About Emma

About Our Digital Assistant, Emma

We’re excited to introduce our digital assistant, Emma. Emma is a cutting-edge technology designed to help answer your questions and provide information about the City of Amarillo’s services. Here’s what you need to know:

• New Technology: This digital assistant is a beta program, meaning it’s in development. The City of Amarillo is the first local government to implement this type of digital human, helping residents access city information quickly. While it represents an innovative step forward, its accuracy and functionality will continuously be analyzed and improved with your helpful feedback.
• Functionality: Emma helps answer questions about City of Amarillo services using information from the City’s website. Not all questions may be answered, and topics outside City services are not supported.
• Continuous Improvement: We are committed to refining this tool. Emma may occasionally be incomplete or incorrect—but your feedback helps us improve its accuracy and usability.

How Emma, Our Digital Assistant, Works

Emma, our digital assistant, is powered by an advanced language model, a type of generative artificial intelligence (AI) that processes and generates natural language responses. Here’s how Emma works and what to expect:

• Multiple Ways to Communicate: Emma can interact through both text and speech, offering flexibility to suit your needs.
• Language Translation: Emma supports interactions in English and Spanish. English is the default language. To interact in Spanish, users must select the Habla con Emma button, which activates a separate Spanish-language experience. The English and Spanish functions operate independently and do not automatically translate between languages. The City of Amarillo is exploring additional language support in future updates.
• Focus on City Information: Emma is programmed to only provide answers based on content available on the City of Amarillo’s website and related resources. She does not access external information and has predefined limitations for certain topics.
• Understanding and Generating Responses: Emma analyzes your input (one question at a time) and generates a response using language models. While Emma often provides accurate and helpful answers, her responses may occasionally be incomplete or inaccurate.
• Limitations: Emma does not “think” or “understand” in the way humans do. Her responses are limited by the quality and scope of her training data, which can lead to unpredictable results. Emma currently does not preserve conversational context between questions, so please ask each question independently.
• Continuous Improvement: While Emma doesn’t learn in real time, your interactions help us identify areas for improvement. We review questions and answers to refine Emma’s training, ensuring that she becomes more accurate and useful over time.

Our Partners:

• Dell Technologies: assists the City’s engagement efforts and connects us with relevant collaborators to enhance Emma’s capabilities.
• UneeQ: The creative team behind Emma’s digital avatar, bringing her to life for an engaging user experience.

Emma represents an exciting step forward in how we serve you. Your patience and feedback are essential as we continue to improve her functionality and make accessing city information easier and more efficient.

Disclaimer for Digital Assistant Interactions

We value your privacy and strive to make your interaction with our digital assistant helpful and secure.

• Content Scope: The assistant’s responses are generated based on the City of Amarillo’s website and related training materials. It may not always provide accurate or complete answers.
• Topic Limitations: Some topics are outside the assistant’s scope, and it will not provide responses in these areas. For further assistance, please contact the relevant city department.
• Privacy Assured: We do not store any personal information from your interactions with the assistant. We only know what questions are asked, and the response that was provided.
• Feedback and Monitoring: To enhance the service, we monitor questions and answers, focusing on improving functionality and ensuring accuracy.