Ask FT is a feature that's included as part of an FT Professional Subscription that enables subscribers to more easily identify FT content and information which is most relevant to their research needs. It provides useful summaries, citations and links to relevant FT articles. It is not a high-risk AI system as defined in the EU AI Act.

Simple search questions in the same way they would have queried our existing search tools or currently perform Google web searches. Access to Ask FT is via ft.com and subscribers are not required to provide any additional personal data in order to use the feature.

Answers are derived from and quote only FT content which is available through our site. Ask FT is not searching other third party sources or the wider internet to provide its answers.

Answers generated by Ask FT are based solely on Financial Times journalism but this technology can make mistakes and occasionally misinterpret the content that answers are based on. Ask FT provides the source articles and extracts used to help subscribers validate the answers and we will continue to monitor and improve the answer quality over time.

It searches as far back as 2004 where the ft.com digital archive starts.

There will be no extra charge for using Ask FT and it will be included as part of an FT Professional Subscription.

FT Professional operates an engagement-based pricing model whereby you’re only charged for subscribers who frequently access FT content. Ask FT contributes to this model on a 1 answer equates to 1 article basis. This conservative approach reflects that Ask FT has been developed to create extra utility for Professional subscribers rather than to increase the volume of articles subscribers are reading.

Ask FT is accessed through an icon in the main navigation bar on ft.com. Subscribers can also use the feature by going directly to ask.ft.com.

Ask FT does multiple LLM requests to generate an answer and currently uses both Anthropic Claude 3 Haiku and Claude 3.5 Sonnet in the answer flow. Please note however that Ask FT is model agnostic and our goal is to use the best combination of models to meet our subscribers’ needs. We will be assessing new models as they are released in the future.

Only the search query itself. No information about the subscriber or client organisation is shared. Anthropic is not permitted to use the inputs or outputs to train their models.

Subscriber inputs and the generated answers can only be viewed by members of the Ask FT development team. Data about what specific subscribers or organisations have been asking is not available to our editorial staff.

This limited access to the data is to assist with the further improvement of the feature and so that we can better understand our customers' information needs.

A data flow diagram for Ask FT can be downloaded here.

There are no additional charges for use of this feature and its use is covered by the existing terms of your organisation’s FT Professional Subscription.

In accordance with the FT Professional Digital Subscription Terms the FT only uses and stores data in accordance with applicable data protection and privacy laws, and as set out in its Privacy Policy. We would not envisage that normal use of Ask FT would involve any additional disclosure of confidential information, but the FT is already bound by the confidentiality obligations set out in the General Terms.

No additional contractual terms are required for Ask FT, and, given the nature of the feature, which we are including as part of an FT Professional Subscription, it is neither necessary nor proportionate to respond to additional due diligence queries relating to Ask FT.

It is not permitted to share Ask FT answers and copying the full text to share with others is against the FT's Copyright Policy. If a subscriber shares an "extract" or "abstract" (as per the Copyright Policy), they must state that AI generates Ask FT answers and that FT staff have not checked or moderated them.

You have the option of opting out of access to Ask FT for your subscription and can do this using a toggle button in the Subscription Manager platform. By default the button is set to 'Opt in' so no action is required if you're happy for your subscribers to use Ask FT.

Please note that opting out can only be done for your entire subscription and isn’t available to do at an individual subscriber level.

Dear Team,

The Financial Times has built a new feature that uses AI to answer queries by finding and summarising FT articles.

Ask FT enables trusted news to be digested efficiently, and can help you get smart quickly on complex themes and emerging stories. It will provide you with:

1. A brief overview of FT's coverage related to your query over your chosen time period
2. The source articles the summary was generated from for deeper reading
3. A solid starting point for in-depth research on topics

More information about Ask FT including FAQs and video guides can be found here.

Try it by submitting a query at ask.ft.com. You can also access it from the 'Ask FT' icon in the main FT navigation bar when you’re logged in to your ft.com account.

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