Putin’s annual Q&A to use AI for first time – Kremlin

Sberbank’s GigaChat tool will sort through the massive number of messages addressed to the president, spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said

The Kremlin will use AI to sort through questions submitted by the Russian population to President Vladimir Putin for his traditional long-format press conference later this month, spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Friday.

The president’s office organizes events of this kind almost every year, with Putin spending several hours each time responding to questions from different parts of Russia asked by regular citizens and members of the press corps.

This year, the marathon press conference will be held on December 19, Peskov announced. The collection of questions from the public will start this weekend, the official told the media. Text messages, phone calls, and video records are all viable options, he added.

“Thanks to the titanic effort by the organizers of the event, first of all the specialists from Sberbank, we’ve managed to employ GigaChat to deal with the entire content of the incoming messages,” the official said.

Sberbank, or Sber, is Russia’s largest lender and invests heavily in advanced information technology. GigaChat is among the tools developed by the banking and tech giant.

READ MORE: Putin speaks: the Russian president’s most important annual event

In 2023, Putin’s press conference was held in mid-December and was named ‘Results of the Year’. Some 2 million texts and calls were submitted to the Kremlin for the event, including a video recording featuring a Putin look-alike created by a university student from St. Petersburg using ‘deep fake’ technology.

In the past, Putin spoke to the general public and to journalists on separate occasions, but in recent years the two types of marathon events have been merged into a single session.