Ask Birubala is an AI-powered RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) tool by Newslaundry – an in-house expert, always ready with the right answer, built to simplify subscription support workflows and act as a reliable assistant for all product and technical queries across the organization.
- A troubleshooting assistant: For those head-scratching subscriber issues, Birubala steps in to quickly identify problems and guide resolutions.
- A knowledge assistant: For onboarding new team members or collaborating with external partners. Birubala acts as a comprehensive knowledge base, reducing the learning curve.
- A documentation shortcut: No more endless searching for answers! This tool drastically cuts down the time spent digging through various documents.
“Ask Birubala takes its name from Newslaundry’s brand mascot, Birubala — seen here with her partner-in-crime, Birubal.”
We spoke to Chitranshu Tewari, Director, Product and Revenue, about this project that was conceived and developed as a proof of concept during Chitranshu’s participation in the 2024 CUNY AI Journalism Lab Fellowship, a global program hosted by the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism.
The tool was then developed by him and Newslaundry’s senior developer, Rishabh Dixit.
> Newslaundry built Ask Birubala, an internal AI assistant that answers technical and product questions and drafts replies to subscriber support emails, trained on years of past support threads and internal notes > Unlike most publisher AI projects, no reader ever touches it. It exists to make a small team faster, and senior developers and product managers now save more than 10 hours a week > The real return was redeployment. People who handled basic support moved into data analysis and campaign management, which lifted job satisfaction in roles that had historically seen high attrition > The hardest part wasn't the AI. Most of Newslaundry's processes were undocumented or manual, so writing the documentation had to come first, and that was the slow part > Trust is designed in. Every answer shows its sources, and staff can correct the underlying documents from inside the tool, so the knowledge base improves as it is used
The two core pillars of Birubala
