Adaptive interview demo

  1. What do you think of using AI to carry out qualitative research like interviews?

  2. It's intriguing, but I have quite a few concerns, especially about the ethics and impact of AI use.

  3. Adaptive follow-up

  4. What are your main concerns about the ethics and impact of using AI?

  5. I worry about data privacy, and about the energy and environmental impact of data centres. And I don’t trust the AI companies.

  6. Adaptive follow-up

  7. Would you consider a tool that had strong data privacy, used only low-carbon energy, and avoided the major AI companies?

  8. Interesting… I’d certainly be willing to have a look

The Civic AI Interviewer is designed to support civil society to better understand and serve our communities

A nonprofit research tool built to prioritise ethical & environmental responsibility over private profit, and to enhance rather than replace human research

Try an interview yourself

What the Civic AI Interviewer allows

Using a conversational chat interface, it carries out in-depth qualitative interviews for you. The Civic AI Interviewer is briefed and customised to your specific aims. Then each interview adapts to the responses, with follow-up and clarifying questions.

  • Get insights for more powerful communications

    Go beyond surveys and polling to gain in-depth insights into the reasoning, motivations, beliefs and feelings of your audience, to inform creative design.

  • Acquire deeper evidence of impact

    Enhance your evaluation processes by quickly acquiring in-depth testimonials and proof of impact for funders and public audiences.

  • Gather perspectives for strategy development

    Ensure all relevant stakeholders are consulted in an efficient and comprehensive way, allowing for alignment on clear strategic decisions.

A nonprofit tool, built by & for civil society

The Civic AI Interviewer currently uses an EU-based LLM that is aligned with stronger data protection and privacy laws, and runs on low-carbon energy. Our AI provider, Mistral, doesn't train its models on your interviews, and under Zero Data Retention it doesn't store their content either. As the project develops, we have plans to further tackle the many ethical considerations of AI use today.

  • Democratically Owned & Controlled

    Future Narratives Lab is a nonprofit research and development institute, not a venture-backed startup. The tool we’ve developed serves civil society's evidence needs, not engagement metrics or data resale, and gives people new capacities instead of displacing them.

  • Hosted in Europe

    Every conversation runs on Mistral's models and EU-based infrastructure — GDPR-native by default, with nothing routed through US commercial AI systems.

  • Powered by Low-Carbon Energy

    Mistral's European data centres run on low-carbon, largely renewable power. We aim to make our technical infrastructure always as ecologically efficient as possible.

Why civil society needs its own tools

Future Narratives Lab is a non-profit research & development institute based in the UK that aims to build the collective power of civil society. We developed this AI-moderated interview tool because we saw there was the possibility to give civil society organisations with limited resources access to a previously impossible capability: regular, in-depth insights into their communities and beneficiaries.

From the start, our main goals were threefold:

  1. To give civil society organisations with limited resources access to regular in depth consultation with their communities.
  2. To support and enhance human qualitative interviewing, which has irreplaceable value.
  3. To find ways to use AI capabilities for the benefit of society, while directly tackling the ethical and environmental challenges it brings.

Commercial versions of this technology are available, but the costs can be prohibitive, too little attention is paid to the ethical dimensions of AI use, and to the needs and values of civil society groups. Overall we want to create a different way of doing AI - non-profit, democratic, and directly confronting costs and 'externalities'. This will be an ongoing challenge, and we welcome thoughts and suggestions.

Our advisors

Apply To Join Our Community Pilot

We're opening limited access to the Civic AI Interviewer to 10 selected civil society organisations for trial use. Fees are on a sliding scale based on annual turnover, with all tiers including up to 30 interviews of up to 30 minutes each. Our aim with this pricing structure is to enable 2-3 grassroots organisations with fewer resources to participate in the Pilot.

Who can apply

  • Non-profit, civil society organisations
  • You have access to interviewees and can get them to participate
  • You are able to analyse the raw transcript data yourself.

  • Grassroots

    under £100k p/a turnover

    £100

    one-off pilot fee

  • Medium

    £100k–£1m p/a turnover

    £500

    one-off pilot fee

  • Large

    £1m+ p/a turnover

    £1,000

    one-off pilot fee

Yes, if you don't meet all the criteria above, want to explore using the Civic AI Interviewer outside of this timeframe, at a larger scale, or need additional support, such as developing a brief, recruiting participants, or analysing interview data, we'd still love to hear from you.

Contact us at civic-ai-interviewer@futurenarrativeslab.org

The Process

Our team will support you through this process, providing input, advice and guidance.

  1. You create an interview brief with our guidance
  2. We finalise & test the brief and provide an interview link
  3. You share with your interviewees, and we gather the responses

Tell us about your organisation

We aim to reply to applicants within one working day from receipt.

Contact & organisation details
Eligibility & fit check
Interviewee access
Data Analysis Capacity
Tier & capacity selection
Intended pilot tier

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