Talk to the City
Talk to the City is an open-source AI platform that strengthens collective decision-making by transforming large-scale public input into actionable insights.
. Unlike traditional polling or commercial survey tools, T3C preserves the nuance of individual perspectives and captures authentic voices, while surfacing the broader themes and differences that matter most. Interactive, conversational surveys with our AI-driven interview and survey tool guides participants through structured conversations at scale, delivered through WhatsApp to lower barriers to response and increase response rates. T3C’s analysis pipeline generates reports by grouping key themes, identifying points of disagreement, and offering an interactive interface to explore perspectives at both group and individual levels. By directly linking themes to individual claims, the platform reduces the risk of inaccurate AI summaries and ensures every voice remains connected to the larger conversation. This resolves a longstanding trade-off in democratic input tools: the choice between detailed dialogue and broad participation.
Evidence of this project's impact
T3C has grown to more than 100 users who have collectively engaged over 10,000 participants through interactive surveys and reporting, demonstrating its effectiveness in scaling public input. — 2025-10
“Ten years ago, the vTaiwan scope was limited, because stakeholder groups needed to adapt to the technology at the time. Today, this is being bridged with the advent of language models that can adapt to their needs. Back in 2014, it was impossible with the capacity of g0v contributors to interview a mini public of people and aggregate their ideas while preserving the full nuance. (Source) — 2024-12
Resources
Founder(s)
Stacey Svetlichnaya, Brandon Perry, Emre Turan, Evan McMullen, Paweł Sysiak, Shu-Yang Lin, Colleen McKenzie
- Org. type
- Non-profit / charity / foundation
- Project type
- Tool or platform
- Country
- United States of America 🇺🇸
- Founded
- 2023
- Language(s)
- English
- Employees
- 8
- Pricing
- Free
- Used by
- Notre Dame University https://talktothecity.org/report/deliberative-technologies-in-polarized-contexts_anon
- Tech stack
- BuiltWith report →
- Categories
- Artificial Intelligence (AI), Deliberation, Digital participation platforms, Emerging tech, Engagement tech
- Added
- 2023-12-06
- Last modified
- 2026-07-12T16:43:48.000Z
Additional details
- Affiliation
- Program Director
- Tech stack
- Vite, Svelte, SvelteKit, Firebase, Google Cloud, Google Cloud Trace, HSTS, jsDelivr, Node.js, HTTP/3
- Integrates with
- Polis, Remesh
- Platforms
- Institutions using the platform
- 100
- How AI is used
- **1. Data Processing and Analysis** T3C uses AI-powered NLP to process unstructured text data, such as open-ended survey responses, interviews, and comments from social media or other sources. Large language models (LLMs) analyze input data to identify and extract key arguments, opinions, and sentiments from participants. AI algorithms group similar responses into clusters and subclusters, enabling stakeholders to visualize common themes and outliers in public opinion. **2. Opinion Mapping** AI-generated clusters are visualized in interactive maps, allowing users to explore the diversity of opinions and navigate through arguments at different levels of granularity. AI helps rank and prioritize the most significant concerns based on the frequency and intensity of arguments.
- Content moderation policy
- Talk to the City (T3C) incorporates the feedback node, which enables public users to provide feedback on the accuracy of claims. When this feature is active, users can click an exclamation point in the info panel associated with each claim or bubble in the graph. This allows them to label a claim as miscategorized, inaccurate, or not belonging to the dataset. Currently, the functionality to label a claim as not belonging to the dataset is operational; such claims are filtered out upon the next load.
- Number of end users
- Not public
- Number of integrations
- 3
- GitHub contributors
- 7
- Metrics of success
- “Ten years ago, the vTaiwan scope was limited, because stakeholder groups needed to adapt to the technology at the time. Today, this is being bridged with the advent of language models that can adapt to their needs. Back in 2014, it was impossible with the capacity of g0v contributors to interview a mini public of people and aggregate their ideas while preserving the full nuance., T3C has grown to more than 100 users who have collectively engaged over 10,000 participants through interactive surveys and reporting, demonstrating its effectiveness in scaling public input.
- Geographic focus
- Global
- Pricing
- Free
- Pricing — license model
- Free for download or offers a free subscription option with full features.
- Documentation & learning
- <https://talktothecity.org/docs> <https://talktothecity.org/api-docs/>
- Support resources
- <https://github.com/AIObjectives/talk-to-the-city-reports/blob/main/scatter/README.md>