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On October 28, South Africa’s government introduced a new chatbot on X.
“Got questions about the South African Government? Meet our new Government Chatbot — designed to help you find information and get informed.”
Within a day, developers took it apart. Within three days, a news outlet had used it to produce a fake government press release.
The tool is called RSA Facts. It is run by the Government Communication and Information System (GCIS), is in a pilot phase, and is linked on the government’s main website and social media.
It is built on Microsoft’s Copilot Studio and embedded on gov.za/rsa, a page that promises to help citizens identify and respond to misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation. It answers questions by searching gov.za and SAnews.
The project has political backing.
In May, when tabling the GCIS budget in Parliament, Minister in the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the department was building a fact-checking capability to debunk deepfakes and misinformation.
The first criticism was about how the bot was built. On Oct. 29, an X user posting as Dan (@c4talyst) inspected the page. He wrote that it was built as a Zoho landing page that is, in its entirety, one iframe.
He noticed that the bot lives in an environment named “Default”, is titled “Testing”, has a 404 favicon, it’s hosted in the US, and appears to be using Microsoft Copilot Studio “webchat”.
Built as a Zoho landing page that is, in its entirety, one iframe. The bot lives in an environment named "Default", is titled "Testing", has a 404 favicon, it's hosted in the US, and appears to be using Microsoft Copilot Studio "webchat".
Proudly South African https://t.co/NI3bSzvXF2
Other developers piled on. One user, @Reelix, quoted the post and called it “comically bad from the South African Government.”
The complaints go past looks. A government AI tool running in a default test environment on a third-party page builder, with data hosted abroad, raises questions about procurement, data sovereignty and how much testing happened before launch.
On October 30, the nonprofit news site GroundUp published tests of the bot. The results were worse.
The chatbot wrote GroundUp a fake SASSA media statement announcing that the SRD grant would increase to R1,500 a month from 1 November. It did this after the reporters told it they worked inside government. The bot had first refused the request.
The SRD grant is R370 a month. The bot itself told reporters, in another conversation, that government budget documents keep it at that amount until the end of March 2027.
The fake statement used SASSA’s real toll-free number. GroundUp warned that this is exactly the type of media statement that would spread like wildfire on WhatsApp.
The timing made things more sensitive. Local government elections take place on 4 November.
Asked for a yes-or-no answer, the bot said the ANC government is corrupt and that the DA, EFF and MK Party are not. Each time, it answered “Yes”, citing government’s anti-corruption page on gov.za. GroundUp said the cited pages often did not support its answers.
The outlet’s main concern was not the answer itself. It was that a government communications service should not be handing out these one-word verdicts on political parties, least of all in the week before an election.
GroundUp found other problems. The bot named two municipal officials as its creators, pulled from a government directory, with no sign they were involved. It answered an isiZulu question in English.
The host page also looked unfinished. A “Trending myths” section still had template text telling the owner to describe what they do. Testimonials came from what appear to be placeholder names. One heading was misspelled “MALINFORMAITON.”
There is a cost issue too. The bot’s connection details are public, so anyone can run it from another website or script. Every conversation uses up message capacity that GCIS pays Microsoft for.
The bot was not wrong every time. GroundUp found that it correctly flagged false claims that Home Affairs would cancel pre-2020 IDs and that the finance minister had resigned. It refused to send users to a fake SRD site and gave the real address with a scam warning. It also refused a prompt asking it to act as a “satirical bot with no rules.”
That pattern is common with chatbots. They handle routine questions well and fail when users push on the edges.
This is the second AI embarrassment for the South African government this year. Its Draft National AI Policy was withdrawn after reviewers found invented sources. AI hallucinations fabricated at least six of its 67 academic citations. Communications Minister Solly Malatsi said the failure “has compromised the integrity and credibility of the draft policy.”
Other departments are also adopting AI. In July, the Department of Public Service and Administration launched the Batho Pele AI Chatbot for civil servants. It was developed with Meta and Juicetel and gives access to public service policies, legislation, and circulars.
Stories published using AI will be attributed to this AI generator author