Tests find incorrect legal guidance from New York City's MyCity chatbot

Established facts

The bot incorrectly generalised that landlords need not accept rental-assistance tenants, that residential rents were unrestricted and that tenants could be locked out. The underlying rules have qualifications: source-of-income protections have limited exceptions; rent-increase restrictions include rent-stabilised apartments; lockout protections include residents with at least 30 days' occupancy.

The service drew on city webpages and already displayed accuracy warnings. It should not be described as entirely ungrounded or as issuing legally binding advice.

Response and limits

The city described the service as a pilot and said it would improve it. The Markup explicitly said it was hard to know whether anyone had acted on the false information. Incorrect answers are documented; resulting legal or financial losses and a completed investigation are not.

VAID assessment

Assessment date: 2026-09-09. Consequences-first rubric.

Provisional L2: Documented erroneous legal guidance from a live government information service supports limited harm through incorrect service outputs. Whether anyone acted on those answers is unknown; resulting evictions, employment violations, legal penalties or financial losses are not established and are not counted. Neither the city's remit nor hypothetical downstream harm supports a higher level. L2 is the lowest level supported by the reported outputs, not an upper bound on unknown consequences.