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AI Chatbot for Public Tax Enquiries

Inform

What it collects

About behaviour
Anonymized data
  • Text and/or speech queries submitted by members of the public to the chatbot — the questions and requests they type or speak. No personal information is collected; inputs relate to general tax and service topics.
Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Unclassified CRA content from canada.ca pages, used as the knowledge base grounding the chatbot's responses. This is static reference data, not personal information.
Run by
Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
Where
No fixed location
Kept
No data retained
Shared with
Not stated by the Helpful Places.
Your copy
You cannot see the data it holds about you. What you can do

What it is for

Inform

The Canada Revenue Agency is developing a generative AI chatbot powered by ChatGPT to answer general tax and service enquiries from members of the public. The system draws on publicly available, unclassified CRA website content to generate responses. No personal information is collected or processed. Users are informed that they are interacting with an AI system.

What it collects and what happens to it

Data taken in

About behaviour
Anonymized data
  • Text and/or speech queries submitted by members of the public to the chatbot — the questions and requests they type or speak. No personal information is collected; inputs relate to general tax and service topics.
Operational data
Anonymized data
  • Unclassified CRA content from canada.ca pages, used as the knowledge base grounding the chatbot's responses. This is static reference data, not personal information.

Processing

Language Models
  • The system uses ChatGPT (a large language model developed by OpenAI, accessed via Microsoft and/or Amazon cloud infrastructure) to understand user queries and generate natural-language responses.

What it does

Creating (Generative AI)
Human decides
  • The system generates text responses to public enquiries using a large language model (ChatGPT). The AI produces content; the user decides whether to act on it, and CRA human agents remain available via complementary contact channels.
Understanding (Semantic AI)
Human decides
  • The system analyses and interprets natural language queries from users, drawing meaning from text and speech input to retrieve and ground responses in CRA website content.

Outputs

Generated content
Anonymized data
  • Text responses to general tax and service enquiries, generated by the ChatGPT LLM and grounded in publicly available CRA canada.ca content. Responses do not contain personal information.

Run by

Canada Revenue Agency (CRA)
  • The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) is the federal institution accountable for developing and deploying this generative AI chatbot to serve members of the public with general tax enquiries.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-CRA-ARC-001

Built by

Microsoft and Amazon
  • Microsoft and Amazon are the technology vendors supplying the underlying AI platform and infrastructure (including ChatGPT LLM access) for this chatbot system.

Government of Canada AI Register — 2526-CRA-ARC-001

Kept for

No data retained
  • The register confirms that no personal information is involved. No personal data retention period applies.
  • Duration: not applicable — no personal information collected

Shared with

Not available to me
  • As no personal information is collected by the chatbot, there is no personal data held by the system for an individual to access. The system does not retain records of individual user conversations tied to an identity.

Stored

Not stated by the Helpful Places.

How to read the colours

Can it identify you?

Anonymized data
Data about people with the link to who is broken. Stripped of identifiers, blurred, aggregated, or noised so this system can’t reasonably tie a record back to an individual.
Pseudonymous data
Each person’s data is tied to a token (hash, ID, template) that lets this system recognise the same person across events, but the token itself doesn’t reveal a name. Reidentification is possible with extra information.
Identifiable data
The data either contains a direct identifier (name, address, account name, recognisable face or voice, plate number) or carries a token this system uses to look up legal identity during processing.

Who completes the loop?

Human decides
This mode suggests; a person decides what to do next. The AI is always advisory — a human is in the loop on every decision. Example: a triage tool ranks cases for a clinician who chooses which to see first.
Human executes
This mode decides; a person carries out the result. Example: an optimizer plans the day’s trash-collection routes, and drivers run them.
Autonomous
This mode decides and acts on its own. No person reviews each decision or carries out the resulting action.

Definitions from the DTPR standard. Amber is about your data, violet about who decides. The fuller the shape and the deeper the colour, the more identifying the data or the less a person is involved.

What you can do

Ask about this system

Questions go to the Helpful Places, not the vendor.

Your rights

  • Right to Be Informed of AI UseUsers are informed that they are interacting with an AI system before or during their interaction with the CRA chatbot. AI use is disclosed to users as confirmed in the register.
  • Right to Algorithmic TransparencyThis DTPR disclosure describes how the AI chatbot works at a general level, including the data it draws on (unclassified CRA website content), the technology used (ChatGPT LLM), and that it does not collect personal information. Additional information about the system is published in the Government of Canada AI Register.View AI Register Entry

Risks and safeguards

  • Societal & cultural harmThe chatbot could provide inaccurate or misleading tax information, eroding public trust in CRA services or leading Canadians to make incorrect tax decisions.Safeguard: The system is grounded in official, unclassified CRA canada.ca content; it complements rather than replaces human contact centre agents; users are informed they are interacting with an AI; the system is still in development with CRA involvement in quality oversight.