Is your Freshchat chatbot EU AI Act ready?

Freshchat and Article 50, briefly

Freshchat is part of the Freshworks suite and, with Freddy, carries an AI layer that generates answers from your knowledge base. In practice Freshchat often runs on the website and inside a mobile app with the same bot behind it. A banner on your site then covers only half your users.

What our scans found on Freshchat sites

We have not yet scanned enough sites where Freshchat was the first widget we detected to say anything meaningful here. As soon as the sample is large enough it will appear, counts included. We would rather publish nothing than a percentage based on two sites.

How we detect Freshchat

Our scanner looks for these signals on your public page. Two independent signals are required for a match, so a blog post that merely names the vendor does not count.

Script hosts

wchat.freshchat.comwchat.eu.freshchat.com

JS globals

window.fcWidget

DOM selectors

#fc_frame#freshworks-container

Where the AI notice goes in Freshchat

Admin, Chat or Widget, Welcome message, or the first step of your Freddy bot. With an active bot that first step wins over the widget setting.

1. 1

   Open Freshchat and go to Admin, Widget.

2. 2

   Find the widget welcome message setting.

3. 3

   Then go to Bots and open the bot that replies first.

4. 4

   Edit the first step or the Freddy opening message.

5. 5

   Publish the bot and test on web and in the app.

Freshchat documentation: support.freshchat.com

What goes wrong most often with Freshchat

Three mistakes we run into on sites that did set the notice. Each one costs points in the scan, and each one takes minutes to fix.

• Web handled, app forgotten

  The banner snippet is web only. If the same bot runs in your iOS or Android app, the notice has to be in the first message of the bot there. That is a separate change in your app config.

• Notice in the knowledge base instead of the bot

  Freddy draws on your knowledge base articles. An article about your use of AI only surfaces when somebody asks. The notice belongs in the opening message, not in the source it draws from.

• Several widgets per brand

  Freshworks customers often keep a widget ID per brand or region, each with its own welcome message. Check which widget ID actually sits in your page before changing anything.

Checking that it works in Freshchat

First find in your page source which widget id actually loads and compare it with the id you edited in Freshchat; with several brands or regions those are often not the same. Then open your site in an incognito window and start a conversation. If the bot also runs in your mobile app, run the same test on a fresh install of that app, because the banner on your website is invisible there and the notice has to come from the bot message.

After that you can scan again. Our scan looks at the same public page a visitor does, so what you see in an incognito window is roughly what we see.

Frequently asked questions

Running another widget as well?

• Chatwoot and Article 50
• Landbot and Article 50
• Botpress and Article 50