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Jamie the chatbot has been suspended from the Ministry of Health's website.

This comes after a website visitor asked a question about Covid-19, and the chatbox dispensed advice for safe sex instead.

The exchange was then uploaded to Reddit Singapore, where it has gathered about 3,200 upvotes.

The original poster (OP) subsequently updated in the comments section that this was not the only instance of Jamie behaving strangely:

Similar screen shots are also being circulated on WhatsApp, where Jamie responded with the same messages of safe sex and abstinence when asked, "My mother tested Covid positive. What should I do?"

In response to queries from Mothership, MOH said they are aware of the "misaligned replies" by Jamie, and have temporarily disabled the chatbot's function.

In the meantime, the ministry is conducting a system check and working on improvements.

Members of the public with queries on Covid-19 can visit a dedicated site, the statement added.

Who's Jamie?

Jamie is a Virtual Assistant born in 2014 to GovTech (Government Technology Agency of Singapore) and SNDGO (Smart Nation and Digital Government Office).

She exists across 70 government agency websites, handling less complex queries.

The chatbot utilises a Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, which is programmed to process and analyse large amounts of natural language data.

This enables Jamie to understand contexts and nuances of the questions, and even ask follow-up questions to refine her answer.

However, as there are many ways that a question can be posed, it can become tedious to "train" a chatbot to pull up the appropriate response, Jude Tan, chief commercial officer of chatbot training company Intnt.ai, told The Straits Times.

The likelihood of it providing a wrong answer also increases as its database of responses grows, Tan added.

Top image via Reddit Singapore, GovTech's Facebook page