01 · What happened
New York City’s MyCity chatbot, announced in October 2023 and built on Microsoft’s Azure AI services, was meant to answer business owners’ questions. The Markup reported on 29 March 2024 that it gave answers contradicting city law: that employers could take a cut of workers’ tips, that landlords did not have to accept housing vouchers, that restaurants could go cash-free.
02 · Reported cause
The reporting documents the wrong answers, not their technical cause. The city said it would keep upgrading the tool and that it had already given thousands of people accurate answers. A small notice said the bot “may occasionally produce incorrect, harmful or biased content”.
03 · What they changed
It stayed online with the notice. On 30 January 2026 the new mayor announced he would shut it down, calling it “functionally unusable”. It was offline by 4 February 2026.
04 · Sources
Facts on this page are limited to what these sources report. Checked in September 2026.