Ask your “needle in a haystack question” and Kitchener’s new AI-powered website has the answer for you.

If you’ve searched for something on the City of Kitchener’s website in the last month, you may have noticed that the search tool looks a little different. It will probably be more conversational.

That’s because the city is turning to AI to improve the user experience when searching for information on its website.

To that end, when the city launched its new website in December, it partnered with local technology company municiPal AI to power its search tools.

“I think it’s a common frustrating experience across the country to ask for something from the city online,” Christy Guthrie, CEO and co-founder of municiPal AI, told CBC’s Kitchener-Waterloo program. Morning paper.

“The nature of local authority websites is that they are very large and contain a great deal of information. That information is usually technical.”

One month in, Guthrie said the results are positive, with more than 90% of searches being resolved with a single query.

Hilary Molinaro, a project manager who worked on the city’s new website, said an additional 7,800 searches were conducted using the new search tool.

“Residents are coming to our site to find information about community centers, pools, city events, winter maintenance and more in one click,” she said in a statement to CBC News.

Guthrie said there are hundreds of searches conducted outside of business hours when city staff are not available.

“You can keep talking.”

Guthrie said the search feature is set up to allow people to have a conversation.

“If you say ‘Best Dog Trails,’ they’ll give you an answer based on the information on the City of Kitchener website, but you can also keep talking to them,” she says.

“After you search, you can have a conversation, so it’s a new way to engage with the city online.”

Guthrie said the search tool’s AI only looks for answers based on content posted on the city’s website to provide users with the most accurate information.

“It’s not even connected to Google or ChatGPT, so you can trust that the answers you get are coming from the website. We’re just making it easy,” she said, adding that no personal information is recorded.

Tools that are also useful for city employees

The City of Kawartha Lakes, located two hours down Highway 401, worked with municiPal AI to use the same functionality on its website.

The city first piloted the new AI-powered search tool and rolled it out on its website in September 2025.

Cheri Davidson, the city’s communications, advertising and marketing manager, told CBC News that the website’s new search tools are helpful to residents as well as city staff.

“For example, we have a customer service team of 14 people who answer phone calls, walk-ins, and answer questions from residents throughout the day, and we take advantage of that,” she said.

“Before, we would use Google search to find anything we could find on a website, so the website really has become an internal resource.”

Davidson said this is a smart way to use AI technology, especially at the customer service level.

“With innovation and efficiency, how can we leverage technology to solve the problems that residents face,” she said.

Davidson said city officials are drafting an AI usage policy to answer that question. He said the city plans to incorporate city council agendas, minutes and reports into the AI ​​system.

“You’ll be able to easily search all the information, and you can ask a needle in a haystack question and the AI ​​will come back to you with the information you’re looking for through municiPal,” she says.