Every wildfire season, Californians face the same challenge: accessing reliable, current information about evacuation orders and fire containment status. California’s solution? Build an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot that fails at both.

The chatbot, “Ask CAL FIRE,” debuted in May of 2025, and Gov. Gavin Newsom cited it as an example of California “transforming government to better serve people.” Yet a month after its launch, the chatbot could not provide timely information about the Ranch Fire in San Bernardino County, responding to queries with containment information that was almost a week out of date.

This wasn’t a one-off glitch. The chatbot routinely gives different answers to the same question about which supplies to bring during an evacuation depending on m

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