Since the launch of ChatGPT, AI has made mainstream media headlines week after week.
The momentum seems unstoppable, following another swirl of stories in the past seven days.
On that note, here are some of the most eye-catching AI scoops from the past week, each touching the customer experience space in one way or another.
Air AI Introduces a Bot That Handles 40-Minute-Long Customer Calls
In recent days, the following demo from little-known tech provider Air AI went viral.
The video shows a bot making a proactive, outbound support call, sounding human-like and engaging in small talk.
Sources suggest that the bot has infinite memory, perfect recall, and sparks actions across over 5,000 apps.
As an excited LinkedIn user wrote:
It’s basically like having 100,000 sales and customer service reps at the tap of a button 🤯 This will revolutionize entire industries.
Indeed, the demo is impressive. Yet – to somewhat dampen the fire – it’s critical to note that it is likely a demo, not a live call recording.
After all, they do not discuss the day of the test drive; they skip straight to the time.
Moreover, the bot never demonstrates an understanding of what the customer said. It acknowledges them and moves on to the next query.
As such, older techniques – such as entity extraction and paraphrasing – are seemingly at play.
Nonetheless, it’s a fun demo that underlines the strides businesses are making in conversational AI and natural voice in particular.
OpenAI Releases Code Interpreter
Code Interpreter is a ChatGPT plug-in that allows users to upload their own data. It then applies a built-in Python interpreter to run and analyze functions on that data.
From there, it’ll produce files for downloading based on those calculations – all within a sandboxed, firewalled container.
A set of Python packages also comes with Code Interpreter, allowing users to build charts, graphs, and other visualizations of their data. They may even make predictions.
Finally, there is a “show work” button, so the business may see the code it’s running.
All this may have significant implications for data & analytics professionals, who may begin to automate more complex workflows with ChatGPT.
Anthropic Unveils Claude 2
Claude is a GenAI bot built by Anthropic, following the premise of “constitutional AI”.
As such, AI trains its LLM by following a set of rules instead of relying on human feedback.
In doing so, it has produced some impressive results. Indeed, Shobhit Varshney, VP & Sr. Partner at IBM, says:
On real-world client use cases, [we] did some A/B testing between GPT and Claude 2 – super impressed. 4-5x cheaper than GPT4-32k, knowledge cutoff early 2023.
Alongside this, Claude 2 can handle 75,000 words as input, which is more than three times as much as GPT-4.
Moreover, users can upload multiple documents simultaneously and have Claude summarize them. Users may then ask questions about the content, which Claude can answer.
Interestingly, Zoom will soon embed Claude into its CCaaS platform – helping customers solve queries autonomously and agents find answers across systems.
Yet, this is just the start. Its new word-crunching capabilities may bring further workforce optimization (WFO) use cases to life.
IBM Releases WatsonX, A GenAI Platform
IBM launched WatsonX, an AI, data, and governance platform that allows enterprises to create “open, trusted, and targeted” generative AI.
In doing so, the enterprise tech giant strives to fill a “meaningful gap” in a competitive landscape.
The proposition is similar to Amazon Bedrock in this sense. Indeed, it offers the foundational GenAI models that businesses can build on and train for particular use cases, jargon, and environments.
Moreover, organizations may apply the best-fit model to any specific application – be it in customer service, IT automation, or cybersecurity.
All this is available in the watsonx.ai studio within the WatsonX platform, which also hosts watsonx.data and watsonx.governance tools.
watsonx.data is a data store – sitting on an open lakehouse architecture – which pipes through business-specific data to enhance the models crafted in the studio.
Meanwhile, watsonx.governance promises to provide a toolkit that ensures any workflow fuelled by the platform’s GenAI is responsible, explainable, and transparent.
Bard Goes from Strength-to-Strength
Google Bard is now available in 27 countries and 40 languages. Indeed, it now supports Arabic, Chinese, German, Hindi, Spanish, and more.
In addition, the tech pioneer has integrated Bard with Google Lens, which will allow users to upload images. Bard may then extract insights from those and even suggest funny captions.
That example highlights how Google may integrate its portfolio to extract further value from GenAI.
It has already done this by embedding its Generative AI AppBuilder, which harnesses Bard to allow businesses to build bots using natural language alone, into its CCaaS platform.
Now, with this new Lens-enabled capability, these businesses may soon automate more customer queries by incorporating images into their bot workflows.
Finally, Google has added text-to-speech capabilities to Bard, which may accelerate its development of GenAI-powered voicebots.
Elon Musk Increases His Stake In the AI Game
Elon Musk has assembled a team of engineers from many prominent US tech firms to launch x.AI.
Announcing formation of @xAI to understand reality
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 12, 2023
Fuelling this endeavor are Musk’s concerns over the potential dangers of AI. To circumvent these, x.AI aims to develop a “safer, more curious” AI system to reshape the future.
In doing so, he plans to rip up the process of explicitly programming morality into an AI model.
Instead, x.AI plans to help AI understand the true nature of the universe, so it prioritizes safety from an inherent moral perspective.
By keeping humanity as the focal point, Musk believes that x.AI will steadfastly support humanity as it reaches the point of superintelligence.
Wait… There’s More!
Alongside all this, the FTC has kickstarted an investigation into OpenAI, Shopify released a Copilot solution of its own, and Stability AI announced a tool that turns sketches into impressive images.
Bill Gates also shared his optimistic take on the future AI, a refreshing story amongst all the doom and gloom prophecies for the space.
Yet, the take conveniently comes the week before Microsoft Inspire – an event in which Microsoft will likely announce many more major moves, perhaps involving Copilot.
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