Fed Adapts Economic Data Site for AI Bots

The Federal Reserve is adapting its data tools to accommodate the growing number of artificial intelligence (AI) bots visiting its website. According to Governor Christopher Waller, AI agents already account for half of the visits to the Fed's Economic Data site, FRED.

FRED serves as a single access point for various economic data produced by the Fed and gathered from other government agencies and global sources. The database hosts over 850,000 data series and is used by analysts and decisionmakers in both the public and private sectors.

The Fed will roll out a model context protocol to help AI agents engage with its databases. This digital rule book aims to ensure that data from FRED is accurately cited and reproduced by AI agents, minimizing hallucinations, biases, and hidden assumptions.