New Ground
Team Manitou hopes you’ve had a fun and healthy summer! It’s hard to believe we aren’t supposed to wear white anymore — VCs, stay tuned for our fall lineup of articleOne fleece vests! But as with outdated fashion norms, Manitou Research believes systems and methods can always be improved. With the rapid emergence and halting adoption of AI across industries and professions, we saw a gap, and we’re filling it with our forthcoming launch of Plus and Pro tiers, which have been in beta for the past several months.
Built and refined by creatures of the Beltway (for better or worse) — those who have, combined, lived and worked in and around Washington for decades and truly understand users’ pain points — articleOne is the first platform to fill that gap between hulking, expensive, and often outdated policy research tools, and “magic-wand” substitutes that promise the world — built on flimsy foundations. articleOne will not displace ChatGPT and similar platforms that do a pretty good job of summarizing key trends and developments, and helping you get quick one-shot answers. But for the past several years, our customers and colleagues have shared concern about veracity and the amount of time spent having to validate information, or rewrite it to fit a specific need. And there are simply some roles and workflows that can’t easily be replaced by AI, and policy professionals are no exception. Generic “politikspeak” (not a real thing; don’t bother looking it up) generated by generalized platforms doesn’t really accomplish anything beyond, well, making one sound like yet another Washington insider.
In a similar vein, articleOne is not seeking to compete with broadly targeted “workplace efficiency” tools like Microsoft Copilot, which admittedly does a pretty impressive job handling our inboxes. (We do have plans to improve workflows specific to the policy industry; more on that in a future post!) Our tailored solutions help avoid the mishmash approach of:
I have a problem and don’t have a solution 🫤
💭👊 AI! 🪄✨🤯
… 🤨
I still have a problem, just more confusing and expensive 😤
Our mission is to Make Policy Intelligent, and we’re proud to carry the torch from and alongside others who have made invaluable contributions to civic life in the United States and beyond (RIP ProPublica API). We’re also proud to break new ground as the first commercially available, multi-tiered, AI-forward policy tool on the general market that isn’t a retrofit of an existing platform. We welcome competition in the space, and we sleep well at night knowing others will look to build upon and improve what we’ve set out to provide with articleOne. But best of all, articleOne helps make policy accessible, understandable, and relevant to users of all backgrounds — including discounts for K-12, non-profits, NGOs, and academia.
With their release in the coming days, Plus and Pro will open a new suite of capabilities for policy professionals, students, and the general public to learn more about their government — and about how to engage with, and shape, public policy. Our groundbreaking Ellipsis™ module provides the fastest, most comprehensive situational awareness for those seeking to stay in-the-know for professional or personal reasons. We’ve designed it with the “alerts firehose” in mind: that lumbering but chaotic tsunami of bells and whistles set long ago, left unread in your inbox because you just aren’t going to read that eighth health policy rag every morning. We believe we’ve struck a balance that enables users to set their own volume and tempo to their policy workflows.
Other modules* like Reader and Lookback (beta), and improvements to existing features like PolicyStream™, SpeechWriter, and MemoBuilder, will help those studying, crafting, and executing public policy — and those whose industries or livelihoods are shaped by it. We at Manitou Research are constantly innovating so that you don’t have to; we’ve spoken with more than one customer who said they worry about adopting the latest and greatest and having to endlessly reevaluate whether a solution is the best to fit their needs. articleOne helps relieve that burden with its modular and adaptable design that allows you to focus on the tasks at hand, and lets us worry about the ever-shifting technological landscape. (Our forthcoming Enterprise tier will permit both, for those who seek or require customization and tailoring to their specific needs — or those who just really love tinkering under the hood.)
Finally, we’re excited to set other precedents along the way. As a Virginia-based, American-owned company, our physical and cloud infrastructure is hosted in the United States, with additional protocols in place from the outset to support compliance pathways like IL-4 and FedRAMP, should our government customers require them. And — as always — we never sell, share, or trade our users’ information to pad our revenue streams (see our Privacy and other policies for full terms, which can be found in the footer of our website). AI is expensive, and building an AI-forward platform isn’t cheap; but we’ve worked hard to constrain costs by being selective about how to allocate resources where they’re required most — without sacrificing the quality and reliability that our customers have come to know.
We hope you’ll look for launch announcements in the coming days and, as always, we welcome your feedback and suggestions for improvements as we continue to grow.
Onward!
* Module availability and constraints vary by tier
Ed. note: This post was written without the use of artificial intelligence.