News / Customs declaration? Chat GPT goes with the Phlo

Saurabh Goyal

A UK company is developing ChatGPT to be one of the first artificial intelligence systems that will complete customs clearance forms for UK exporters.

Founded in 2017, digital forwarder Phlo Systems has told its 30-strong work force to sign up to ChatGPT and to start applying the system to develop an AI product for importers too.

CEO and founder Saurabh Goyal told The Loadstar: “We have started testing for customs specific use cases and we are developing the chat bot by asking it customs specific questions, at the moment the responses are 80% correct.” But Mr Goyal added: “Within three to six months we expect to be able to complete a customs declaration.”

Phlo sees two use cases for Chat GPT: as a chat bot, to support exporters by answering questions; and to prepare customs declarations for UK exporters. The company is also looking to develop the system to handle exports from other countries.

There are some 98 fields to populate in a standard declaration form and documents, including a packing list and invoice.

In addition to developing ChatGPT for customs Phlo is looking to add a data analytics function for freight forwarders and shippers through ChatGPT plug-ins which will be available soon via openAPI.

“These plug-ins would allow users to extend the power of ChatGPT by allowing it to connect to regular consumer apps such as Word docs, Excel sheets, pdfs and so on without any programming effort. This would mean we could upload an Excel sheet to ChatGPT and ask it to generate meaningful user analytics and graphs.”

The company is already using the Microsoft AI system for an extensive range of work, including generating letters and emails, proposals to customers, blogs and social media output, designing data models for new software functions, debugging software code, documentation of code already written, technical research, market research, designing course content for new employees, among other use cases.