AI assistant deliberately doesn't do

Sandy Springs, Georgia launched an AI assistant this summer, and the smartest thing about it might be what it doesn't do.

It doesn't search the open web — it answers only from content the city has approved.

It didn't launch trying to do everything — it started with community events and earned its way into permits and trash service as the content held up. And it doesn't keep chat logs, names, or IP addresses. Staff see a summary of what residents needed, nothing more.

The detail we keep thinking about: the city scores each conversation for confusion and resolution, which quietly doubles as a map of where its own content could work harder. When residents kept arriving at the city site looking for a benevolent fund that lives somewhere else entirely, staff didn't rebuild a page. They taught the assistant where to point people. Fixed in an afternoon.

If your city is weighing a resident-facing assistant, this is the pattern worth borrowing. Accuracy is a content question wearing a technology costume — narrow the scope, own the source, and residents get answers they can trust.

Source: Government Technology