San Francisco laws are a tangled mess. Talk with our AI charter bot

At a recent mayoral debate, San Francisco Mayor London Breed tossed out a joke—or was it?—that ChatGPT should rewrite the city charter. 

The charter, the legal document laying out how San Francisco is organized and governed, consists of 18 articles, six appendices and countless chapters and sections on everything from business and health regulations to parks, planning, police, fire, tax and election codes. The charter is akin to our local constitution, and changes are approved by voters. 

It’s not exactly light reading: One hard copy available on Amazon clocks in at 604 pages and 2.3 pounds. Currently, the best way to look up a rule or regulation is to Google it. Or use the search function on American Legal Publishing and wade through reams of legalese until your eyes water. So we threw the charter into ChatGPT to see if the artificial intelligence tool could help answer questions about this living document. 

As it turns out, the charter is so voluminous that even the bot refused to sift through the layers upon layers of laws that make up San Francisco’s charter.

For example, when asked how many total business taxes there are in the city, we had to badger the bot repeatedly before it provided anything close to a comprehensive list. Likewise, when we asked how many commissions there are in the city, the bot gave answers—first 56, then 58—that were far below the Civil Grand Jury’s count of 115.

Our CharterGPT comes with the same caveats as the budget bot we created earlier this month. The bot is often wrong and should be fact-checked. The source document covers the city’s extensive municipal codes but not budgeting or the policy choices of specific elected officials. 

Here are some examples of questions you can ask our charter bot:

In the box below, you can try asking your own questions about the charter. As always, we’re happy to hear your thoughts at feedback@sfstandard.com.