Why does the City of Helsinki use AI?
AI helps make our services more convenient for you.
Reasons we use AI include:
- to provide you with the answers you need faster;
- to make it easier for you to find the right service;
- to provide you with advice in your own native language;
- to allow you to access services even in the evenings and at weekends;
- to make services run more smoothly, even at peak times.
We identify, evaluate and supervise all uses of AI and only use AI for purposes that are permitted by law and that we have evaluated as being responsible.
The City’s decisions are always subject to liability for acts in office, even if their preparation is assisted by automation or AI.
How AI features in your everyday life in Helsinki
You may come across AI in the City’s digital services and chatbots or in automatically translated advice videos, for example.
City employees whom you interact with may also use AI to search for suitable services for you or to prepare for a meeting with you, for example.
The City is also currently running several AI pilots across various services.
If we use AI in a way that affects the handling of your matters or involves the processing of your personal data, we will inform you of our use of AI.
The City monitors the benefits and costs
The use of AI incurs costs, just like other digital services.
These costs arise from the development, deployment and maintenance of systems, as well as from information security and the supervision of AI operations, for example.
The City monitors these costs and continuously evaluates the benefits provided by AI solutions.
Our aim is to use AI when doing so provides benefits to the City and its residents. For example, AI can save employees time and help them focus their efforts on tasks that require human input.
Where can you find information about AI systems?
You can find out about the AI systems used by the City of Helsinki in the AI Register.
There you can see, for example:
- in which services AI is used;
- who uses AI and who is affected by it;
- what each system does;
- what sort of data is used in their operations;
- who is responsible for each system and its supervision.
We always keep you informed about the use of AI
We always let you know when you are interacting with an AI system:
- when you access an application or service that uses AI, you are shown a notification explaining how AI is used in that service as soon as you access it;
- if a City employee uses AI to handle your matters, they will inform you about it.
If you access a service that operates automatically without human intervention, you can always ask to interact with a human instead.
AI does not replace humans in situations where handling a matter requires a decision or judgement made by a human being.
Use of AI in the City’s communication
Any use of AI in the City’s communications complies with our communication policy and brand and marketing strategy.
We use AI in the City’s communication to search for and organise information and to generate content, for example. The aim is to improve the accessibility, effectiveness and quality of information. The content that we publish is always verified by and the responsibility of a human being. As a general rule, we do not use AI to generate images, illustrations or videos.
If we use content generated by AI, we clearly indicate this with text or, where necessary, a watermark.
How to recognise AI-generated content produced by the City
If we use AI to generate content (text, images, illustrations, video, audio) or to support content production, we will always openly inform you about it.
We use two ways to label AI content:
- ‘Generated’ means that the content was generated entirely by AI: “This content was generated by AI”.
- ‘Modified’ means that the content was significantly edited using AI: “This content was modified using AI”.
We do not notify you separately about minor changes made by AI under human supervision.
We will only indicate that a text has been generated by AI if it has not been checked by a human.
How do we use your data?
The City of Helsinki uses AI responsibly.
We adhere to the same privacy protection principles when using AI as we do in all our other operations. We will only process your personal data when there is a lawful basis for doing so, and we will delete the data when they are no longer needed and there is no other basis for retaining them.
The data that we use in our AI solutions remain the responsibility of and under the control of the City, and we will not disclose your data to third parties for the purpose of training AI models.
We also ensure that the AI solutions that we use are secure and that we can intervene in their operation if necessary.
Whenever the use of AI affects the handling of your matters, we will inform you. For example, if AI is involved in assessing which services are suitable for you, you will be provided with information about the role of AI and what the assessment is based on.
You can find out about the AI systems used by the City in the AI Register.
The processing of personal data is described in the City’s privacy notices, and our ethical principles are available on our website.
Who can you ask for more information?
Please do not hesitate to ask if anything is unclear to you.
You will get the most relevant information from the customer service department or service point of the service that is using the AI system in question.
You can also contact the City’s advisory services, which will refer you to the appropriate service. You can also submit a request for information to the City.