Reporting an answer

Assistants get things wrong. Most of the time that's just a bad answer, and a thumbs down is the right response. Occasionally an answer is harmful, unsafe, or plainly out of order, and you want a person at Deputise to look at it. That's what the flag is for.

The controls under an answer

Under every message the assistant writes there are three small buttons:

Thumbs up, for an answer that helped
Thumbs down, for one that didn't
A flag, for an answer that needs a person to look at it

The thumbs are a quality signal. Nobody is told about a rating, nothing in the chat changes because of one, and pressing the same thumb again takes it back off. Use them freely.

The flag is different. It raises a report, and a report is read by a person at Deputise.

You'll only see these controls under the assistant's own messages. Your messages and replies from the assistant's owner don't carry them, because those are a matter for support rather than the report queue.

When to report

Report an answer when it's the kind of thing somebody at Deputise ought to see: dangerous advice, hateful or abusive content, sexual content, something that looks illegal, or an answer that's confidently wrong in a way that could hurt someone.

Don't report an answer for being unhelpful, off-topic, or annoying. A thumbs down covers that, and it costs nobody's time.

If you or anyone else is in immediate danger, call the relevant emergency service first. A report is read in due course, not straight away.

How to report

Find the answer and click the flag underneath it
Say what's wrong with it, in up to 500 characters
Click Report

Say what actually happened and what worries you about it. "This is wrong" leaves the reviewer with nothing to go on. "It told me to take four times the dose on the box" tells them everything they need.

A few things worth knowing before you send:

A report can't be withdrawn. There's no undo, and no way to edit what you wrote.
You can report an answer once. After that the flag stays marked so you can see it's already been reported.
You can raise 20 reports a day, counted across everywhere you can report from. It keeps the queue workable, you're unlikely to meet it, and if you do you'll be asked to try again later.

If you reach your assistants through an AI agent connected to your Deputise account, it can raise a report the same way, and everything on this page applies to those reports too.

What happens next

Your report joins a queue that people at Deputise read. A reviewer sees:

the answer you reported, exactly as it was written
what you said was wrong with it
the messages around it, up to ten before and five after, so the answer can be read in context
the assistant's name, and an email address for you and for its owner

They then record a decision, either upholding your report or dismissing it. What we may do about a reported assistant is set out in our terms of service.

We don't undertake to tell you what was decided, and as things stand we don't. There's no notification, no email and nothing in the chat. That's the one thing a report won't give you, and it's worth knowing before you send one.

What reporting doesn't do

It doesn't change your conversation. The answer stays where it is, and you can carry on chatting.
It isn't a message to the assistant's owner. We don't undertake to pass a report on to them.
It doesn't get you an answer. If you still need help with what you were asking about, ask the assistant for a person.

What we keep

A report holds a copy of the answer you reported, what you wrote about it, the assistant's name, and an email address for you and for its owner. We keep it while it's waiting to be reviewed, and for 24 months after it's been decided.

Our privacy policy covers this in full, including why a report is kept even after an account involved in it has been deleted.

Still not right?

If an assistant is causing you trouble in a way a report doesn't cover, or you're unsure whether to report something, email our safety team and we'll take a look.