Frequently asked questions

Participants take part through a written conversation in their web browser. The tool asks your questions, follows up on their answers, and records a full transcript for your organisation to analyse. It can run many interviews at the same time, so you can hear from more people, in more depth, whenever is convenient for them.

A survey asks everyone the same fixed questions. The Civic AI Interviewer asks follow-up and clarifying questions based on what each person says, so you learn the reasons, feelings and motivations behind their answers.

No. It's designed to support human qualitative research, not replace it. Most civil society organisations can't afford regular in-depth interviews with the people they work with, so the tool gives them a new capacity rather than taking work away from people. Your team still decides what to ask and makes sense of what people say. The chatbot interface deliberately does not create the illusion that the interviewer is a real person.

Built from original research by LSE and running prototypes with Instituto Fogo Cruzado and Better Justice, the Civic AI Interviewer was developed with funding and support from King's College London. During the development period Pembroke House, The Other MA, and London Play trialled it with their own communities, helping to shape and test the tool for civil society.

Organisations such as campaign groups, charities, community projects, funders, NGOs, think tanks, or trade unions.

Future Narratives Lab (opens in a new tab), a nonprofit research and development institute based in the UK that aims to build the collective power of civil society. We are a workers’ cooperative run as a community interest company, not a venture-backed startup. Find out more about us at https://www.futurenarrativeslab.org (opens in a new tab)

The Civic AI Interviewer is being offered on a nonprofit basis to organisations that will use it to generate insights to support their missions, not for private gain. The tool serves civil society's evidence needs, not engagement metrics or data resale. The nominal fee charged to use the tool helps to cover delivery costs, and we are exploring funding avenues to widen access.

AI uses energy and water, and we take that seriously. The tool runs on Hetzner servers in Germany and Finland powered by renewable energy, and Mistral's data centres in France run on low-carbon, largely renewable power. We aim to keep our technical setup as ecologically efficient as we can, and we'll keep reviewing it as the project develops.

The tool runs on servers in the EU subject to GDPR. We chose Hetzner for our server and Mistral for our AI model on purpose: to keep data in Europe and away from big US tech platforms.

No. We use Mistral's paid service with model training switched off, so your interviews are not used to train AI models. Mistral has also approved Zero Data Retention for our account, so it doesn't keep the content of interviews after processing them. Interview transcripts are stored only on our own EU server.

It is being offered on a nonprofit basis, where we come up with solutions to the various ongoing ethical challenges thrown up by the way artificial intelligence technology has been developed.

Community groups, NGOs, trade unions, funders and campaigners: organisations that want to hear from their communities, members, staff or stakeholders in more depth than a survey allows. We're working with 10 organisations in this pilot.

• Up to 30 interviews, each up to 30 minutes long.
• Support from our team, including help designing your interview questions, setting up and testing your interview, and support while it's running.
• Your full interview transcripts at the end.

• The participants. You invite your own people, and we give you a link and invitation wording to send them.
• Some capacity to work on the interview questions and to test the interview before it goes live.
• Ability to analyse the results. The pilot gives you the transcripts; analysing them is up to you.

Fees depend on your organisation's annual turnover:

• Grassroots (under £100k turnover): £100
• Medium (£100k–£1m): £500
• Large (£1m+): £1,000

Most projects take between 2 and 8 weeks. We agree an end date with you at the start.

Up to 30 minutes, but in our experience 15 to 20 minutes works best. More participants finish shorter interviews.

Up to 30 people, and in our experience 20 is ideal, with no fewer than 5.

We delete all transcripts 2 months after your project closes. Please download your copy before then.

They open a link on a phone or computer, read a short introduction and answer questions by typing. Nothing needs to be downloaded. They can ask for shorter or simpler questions, or finish early, at any point.

Participants don't need to give their name, and we don't collect contact details. We'd advise participants not to include identifying details in their answers.

Yes, at any point during the interview. If a participant uses the Quit button or closes the window before finishing, their answers aren't included in your results. Once an interview is finished, it can't be removed, because it's anonymous and we can't tell which transcript belongs to whom.

Yes. As well as English, interviews can run in Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Italian or Polish.

Fill in the pilot application form on our main page. We'll get in touch to arrange a short intro call.