Julieta Lanteri, Argentina’s first civil service chatbot

With a view to providing a more rapid response to its users and reducing the strain on its customer-service phone lines, and thus focusing its efforts on dealing with more complex enquiries, Argentina’s Superintendency of Occupational Risks (Superintendencia de Riesgos del Trabajo – SRT), a national public body, decided to launch a chatbot that would be available on its website 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

The bot is female, to mark the fact that the project was launched on 8 March (International Women’s Day). The team named the new virtual assistant Julieta, in honour of Julieta Lanteri, a doctor and forerunner of the women’s movement – and the first woman in both Argentina and South America to exercise the right to vote.