European Parliament expands access to their archives with Claude
The European Parliament is revolutionizing access to its vast historical archives by implementing 'Ask the EP Archives', also known as Archibot, an AI-powered tool built with Claude in Amazon Bedrock. Archibot allows users to instantly search, retrieve, and understand decades of legislative documents and parliamentary proceedings in multiple languages.
With Claude, Archibot:
- Reduces document search time by 80%
- Increases customer satisfaction by ~60%
- Processes 10x more queries per month
- Makes over 2.1 million official documents readily available to researchers, policymakers, educators, and the public
Maintaining history and promoting transparency
The Archives Unit of the European Parliament in Luxembourg safeguards a vast collection of historical documents. Since 1952, this archive has accumulated 5 linear kilometers of paper records and 2 terabytes of digital data. These archives are crucial for preserving the archival integrity of EU governance and promoting transparency.
Ludovic Délépine, Chef de l'Unité des Archives, emphasizes the archive's importance: "These efforts support accountability, trust in institutions, and an informed society."
For years, the archivists had two main challenges: making the archives easy to search and ensuring they’re accessible to anyone who needs to access them. "To access our archives, people had to come to Luxembourg or email a request for a limited number of .pdf scans,” said Daniel Urse, head of the processing department. The arrival of generative AI has dramatically changed how archivists and researchers can navigate the millions of documents within the archives.
Archibot brings history to life with Claude
To address accessibility issues, the European Parliament created Archibot, now available on the European Parliament's archive website, which offers users worldwide easy access to EU Parliament documents in multiple languages - including resolutions, positions, policies, and inter-institutional negotiations - while also helping researchers and staff analyze data and create comprehensive reports.
Key features of Archibot include:
- Summarization of EU legislation and history to help users understand key details without reading entire documents.
- Retrieval augmented generation (RAG) to let users instantly query specific and accurate information.
- Functionality for users to extrapolate information and build reports
- Language support beyond French to serve all EU member states
- Global accessibility for users to explore EU governance history without specialized knowledge or physical presence in Luxembourg, including policymakers, researchers, and the general public.
Délépine notes the tool's significance: "In today's misinformation era, these primary sources are crucial for learning from our past and upholding our values."
The trusted choice for AI ethics and security
The European Parliament prioritized trustworthiness and reliability when selecting an AI partner. They found Claude, which met these criteria and aligned with their commitment to ethical and responsible technology use in governance.
“We evaluated several large language models and chose Claude because it uses Constitutional AI, a proprietary approach to developing AI systems that instills core values and principles into the AI during the training process. For Archibot, this means users are more likely to receive answers aligned with those principles from training data, including diverse sources like the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights.” Deploying Claude in Amazon Bedrock provided another security advantage, allowing them to maintain full control of their solution within their own cloud environment in the European Union.
Archibot greatly improves access and experience of the archives
The European Parliament's goal for Archibot was to enhance rather than automate human activity. Before integrating Claude, skilled staff handled hundreds of queries each year. Now, Archibot processes thousands of requests monthly. This collaboration between human expertise and AI efficiency has significantly improved service delivery and user experience.
Archibot has streamlined operations and strengthened the relationship between the European Parliament and researchers. As Urse notes, "They don't just access Archibot once - they start a dialogue about their feedback, and we often implement their proposals. They see we're here to help, and in return they help improve our tool."
Archibot has significantly impacted staff and users. Users now save 80% of their time searching for documents, leading to a 58% increase in user satisfaction due to improved discoverability, speed, and ease of use. The tool's global reach includes users from hundreds of countries accessing the archives online. This adoption and feedback highlight Archibot's success in enhancing the European Parliament's archives experience.
The potential of generative AI for the public sector
The European Parliament sees Archibot as just the beginning of AI's potential in governance. Délépine envisions broader applications: "In the future, parliaments can use generative AI to streamline legislative processes by supporting the drafting and reviewing of documents. AI can assist in summarizing lengthy reports, enabling quicker decision-making and better-informed discussions."
The European Parliament is addressing public concerns about government transparency and responsible technology use by focusing on accessibility, ethical AI use, and the democratization of information. Archibot is a significant step towards making EU governance more open and understandable to citizens and demonstrates how generative AI can ensure the past informs a better future.