French town with ‘oldest residents’ provides them with ChatGPT access

Residents of the southwestern French town Arcachon will get free access to ChatGPT Premium to help the mainly older population access city information.

Mayor Yves Foulon, from the right-wing Les Republicains party, announced last week that it was “essential to be digitally literate in everyday life”.

The town has people trained to help residents with digital information, and now they’ve “decided to go one step further and…give all its residents free access to ChatGPT,” Foulon said in an official video.

More than 60 per cent of the town’s 12,000 residents are over the age of 60, with the mayor calling his town the “oldest in France, sociologically,” in an interview with a French broadcaster.

The access will be provided through the city’s website, which gives examples of tasks that the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered assistant could help with such as accessing the municipality’s information.

The chat is powered by GPT-4o, the latest version of ChatGPT that is only accessible to paid subscribers, and was fine-tuned using the city’s data.

According to the city, 250 ChatGPT access codes were given out on the launch day.

The seaside town on the Atlantic, southwest of Bordeaux, has multiplied initiatives to curb the digital divide as an increasing amount of administrative services, such as taxes, are carried out online.

Some concerns raised by social media users included that the town picked a US company instead of a French one.

The budget for ChatGPT was, meanwhile, estimated at €10,000 per year, Foulon said in an interview with French public radio, but it comes as the country works to cut costs amid a major budget crisis.

Generative AI tools have, meanwhile, been criticised for “hallucinations,” where they convincingly make up false information.

The city plans on organising regular training sessions to guarantee the best use of the tool.