Boti — WhatsApp City Assistant
This overview was generated with AI from the public sources listed below and checked against them before publication. It has not had a complete human fact-check — treat it as a starting point and follow the sources.
18 sourced claims on this page, none individually verified yet — turn on “Sources in the text” to see each one.
How this atlas is made · What “last verified” means · What “source-checked” means · The full record behind this page
Buenos Aires did not build an app. Boti lives inside WhatsApp: a record 11 million conversations in January 2022, at the height of COVID-19 testing, and more than 3 million a month by 2025.
what does this mean?
The strongest source is the operator's or the city's own reporting — an official report, dataset or press release. It grades who did the looking — not how well the project went. All four grades →Part of 1001 Smart Cities — 1,216 documented projects · 🏙️ 10 more in Buenos Aires · 🤖 Artificial intelligence guide · 🏛️ Governance projects
Buenos Aires put city hall into WhatsApp: the AI chatbot Boti handles millions of conversations a month, from renewing licences to booking vaccinations. In 2024 it added a GPT-4o agent that writes personalised tourism plans.
📊 Impact
Launched 23 February 2019 as one of the first government services on WhatsApp; conversations peaked during COVID-19 testing and vaccination, with a record 11 million in January 2022 and more than 26 million in the first quarter of 2022, and stood at more than 3 million a month in 2025. The tourism agent runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI; in 2025 the city piloted an assistant for its procedures on Amazon Bedrock with AWS. The city's audit office concluded in 2023 that the chatbot facilitates access to information, procedures and appointments, while asking for IT-governance and data-protection policies.
🎓 Lesson
Meeting residents inside the messaging app they already use brought the volume, but not the back office: in 2025 the city's internal auditor found that Boti gave no notice when one of its 99 connected services was down, leaving answers inconclusive or looping, was not linked to the city's remote-procedures platform, and had no ticket system able to measure resolution times.
Sources
Show 4 more sourcesShow fewer
📅 How old is the evidence?
Two clocks, kept apart: when this entry’s sources were published, and what has happened to its record in the atlas. Documented span: since 2019. 9 of 9 sources carry a publication date, from 5 May 2021 to 19 November 2025.
When the sources were published
- La Nación · pressLa Nación — Boti's record 3.3 million conversations in April 2021 (5 May 2021)
- Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires · city governmentCiudad de Buenos Aires (authority)
- Auditoría General de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires · oversight bodyAuditoría General de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires — Chatbot BOTI systems audit (March 2023)
- OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation · international organisationOECD OPSI — case study submitted by the City of Buenos Aires
- El Economista (Argentina) · pressEl Economista — Buenos Aires and Microsoft launch Boti with Azure OpenAI (13 August 2024)
- La Nación · pressLa Nación — Boti integrates GPT-4o and recommends tourist plans (14 August 2024)
- Derechos Digitales · ngoDerechos Digitales / ADC — Boti: study on the city's natural-language chatbot (2024)
- Amazon Web Services · vendorAWS Machine Learning Blog — Meet Boti, co-written with the City of Buenos Aires (28 August 2025)
Show 1 more dated sourcesShow fewer
- Sindicatura General de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires · oversight bodySindicatura General de la Ciudad — Management of the Boti chatbot, report 98/25 (19 November 2025)
Show your work What this page rests on and what it can’t tell you · all 18 claims with their sources · the forensic record
Evidence file · public beta 18 addressable claims, 9 source dossiers, one permanent baseline. The file is unreviewed — an AI-assisted structural migration, not a human or expert endorsement. Every revision keeps a permanent copy under revision history.
