The MyGOV chatbot is back — and it’s still giving wrong answers

You’re at your desk, halfway through your morning coffee, trying to figure out whether your food stall needs a new licence before the local council inspection next week. You remember reading something about a government AI chatbot. You pull it up, type your question, and get an answer in seconds. Confident. Polished. Complete with a “source” reference.

But here’s the unsettling part: that answer might be wrong. And when the wrong answer involves a compliance deadline or a licence requirement, your business pays the price — not the chatbot.

The MyGOV AI chatbot is officially back after being pulled offline earlier this year, but early testing shows it still produces incorrect answers on certain queries. For busy SME owners, that creates a dangerous temptation: a fast answer feels better than a slow, correct one.

TL;DR

• The MyGOV AI chatbot is operational again, but it’s not fully reliable — it still gives wrong answers on some topics.
• Use it to point you in the right direction, not to make final decisions on licences, tax, or compliance.
• Always cross-check anything that affects your business against the official agency website or a phone call.

What This Means

Governments worldwide are experimenting with AI chatbots to handle the endless stream of citizen questions. Malaysia is no exception. The MyGOV chatbot is designed to be a single front door to government services — you ask a question in plain language, and it tells you which forms to fill, which department to contact, and what the requirements are.

The problem is that these chatbots “hallucinate.” That’s the technical term for when an AI generates a response that sounds perfectly plausible but is completely fabricated. The chatbot isn’t lying on purpose; it’s predicting the most likely sequence of words based on its training data. When the data is outdated, incomplete, or contradictory, the result is a confident wrong answer.

The current iteration is better than the version that crashed and went offline — the system has been retrained and tested. But “better” doesn’t mean “reliable.” As the SoyaCincau report points out, the issues are still visible in live usage. For a business owner, the stakes are real.

“The danger of an AI chatbot isn’t that it says ‘I don’t know.’ It’s that it answers wrong with absolute confidence — and you’ve got a stack of orders to fill, so you don’t double-check.”

How This Applies to Malaysian SMEs

Think about the last time you needed something from the government. Maybe it was renewing your company’s business licence, updating your SSM registration, or checking your HRD Corp levy payment. You went through the website, tried to find the right form, and if you were lucky, you got a phone call answered within three business days. The chatbot, when it works, is genuinely useful here — it can cut through the maze and tell you exactly which page to go to.

But here’s where it gets dangerous. In my own testing of AI government tools, the wrong answers tend to cluster around specifics: exact fee amounts (when available), deadline dates that change yearly, and the difference between “must do” and “should do” requirements. A chatbot that tells you an SSM annual declaration is “optional” could set you up for a late fee. A chatbot that gives you last year’s tax deadline sets you up for a penalty. These aren’t hypothetical scenarios — they’re exactly the kind of casual misinformation the testing uncovered.

Consider a common scenario: a small construction firm asking whether it needs a CIDB registration. The chatbot might pull from an older version of the regulations and say it’s only needed for projects above a certain size — when the rule changed and it’s now needed for all projects. You take the chatbot’s word, skip registration, and discover the problem when a client suddenly requires the paperwork to release your next payment. Now you’re stuck in a verification backlog for a registration you should have handled weeks ago.

The practical approach is to treat the chatbot as a research assistant, not a legal adviser. Use it to discover which agency governs your question, what forms exist, and where the official portal is. Then go to that portal and verify. If the portal itself is confusing (a common experience), call the agency directly. The 10 minutes you spend verifying will be cheaper than the hours you’ll spend fixing a compliance mistake later.

Practical Takeaways

• Use the chatbot for “where do I go?” questions — it’s decent at pointing you to the correct agency or department.
• Double-check anything time-sensitive — deadlines, expiry dates, and grace periods change frequently. Verify these on the official agency portal.
• Beware of “simple yes/no” answers — most business questions have conditions and exceptions. If the chatbot gives a blunt answer, treat it as a red flag.
• Save the official agency links — bookmark LHDN, SSM, KWSP, PERKESO, and HRD Corp portals so you can jump straight to the source.
• If a wrong answer costs you, report it — the government has feedback channels for the chatbot. Reporting errors improves it for everyone.

Quick reference: which answers to trust cautiously

If you’re asking about…	Risk if the answer is wrong	What you should do
Business licence renewal requirements	Operations delayed, fines for late renewal	Verify with the issuing agency (MPK, MBI, or relevant council)
SSM company registration or annual declaration	Legal and compliance issues	Check the official SSM portal or use a registered company secretary
Tax filing deadlines or obligations	Penalties from LHDN	Confirm directly on the LHDN website or with your tax agent
EPF/SOCSO/HRD Corp contribution rates	Non-compliance and late payment charges	Refer to the official KWSP, PERKESO, and HRD Corp tables

The Bigger Picture

You might be wondering whether it’s worth using at all if you can’t fully trust it. The answer is yes — carefully. The MyGOV chatbot is going to keep improving, and each iteration will handle more complex queries with greater accuracy. But this is a matter of managing expectations, not dismissing the tool.

What this signals long-term is more significant: the government is actively investing in making its services more accessible through AI. For SMEs, that’s a positive direction. Less queueing, fewer phone calls, more self-service. The agencies that run these systems know public trust is on the line, which is why they’ve pulled and retrained the chatbot before. That’s a good sign — it means they’re paying attention.

Until the reliability gap closes, the smartest move is to build habits that protect you. Use the chatbot for orientation, verify with official sources for decisions, and keep a log of what you asked and what you found. That way, if a dispute ever arises, you can show your due diligence.

In the meantime, treat every government AI answer like advice from a well-meaning colleague — valuable for pointing you in the right direction, but never the final word on something that affects your livelihood.

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