The sharing of unverified information and conflicting reports about COVID-19 in Chennai prompted Shaamil Karim to think about how verified information from the government could be made available and accessible in an easy way.
The class 12 student from Sishya, and his brother Shaaban Karim, a third-year student from BITS Pilani, Hyderabad have come up with a Chatbot for the Greater Chennai Corporation’s social media pages to help create awareness and address some frequently asked queries from residents.
“We reached out to the Greater Chennai Corporation with an idea for a Chatbot that could be made available on their social media pages and worked on this over the last two weeks. The bot has essential information ranging from helplines, updates on COVID-19 to testing centres and details about the restrictions in place,” explained Shaamil.
Shaamil and Shaaban met with officials from the GCC and worked with them towards identifying standard queries for which they could provide speedy responses.
The Chabot, which is now live on the Chennai Corporation’s Facebook page, asks users if they wish to converse in English or Tamil and then proceeds to show a selection menu with options regarding the information they need.
“A resident who is looking for information regarding the latest announcements by the GCC about restrictions, the procedure to apply for travel passes or even to find out where the testing centre nearest to them is can make use of the information the Chatbot provides,” he said.
Ever since the lockdown began, the Corporation has been actively using social media to inform and address concerns of the residents online. “We get hundreds of queries on a daily basis and several queries are usually about information that we have already put out on our social media handles or on our website. The Chatbot effectively collates this information and will be faster in providing this to social media users,” said a senior official from the Corporation’s social media team.
As a next step, Shaamil and Shaaban said that they are looking to make the Chatbot available for Twitter and telegram as well.
