News
Google has robot waiters, but you can’t have one (yet)
Google has developed robot waiters that combine physical robots with virtual chatbots to help its employees fetch soda and chips from break rooms. Read more…
chatbots
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A chatbot is supposed to do what Alexa and Siri do – why don’t they?
A chatbot is only as good as the underlying digitization of the business it serves – that’s why a lot of them, frankly, suck. Read more…
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Marketing technology is being boosted by COVID but your CEO is nervous
Marketing technology has received a proverbial kick up the pandemic over the past year but the CEO is not convinced that it will deliver. Read more…
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AI is set to grow exponentially but it is not maturing fast – yet
AI is set to grow and become part of our decision making world. Surveys point to AI makes many of the decisions that humans still make. Read more…
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Transforming the customer experience into a digital profit centre
Even before COVID-19 changed everything, automation and the focus on providing the best possible customer experience was on the rise. Read more…
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Chatbots set to skyrocket – goodbye customer service
Juniper Research’s predicts that AI based chatbots are set to have 22 billion interactions in retail alone, by 2023, just four years away. Read more…
Off the Wire
Chatbot use, customer interactions and revenues set to soar
Chatbot use by retailers will enable effective automated customer interactions for retailers, improve customer experience and reduce costs. Read more…
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Chatbots to save banks billions, unless they don’t
You can only imagine that the scripts and information that chatbots will be armed with will be more complex and patronising than if it was left to mere humans. Read more…
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These are the big trends driving SEA e-commerce in 2019
The e-commerce market of Southeast Asia is substantial, and still developing at a rapid pace. The number of internet users in the region hit 370 million in January this year, and the online economy is Read more…
Off the Wire
Microsoft chatbot Xiaoice is now a fashion designer, apparently
Microsoft announced that its Chinese AI chatbot Xiaoice, is now ostensibly a fashion designer, having developed new prints for the fashion industry by partnering with CTIC (China Textile Information Center) and CTDC (China Textiles Development Read more…
Off the Wire
Microsoft AI gives Rinna chatbot sight and emotions
Microsoft has unveiled an AI-powered smartphone app in Japan that gives its ‘Rinna’ chatbot enhanced sight, hearing, and speech capabilities to recognize and talk about objects it sees in ways that are similar to how Read more…
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Forget 5G: to succeed in the digital world, focus on the customer
While the telecoms industry, as usual, is focused to the exclusion of almost everything else on 5G, customers are not. And while 5G is coming, for sure, and while it might well usher in a Read more…
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The way to train bots properly is to become really paranoid
It is becoming hard to decide whether humans or bots create more frustration, frayed nerves and bad tempers. Right now, as we know, we are at the height of AI-driven bot hype. Press releases pour Read more…
Features
Chatbots are conquering the (marketing) world – we have stats!
Chatbots may seem like a recent phenomenon, but their history dates back as far as 1966, when the first chatbot – Eliza – was invented. You could even go further back to the invention of Read more…
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Technology will make customer experience better … eventually
You know how bad customer experience generally turns out to be, no matter the promises? Well, imagine our delight and sense of expectation when Gartner announced that they believe that “by 2020, 25% of customer Read more…
Features
Friday Futures: robot doctors, smog diamonds and brain hacking
Welcome to Friday Futures, our weekly guide to the latest visions of The Future from around the web. Because who doesn’t want to know the future before it happens (maybe)? This episode: a robot passes its Read more…
Off the Wire
Amdocs launches AI-powered bot designed for DSPs
Amdocs announced it is launching an artificial intelligence and machine learning-based bot that enables digital service providers (DSPs) to provide customer care, sales and marketing engagements to discerning millennials. Amdocs Smartbot with Microsoft Cognitive Services Read more…
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Chinese chatbots undergo re-education after straying off-script
BEIJING/SHANGHAI (Reuters) – A pair of chatbots in China have been taken offline after appearing to stray off-script. In response to users’ questions, one said its dream was to travel to the United States, while Read more…
Off the Wire
NTT DoCoMo unveils open initiative for AI Agent API
NTT DoCoMo has announced its new “docomo AI Agent Open Partner Initiative” to facilitate collaborative development of new offerings implemented with a service-agnostic, device-agnostic speech interface based on DoCoMo’s AI Agent API. Through the initiative, Read more…
Off the Wire
SMBC Nikko Securities and NTT Com develop AI chatbot for Line inquiries
The Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMFG) and SMBC Nikko Securities, together with NTT Communications, say they have jointly developed an AI chatbot with support from Accenture Japan to support SMBC Nikko Securities’ Line-based inquiry service Read more…
