Žilina Chatbot Pilot: 8,603 Questions, 47.3% Off-Hours, Independent Research by Šafárik University

Citymind's AI chatbot on the Žilina city website received 8,603 questions from approximately 1,850 citizens over a six-month pilot from 1 July 2025 to 1 January 2026, with 47.3 percent of conversations occurring outside business hours and only 3.1 percent of inquiries left unanswered, per research by the Faculty of Public Administration of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice and reported by Smart Cities Klub Slovakia in early 2026. "In Žilina, we believe that AI can help make city hall more accessible and more human," said Peter Fiabané, Mayor of Žilina, in the Citymind case study, framing the deployment as a deliberate "Living Lab" for data-driven AI in municipal communication. Žilina, Slovakia's third-largest city, deployed the chatbot not just to answer citizen questions but to produce operational evidence about what AI in municipal communication actually does. The research partnership with Šafárik University provided independent academic validation of the deployment's impact. The pilot ran 1 July 2025 to 1 January 2026 in cooperation with the city, Citymind, and the Faculty of Public Administration of Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice. The research was led by Milan Douša, PhD, and reported through Smart Cities Klub Slovakia. Citymind's chatbot uses Retrieval-Augmented Generation hosted on Microsoft Azure servers in the EU via Azure OpenAI Service, with ISO 27001-certified security, full GDPR, AI Act, and Data Act compliance, automatic detection of up to 150 languages, and the Citymind Manager admin panel. Twenty-eight percent of relevant queries (2,363) were routed to a human operator, mostly because the chatbot could not find an answer in available website content. The strongest topic was the building authority at 98.8 percent resolution, followed by passport fees at 96.78 percent, ID cards at 68.61 percent, waste management at 74.64 percent, and contacts at 63.53 percent. Cultural information scored lowest at 44.42 percent, exposing a website content gap. The research gives the city a clear roadmap for where to add or update content, particularly cultural information. Žilina is positioned as a model for other Slovak cities seeking data-driven AI deployment, and the city will host inDays workshops from 12 to 14 May 2026 to share findings with other municipalities.