Inspect the claims, one by one — verbatim text, sources and caveats for all 18
The text below is copied verbatim from the published record. Each claim names the source dossiers that carry it; caveats stay attached to the claim they qualify.
clm-5d274120dcd4a2ce
descriptive
Buenos Aires put city hall into WhatsApp: the AI chatbot Boti
Sources carrying this claim
clm-657baef2581c9c2d
descriptive
handles millions of conversations a month
Sources carrying this claim
clm-286f93b5dec99005
descriptive
from renewing licences to booking vaccinations
Sources carrying this claim
clm-f2b2a8b5eec1c92a
quantitative
In 2024 it added a GPT-4o agent that writes personalised tourism plans
Sources carrying this claim
clm-20c2efb88389e351
quantitative
Launched 23 February 2019
Sources carrying this claim
clm-78f3dd748e4085f1
descriptive
as one of the first government services on WhatsApp
Sources carrying this claim
clm-1f937766d02a70f1
quantitative
conversations peaked during COVID-19 testing and vaccination
Sources carrying this claim
clm-46122ad4d46ec06c
quantitative
with a record 11 million in January 2022
Sources carrying this claim
clm-c4f5f31e5ffc60db
quantitative
more than 26 million in the first quarter of 2022
Sources carrying this claim
clm-7d9f2abd39a95b43
quantitative
stood at more than 3 million a month in 2025
Sources carrying this claim
clm-1d02e5c66cfed5f5
descriptive
The tourism agent runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI
Sources carrying this claim
clm-959e7158e6cec452
quantitative
in 2025 the city piloted an assistant for its procedures on Amazon Bedrock with AWS
Sources carrying this claim
clm-db192061e59fa36e
quantitative
The city's audit office concluded in 2023 that the chatbot facilitates access to information, procedures and appointments
Sources carrying this claim
clm-bc26467e7fc25515
descriptive
while asking for IT-governance and data-protection policies
Sources carrying this claim
clm-232687e4a49e9901
descriptive
Meeting residents inside the messaging app they already use brought the volume
Sources carrying this claim
clm-387bd4023790706f
quantitative
in 2025 the city's internal auditor found that Boti gave no notice when one of its 99 connected services was down, leaving answers inconclusive or looping
Sources carrying this claim
clm-0aef7d4c4b563560
descriptive
was not linked to the city's remote-procedures platform
Sources carrying this claim
clm-e039c5bd21928cd2
descriptive
had no ticket system able to measure resolution times
Sources carrying this claim
Forensic record — source dossiers, gaps, hashes and the exact revision this page renders
This layer records what is known about each source, what is still missing, and the exact snapshot this page is rendering. A missing date, archive or hash stays visible as missing.
Awaiting operator and domain-expert review; publication of this revision implies neither.
sha256:8821873d8c1ef202d59900f13088019fb990b9fa36ec01c8f1e3a5e67c806db3
- 18
- of 18 claims mapped
- 9
- source dossiers
- 8
- publication dates recorded
- 0
- archives linked
- 0
- exact locators
- 0
- content captures hashed
Governance facts carried by the record
- Operator
- Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (GCBA)
- Actor types
- city-government
- Funding model
- public
- Funding description
- Not recorded
- Cost
- Not recorded
- Ownership
- Not recorded
- Decision rights
- Not recorded
- Exit conditions
- Not recorded
9 source dossiers
Ciudad de Buenos Aires (authority)
- Stable source ID
src-5a0f6734a5b5c38d- Publisher
- Name not classified · buenosaires.gob.ar
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2022-05-06
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
City news item: Boti passed 26,181,606 conversations in the first quarter of 2022 (4,167,362 a year earlier); it was launched on WhatsApp on 23 February 2019 and the city calls itself the first government in the world to use WhatsApp this way; 70+ procedures and services.
OECD OPSI — case study submitted by the City of Buenos Aires
- Stable source ID
src-f923adeebf76ea5d- Publisher
- Name not classified · oecd-opsi.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2023-11-16
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Case study written by the city for the OECD Observatory of Public Sector Innovation: February 2019 launch, a record 11 million conversations in January 2022 and a monthly average of 5 million, 11,000,000 vaccination appointments offered via WhatsApp.
La Nación — Boti integrates GPT-4o and recommends tourist plans (14 August 2024)
- Stable source ID
src-fcbeeb2eb947cac9- Publisher
- Name not classified · lanacion.com.ar
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2024-08-14
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Boti integrates GPT-4o, built with Microsoft, to assemble personalised tourism plans in natural language; the chatbot keeps its original functions such as appointments and procedures.
