Our new AI Assistant 'Peter' is available on our website for live customer testing. During July and August 2025 we will be monitoring and tweaking the functionality as well as Peter also learning himself.
Residents can interact with Peter directly on our website. In the first testing phase, our focus is on enabling conversational searches (question and answers) with escalation to live agents. We will be monitoring use, responses and escalations.
We have not replaced any current functionality and using the AI assistant is optional.
Future phases will focus on refinement of responses and improving user experience.
How to use Peter
Peter can be found by clicking the speech icon at the bottom right of your screen (browser window).
- Open the Peter Chatbot by clicking the button found at the bottom-right hand side of your screen. The chat will then expand.
- You can then type in a question to ask Peter
- To clear your chat history and start again with a new question, click the 'END CHAT' button
- During the conversation use the YES and No options between appending to an existing question.
- If Peter is unable to help, after a few tries, he will transfer you to a human agent. You can also request to 'speak to an agent' during the chat.
To get the best out of Peter, ask him in a question format, but don’t make it too long. Try not to personalise the question. If you don't get the answer you're looking for, try re-phrasing the question. For example:
- "How do I apply for Free School Meals?"
- "How do I report a pothole?"
- "Where can I visit to pay my council tax?"
- "How do I bid for a council flat?"
- "What are the rules for applying for a primary school place?"
Why are we using an AI assistant
Peter continually learns and improves how to answer your questions. The range of subjects and knowledge will also increase over time. Peter aims to:
- Answer frequently asked questions
- Provide information quickly and efficiently
- Enhance user engagement and support
- Escalate complex queries to live agents
- Reduce telephone call waiting times
- Provide an alternative to traditional keyword search, and result pages.
What not to ask Peter
Peter only has access to information on www.peterborough.gov.uk, he cannot tell you about the wider world.
Peter may struggles to answer your questions that:
- are open-ended or ambiguous. For example, "What is the meaning of life?"
- are personal. For example, "How are you?"
- based on humour or sarcasm. For example, "Why did the chicken cross the road?"
- contain profanity or toxic comments
How Peter works
Peter uses the following components of Amazon Web Service (AWS).
- Chat user interface on the website - Collects user input and displays responses.
- Amazon Lex - AWS’s Conversational AI platform for self-service interactions and decision logic
- Amazon Bedrock - Allows developers to build and scale generative AI applications
- Amazon Bedrock Guardrails - Enforces safety, tone, and compliance rules before output is returned.
- Amazon Connect - Enables live agent escalation, allowing human support to take over the chat session.
You can also look at our privacy notice.