About AskNews

An answer engine for central bank communications.

AskNews answers questions using only what central banks and finance ministries have officially published: policy statements, press conferences, minutes, speeches and outlook reports. The core archive is the Federal Reserve in English and the Bank of Japan in Japanese.

How it answers

01

Ask

Type in English or Japanese, about a decision, a vote, a forecast or something said at a press conference.

02

Retrieve

AskNews searches the archive of official releases and transcripts, by words and by meaning, and reads the passages that match.

03

Cite

Every sentence links to its release. Quotes from video carry a timestamp that opens the player at that moment.

Principles

Sources first

Every claim is tied to an official release. If the archive does not say it, the answer does not either.

Declines outside the archive

Stock picks, market forecasts and general news get a plain note on what is covered, not a guess.

Two languages

Interface and answers in English or Japanese. Releases stay in their original language, marked with a badge; any translated title is labelled.

Data sources and terms

SourceWhat is usedLanguageTerms
Federal Reserve BoardStatements, press conferences (video, captions and transcript), minutes, speechesENU.S. government work, public domain; cited as the source
Bank of JapanStatements, press conferences and their summaries, minutes, Summary of Opinions, Outlook Report, speechesJAReproduction permitted with attribution for non-commercial use; nothing is altered
European Central BankPress releasesENFree use with the ECB cited as the source
Bank for International SettlementsCentral bankers' speeches (feed descriptions)ENNon-commercial redistribution with the BIS cited
U.S. Bureau of Economic AnalysisReleasesENU.S. government work, public domain
Ministry of Finance, JapanPress conferences and policy releasesJAPublic Data License 1.0, attribution and a note on processing
Financial Services Agency, JapanPress conferences and releasesJAPublic Data License 1.0, attribution and a note on processing
Bank of EnglandTitles and links onlyENTerms allow no republishing of excerpts

AskNews is a non-commercial demonstration. Each source's terms are checked before material is used.

How generated content is labelled

Anything AskNews generates carries the same AI mark. Official text, such as statements, transcripts and report sections, is shown as published and is never rewritten.

AIAI summary

Summaries of releases and the summary line in lists

AIAI brief

Daily and meeting briefs

AIAI title

Meeting titles in the timeline

AIExtracted

Policy decisions extracted from a meeting

AIAI translation

Titles shown in a language other than the original

Code

The archive, retrieval and answer pipeline are open source. github.com/aspirit/asknews