- Claims linked
El Economista — Buenos Aires and Microsoft launch Boti with Azure OpenAI (13 August 2024)
- Stable source ID
src-0fc0cc3a1d7e0fcb- Publisher
- Name not classified · eleconomista.com.ar
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2024-08-13
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The city is incorporating Microsoft Azure OpenAI into Boti; 'Boti con GPT' offers tourists personalised plans in Spanish or English, grounded with retrieval-augmented generation.
- Claims linked
La Nación — Boti's record 3.3 million conversations in April 2021 (5 May 2021)
- Stable source ID
src-d2530b7c3a600f77- Publisher
- Name not classified · lanacion.com.ar
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2021-05-05
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Boti recorded 3.3 million conversations in April 2021, its highest two years after launch, a milestone highlighted by WhatsApp's head.
- Claims linked
- Background source; no baseline claim points here
AWS Machine Learning Blog — Meet Boti, co-written with the City of Buenos Aires (28 August 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-014410462abc0816- Publisher
- Name not classified · aws.amazon.com
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-08-28
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Vendor blog co-written with the city's team: Boti facilitates more than 3 million conversations each month; the city piloted an agentic assistant for its 1,300+ government procedures on Amazon Bedrock with the AWS Generative AI Innovation Center.
Auditoría General de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires — Chatbot BOTI systems audit (March 2023)
- Stable source ID
src-c1a65cf0ae971eed- Publisher
- Name not classified · agcba.gov.ar
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- Not recorded
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Final systems audit of the Boti chatbot (period 2021, project 10.22.04): concludes that the modernisation facilitates access to information, procedures and appointments, and calls for IT governance, data-protection policies and contingency plans covering external providers.
- Claims linked
Sindicatura General de la Ciudad — Management of the Boti chatbot, report 98/25 (19 November 2025)
- Stable source ID
src-d25c9414e6a1d1a0- Publisher
- Name not classified · buenosaires.gob.ar
- Type / language
- pdf · language not classified
- Published
- 2025-11-19
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
The city's internal-control body audited Boti for January–June 2025: no documented disaster-recovery plan, no formal ticket system able to measure resolution times, no notice to users when one of the 99 integrated services is down (causing inconclusive answers or conversation loops), and no integration with the remote-procedures platform TAD.
Derechos Digitales / ADC — Boti: study on the city's natural-language chatbot (2024)
- Stable source ID
src-3c7b9cc28095af55- Publisher
- Name not classified · derechosdigitales.org
- Type / language
- web-page · language not classified
- Published
- 2024-11-19
- Updated
- Not recorded
- Source last checked
- No source-level check date
- Record last verified
- 2026-10-14
- Dossier created
- 2026-10-14
- Retrieved copy
- No local capture recorded
- Archive
- No archived copy linked
- Content hash
- No captured content hash
- Locator
- Descriptive only — not page/paragraph exact
Open the recorded source note
Study by the Asociación por los Derechos Civiles for Derechos Digitales, funded by IDRC: concerns over informed consent, handling of sensitive data such as COVID-19 test results, and private contractors without clear oversight; summarises the 2023 audit and an ombudsman complaint.
- Claims linked
Known limits of this file
- Publisher names and source languages have not yet been classified; domains are recorded without guessing.
- Existing source notes are descriptive locators, not page- or paragraph-exact citations.
- A missing archive, publication date or content hash is shown as null rather than inferred.
- The project-level evidence grade ranks the strongest source in the entry; it is not a truth score for every claim.
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📎 Cite this project
1001 Smart Cities (2026). “Boti — WhatsApp City Assistant” — Buenos Aires, Argentina. The Smart City Atlas. https://1001smartcities.org/projects/buenos-aires-boti/ (last verified 2026-10-14). Data: CC BY 4.0.
The underlying data is free to reuse with attribution — see the open data page.
