![]() If they wish, IPsoft customers can replace Amelia with simpler avatars that reflect their brands. The tech includes a 3D avatar called Amelia along with the cognition technology and algorithms that support customer interactions. ![]() IPsoft sells chatbot technology to businesses in more than a dozen industries. The range of use cases help explain why IPsoft has adopted a mix‑and‑match product strategy, says Jonathan Crane, the New York City tech company’s commercial director. ![]() What Real Customer Services Leaders Do When Life Goes Off Script Baidu’s Melody looks like a character from a Pixar film, but she helps Chinese physicians diagnose patients. Other companies use animated avatars for very grown‑up tasks. The company is also developing AI‑driven celebrity avatars that might one day interact with fans. Similarly, the Pasadena, CA‑based startup Oben created PAI, an AI that allows individuals to create detailed virtual replicas of themselves that can interact with their contacts or customers when the flesh‑and‑blood person isn’t around. In 2014, IPSoft launched Amelia, an AI chatbot platform fronted by a 3D avatar that they produced by digitizing the features and movements of real‑life model Lauren Hayes. Some AI technology providers, such as New York‑based IPsoft, have adopted a hyper‑realistic approach. Others offer genderless avatars or male‑female tandems such as X.ai’s virtual assistants Andrew and Amy. When it comes to a defining characteristic such as gender, many companies have moved away from an older standard of deferential female characters or voices toward a broader mix of genders. Today’s AI avatar population are a diverse bunch. Companies are following their own cues and knowledge of their customers’ needs to figure out the right form factor for each virtual agent. There isn’t a set playbook, at least not yet. This raises new questions: How do companies make customers and employees feel comfortable interacting with virtual agents? Should they set them up as faceless tools with customizable voice and gender? Or should they design ethnically ambiguous, 3D human avatars such as Autodesk’s Ava, with thousands of programmed facial expressions designed to respond to every nuance of your interactions? “I am surprised now when it doesn’t.”īecause virtual assistants are getting smarter and more capable, companies are assigning them tasks that only humans could do in the past. “Two to three years ago I wouldn’t have expected the kind of quality of interaction and the expectation that AI will understand you,” says Austin Tate, professor of knowledge‑based systems at the University of Edinburgh and director of the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute. In the future, virtual assistants could wind up handling most basic support requests, experts say. They’ve evolved into a category of business applications that’s growing 25% annually and estimated to save businesses $8 billion per year in costs by 2022, according to Juniper.Ĭhatbots powered by AI are already handling phone and even video conversations with customers, helping to reduce the cost of support. AI chatbots and assistants are no longer just the province of giant tech companies like Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft. Many more companies today are facing the same dilemma, only now the stakes are higher and the choices more complex. So, we figured if it was just a name and a nice voice, people could put their own face on it.” As Shawn Carolan, one of Siri’s early investors, told Forbes a few years later, “If Siri looked like me or you, maybe our friends would use it and like it, but somebody in a different part of the world would not. Ultimately, they ditched the avatar, but it was a more out of gut instinct than empirical research. Should they give Siri a humanoid avatar to go along with her voice interface? Or should they render her on screen as she remains today: a small undulating orb, hovering quietly in the background? Nearly a decade ago, the team that designed Siri had a decision to make. x and emotional intelligence are the main determinants of chatbot avatar success.Companies can choose a range of chatbot avatar forms and likenesses for their chatbots to fit audiences and use cases.AI chatbots will save businesses an estimated $8 billion annually by 2022. ![]()
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