Watson Assistant for Citizens Will Provide Responses to COVID-19 Questions

With COVID-19 affecting the world, IBM is helping government agencies, healthcare organizations and academic institutions use AI to put critical data and information into the hands of their citizens. With a flood of information requests from citizens, wait times in many areas to receive answers can exceed two hours.

Available for no charge for at least 90 days and available to our client's citizens online or by phone, IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens on the IBM public cloud brings together Watson Assistant, Natural Language Processing capabilities from IBM Research, and enterprise AI search capabilities with Watson Discovery, to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19.

"While helping government agencies and healthcare institutions use AI to get critical information out to their citizens remains a high priority right now, the current environment has made it clear that every business in every industry should find ways to digitally engage with their clients and employees," said Rob Thomas, general manager, IBM Data & AI.

"With today's news, IBM is taking years of experience in helping thousands of global businesses and institutions use Natural Language Processing and other advanced AI technologies to better meet the demands of their constituents, and now applying it to the COVID-19 crisis. AI has the power to be your assistant during this uncertain time," added Thomas.

Watson Assistant for Citizens leverages currently available data from external sources, including guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention and local sources such as links to school closings, news and documents on a state website. IBM already is delivering this service across the United States, as well as engaging with organizations globally in Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK and more.

Using information provided by clients, Watson Assistant for Citizens automates responses to frequently asked questions about COVID-19 that come in via phone call or text, such as "What are symptoms?", "How do I clean my home properly?" and "How do I protect myself?" State and local government agencies, hospitals or other healthcare organizations can choose to customize the solution to address questions specific to their area or region, including "What are cases in my neighborhood?", "How long are schools shut down?" and "Where can I get tested?

IBM is offering Watson Assistant for Citizens for no charge for at least 90 days and will assist with initial set up, which can typically be done in a few days. The initial solution is available in English and Spanish and can be tailored to 13 languages. The offer includes access to 15 pre-trained COVID-19 "intents" or queries. "Intents" are purposes or goals that are expressed in a customer's input, such as answering a question. By recognizing the intent expressed in a customer's input, the Watson Assistant service can choose the correct dialog flow for responding to it.