Texas efficiency office launches AI chatbot to help public navigate regulations, licensing
After being created just over one year ago, the Texas Regulatory Efficiency Office on Friday unveiled a website centered around an AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions about rules, licenses and permits for a variety of professions and industries.
Ask it which licenses a plumber needs, and the bot returns a detailed response (in English or Spanish) that begins by noting that it’s the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners with the authority to to issue licenses, endorsements and registrations. Next is a table outlining four levels of licensing, along with their associated exam and registration fees. It concludes by providing a phone number and web address for the plumbing board, and warns that “this is informational only — not legal advice. Verify details with TSBPE or a licensed attorney.”
The shape of the chatbot’s thorough output will be familiar to anyone who’s used commercial chatbots like ChatGPT or Claude, but, as with other government chatbots, its designers at the state efficiency office, and the Austin firm Vulcan Technologies, have taken measures to limit its knowledge and possible range of responses. Repeated attempts to get the bot off track, such as by suggesting illegal occupations or requesting knock-knock jokes about licensing, were each deftly rebuffed: “That’s a vivid picture, but I’m better suited for navigating regulatory codes than telling jokes around a campfire.”
State officials have framed the project as a natural extension of the efficiency mandate assigned to the office upon its creation in the spring of last year. Greg Abbott, the state’s governor, last year explained that the new office, which had been granted by the legislature $22.8 million over five years to spot rules impeding the state’s operations, would “put a check on the growth of the administrative state in Texas.” Born out of a Texas House committee called Delivery of Government Efficiency, the office was partially modeled after the federal reduction efforts led by Elon Musk. A 2024 report out of George Mason University ranks Texas as the nation’s fifth-most regulated state, after only California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
In Friday’s press release, Abbott explained that the new website “saves time, reduces confusion, and makes information readily accessible right when you need it.” Jerome Greener, a former executive of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, who now directs the efficiency office, said the website will allow the state to “move at the speed of business and build on Governor Abbott’s vision of the Texas of tomorrow.” Separate from the chatbot, the release notes, the office has so far identified “more than 435 regulations” that can be amended or repealed, which would reduce the state’s administrative code by 69,000 words and save taxpayers $123 million. A running tally, along with citations, is chronicled on the new website.
Despite their warnings and disclosures, government chatbots have at times faced withering criticism for their shortcomings. A New York City chatbot launched in 2024 by then-Mayor Eric Adams sometimes provided erroneous information on a wide range of topics, including funeral home pricing, running cashless stores and requirements for landlords on accepting government vouchers. The Adams administration was criticized again when it left the chatbot online, even after the bot’s many mistakes were pointed out. One analyst told this publication that the decision was “inexcusable” and pointed out that the nebulous nature of misinformation made the true extent of its harms hard to quantify.
Before using Texas’ chatbot for the first time, users are presented with an AI disclosure notice that explains they’re not interacting with a live person and that, because any information entered may be subject to public records laws, they shouldn’t enter any sensitive personal information. A more detailed rundown of the chatbot’s specifications explains that SAM (the chatbot’s name, short for State Administration Manager) “is intended for general regulatory navigation and self-help information, not for collecting private user information.” As for accuracy, the site says SAM was “evaluated against representative regulatory questions prior to deployment for accuracy, citation fidelity, and refusal behavior.”
In a podcast interview with the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Greener, the office’s director, explained the Vulcan AI chatbot ingested “all of the state’s statutes”: “It’s pulling from fact. If it can’t fill in the gaps with everything on this primary database, it will partner with those generative AIs, your Google Gemini, your Claude, ChatGPT, etc. and” draw on the strength of each. “As an agent it’s almost like a project manager, saying I want this piece and this piece and this piece, in order to get the best, most accurate and comprehensive answer to the user.”
For a question that’s “too complex,” he continued, the agent can clone itself “an infinite amount of times.” During one stress test, he said, the state observed 25,000 agents working concurrently for a highly complex question testers had contrived. But the number Greener said he was most interested in was “15 seconds,” the amount of time it takes for the chatbot to answer an important question like, “How do I become an electrician?” Though it’s much faster than the hours previously required to look up all the licensing and regulatory information manually, Greener said he’s not yet satisfied: “We’re trying to get that number down.”
