DENVER — The sun could be setting on ’Sunny,’ Denver’s artificial intelligence chatbot built to answer simple questions or take non-emergency reports about issues like potholes.
In a 9-3 vote last week, Denver City Council rejected a five-year, $3.9 million contract extension for the chatbot operator, Citibot.
“I see no reason, no benefit in replacing human beings that need to earn a living with artificial intelligence,” said City Council Member Paul Kashmann, one of those ‘no’ votes. “I think the city needs to stop for a minute and take a look at where we're comfortable with going with AI, and where we need to put up boundaries.”
Mayor Mike Johnston’s office sent Denver7 a statement singing Sunny’s praises, saying since it launched in 2024, it has a customer service satisfaction rating ‘around 90 percent,’ understands 72 languages, has lowered hold times for 311, and has reduced burnout—allowing city staff to focus on solving more meaningful problems.
Sunny makes life easier for residents and allows city employees to focus on solving problems. Losing Sunny means losing a tool that has reduced burnout among employees, slowed attrition, and lowered hold times for 311. We will meet with Council to discuss the totality of services Sunny provides and will look to get the contract back on track soon.
Kashmann is not convinced Sunny is necessary for the city.
“If people are getting burned out, hire another human being,” he said.
The city tells Denver7 that is part of the plan: to hire and train three new 311 agents by next summer, adding that staff are also exploring “options” to keep Sunny around. The city says while the chatbot’s contract ends at the end of October, there is money budgeted for the chatbot through this year and into 2027.
The city warns if Sunny “were to become unavailable for a period of time while we iron out the details, we would expect to see a 40% increase in 311 calls, with a corresponding increase in caller wait times.”
Metropolitan State University Denver professor and AI expert Samuel Jay said while the City Council decision could be partially framed by growing anti-AI sentiment, there could be a financial discussion as well. Jay says the city could at some point decide to build its own chatbot tool for a cheaper price.
“I’m guessing that it's probably also related that these tools can be built pretty easy now,” he said. “When these sort of vendor provided tools hit the market two years ago, two and a half years ago, it was sort of hard to build a chatbot… Building a chatbot that would answer questions accurately via their web content was pretty hard to do still. It’s not hard to do anymore.”
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