Conversational AI became the talk of the town when Facebook introduced its first-ever developer-friendly platform to build chatbots on Facebook messenger. Soon, the market was abuzz with chatbots that became increasingly conversational in nature thus ushering a new era of human interaction.
The popularity of chatbots has skyrocketed so much that it has become difficult for those who own digital businesses to make waves in their industry without chatbots. But all the hype has paved way for a lot of misconception regarding chatbots and virtual assistants. That’s why it’s important to get some clarity on the differences between them and how conversational AI is the next best thing ever.
What Is Conversational AI?
Although humans have been using various modes of communication since the dark ages, business-to-customer and employee-to-employee interactions are full of missed opportunities. However, the good news is that we’ve reached the point where we can manipulate machines to understand and respond in human language through an interactive approach, this is called conversational AI. Conversational AI systems are computer systems that communicate with people in an organic manner with the intention to solve their problems.
Major Types Of Conversational AI
Conversational AI can be of two different types, chatbots and virtual assistants. Supported by artificial intelligence, they decipher the meaning of what’s said or typed.
Specifically, what are chatbots:
Any software that responds or performs an action following a question or instruction from the human operating it, is a chatbot.
Basically, there are 3 different types of chatbots, scripted chatbots which work according to a set of rules in a predetermined manner, intelligent chatbots are built on artificial intelligence, and application chatbots that have a combination of both scripted and intelligent chatbots with the graphical user interface.
Intelligent chatbots or AI bots are moving ahead with great strides. AI bots serve as the simplest and sharpest modes of communication for businesses with devices, services, customers, suppliers, and employees everywhere. The best feature of intelligent bots is that they can be taught every day to learn something new.
What Are The Uses Of Conversational AI?
Following are the uses of a conversational AI:
- Provide customer support in an efficient manner without human error or fatigue. Most businesses use conversational AI bots to reply to frequently asked questions (FAQs) so that the quality of the answer remains good regardless of the number of times the question was asked.
- Organize and execute repetitive tasks like scheduling meetings, booking flights, making restaurant reservations and shopping online can be done via an AI bot in the middle.
- The most frequent application of AI bots is that of a personal assistant. of the most intensive applications of AI bots is as a personal assistant. From comprehending open conversations to getting things done AI bots are on the way to becoming intelligent personal assistants. Tech giants like Apple, Microsoft, and Google have already seized this opportunity.
Interesting Real-World Examples Of Conversational AI
Below are some of the most successful applications of conversational AI today:
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WeChat
This dominant and versatile mobile messaging platform in China boasts of having about 700 million monthly active users. The main reason behind its popularity is that it has a chat-based user interface (UI) along with several add-ons features that enable the user to make transactions, shop, hire a taxi, pay bills, hold a conference call and order food online.
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Facebook Messenger
The trailblazer in conversational AI, FB provides a rich interactive UI that’s not only limited to just texting or voice commands but also integrates the options to book a cab, make a purchase or even make peer-to-peer payments.
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Amazon’s Alexa
Hailed as one of the top-notch examples of conversational AI today, Amazon’s Echo device has become a household name already. Over 3 million units have been sold over the past 18 months and that’s because of its wide range of capabilities to play music, respond intelligently, run errands and control other home devices as well.
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Allo from Google
Google’s answer to Facebook’s messenger, Allo has already grabbed attention with some crisp features, privacy updates and its role as an AI digital assistant. Backed by a Google, Allo is well on its way to become Numero Uno in conversational AI capabilities.
The ultimate vision for conversational AI is to be able to handle all kinds of conversations at the same time repeatedly without any human intervention. With the pace at which customer demands are growing, it will get harder for humans to keep track. That’s why more and more businesses are embracing the power of conversational AI chatbots and other virtual assistants.
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