Communications Minister Fahmi Fadzil lamented that his staff members have become deeply affected by comments on social media to the point that they have become depressed.

The PKR information chief said his team works hard to clarify policy decisions, but the public tends to blame Fahmi whenever a message does not land well, even for issues belonging to other ministries or external agencies.

"The problem is that my team is depressed because they feel that we must do everything," he said on the latest episode of PKR's "Blue Chair" podcast last night.

He gave Tenaga Nasional Berhad's electricity tariff adjustments issue as an example, which did not fall under his portfolio, but he felt responsible for addressing it as the utility's headquarters lie within his parliamentary constituency of Lembah Pantai.

He explained that his proactive initiative came from a sentiment analysis exercise his team ran that detected widespread public anger over rising electricity bills.

Touting the importance of mental health, he said he rarely reads hateful comments and encourages his team to do the same.

At the PKR congress last month, Fahmi apologised to the party over perceived weaknesses in communicating the government's successes to the voters following the party’s lacklustre results in recent state elections.

Government communications have been an ongoing issue within PKR, with its president Anwar Ibrahim acknowledging in 2023 that there were "weaknesses".

However, party vice-president Dr Zaliha Mustafa urged PKR members at all levels to help expand the party’s reach among the public, saying it was unfair for the burden of communication to be placed on ministers or the party's information chief.

Using AI

During the podcast, Fahmi also shared his use of artificial intelligence (AI), saying he prefers Gemini for its ability to generate visuals, such as graphs.

He said this marked a shift from his research habits as he has pivoted from using keywords on search engines to typing full questions into Google for its AI to answer.

"So now I don't give it (AI tools) keywords; I just ask it a question directly," he added.

As an example, he said he asked Gemini about whether the Negeri Sembilan ruler had the authority to revoke the appointment of state excos.

He said Gemini cited the former Sarawak premier Stephen Kalong Ningkan case on the powers of a governor and explained that authority lies with a ruler as long as it remains "at the pleasure of tuanku".

Additionally, he said he has tested similar prompts across other AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek to compare their responses in terms of neutrality and comprehensiveness.

However, Fahmi did not elaborate on any fact-checking measures to ensure the accuracy of AI's answers to his questions.

He further said that as a government administration member, he has access to a ring-fenced version of Gemini, which prevents data from being leaked externally or shared outside the system.