Meet Archie, the City of Fairfield's artificial intelligence aid
FAIRFIELD — Artificial intelligence is starting to become a part of everyday life, even by helping to fix potholes among other things in the city of Fairfield.
Meet Archie, the city of Fairfield's artificial intelligence aid. Archie can be accessed by clicking on the "Let's Chat" bubble on the City of Fairfield's website.
"He's named after our famous arches that stand on Texas Street downtown," said Fairfield city communications manager Bill Way.
Way added, "Archie also integrates with that app so people can report a pothole and water leak, graffiti, broken streetlights."
To modernize its approach to helping its residents, Fairfield turned to the tech realm.
"An issue can be reported in real-time as opposed to calling staff and contacting staff and waiting for it to be filled out," Way said.
Thus, Archie came into being.
"You can speak a language and Archie can respond in up to 71 languages by providing links and information," Way said.
So how does it help? It can categorize requests, delegate responsibilities and even help non-native speakers of the area.
"Not everybody wants to go to a city website, but the familiarity of a similar language, maybe it is more inviting," Way said.
Way also said other cities are interested in Archie.
"In our local networking groups," he said. "They do have questions about Archie and they do inquire about information, so it's nice to get the good feedback."
The City of Fairfield is inviting its residents to try and stump Archie so that it can continue to learn and better serve the community.