Recently, the Chief Justice of India SA Bobde proposed the use of AI-technology and vernacular translation engines to expedite judicial processes. He suggested that this technology can at least initially be used to resolve the language barrier between litigants and court officials, thereby enhancing transparency and making the judgment process faster. The fact that the technology is being viewed as a potential helping hand in something as intrinsically human as the law shows that AI has finally gained the trust of humans to enhance the choices we make and the lives we live holistically.

Advancing the ability of machines to interact with us more naturally is crucial to develop the AI-human relationship further. This transition is rapidly happening through the evolution of Conversational AI solutions. AI-powered conversational Assistants on our devices are playing a crucial role in determining how we interact with the world. The biggest reasons for this transition include advancements in machine learning to better speech recognition, transform text-to-speech and understand the context, the key elements in Conversational AI's backbone-Natural Language Processing (NLP). As machines' dictionary to understand humans get thicker, so does their capabilities, resulting in something completely new, bolder and much more capable-Intelligent Virtual Assistants, a revelation in the world of Conversational AI.  

Intelligent Virtual Assistants: Culminating the evolution of chatbots

For many, IVA is just a fancier nomenclature for a chatbot. While at a surface level, the core thought is the same, there is a vast difference in terms of scope, complexity, and capability. With NLP, man-machine conversations have become far enriched than the basic Q&A with a chatbot. IVA's understand intent, preferences and are built to learn with every conversation.

The focus of a chatbot was to achieve accuracy and automation, whereas IVA's are built with the goal of achieving higher ROI. At Haptik, we have helped brands achieve up to 10X ROI using our IVA's. For the first time, brands today can reach out to masses, carrying out millions of simultaneous interactions with customers, all the while offering the warmth and personal engagement only a conversation can provide. Through IVAs, enterprises have the best of both worlds.

Haptik's Outlook

At Haptik, we aim to help enterprises transform their customer experience using our IVA's. After enabling 3 billion+ interactions and delivering an ROI greater than USD 10 million within the last year alone, we have realized that the need of IVAs, in the global business landscape is massive and diverse.

Haptik currently handles the scale of > 400 million customers across Financial Services, Retail & QSR, Telecom and E-Commerce. We are proud to be the only enterprise vendor globally who has built the technology from the ground up based on actual consumer interactions.

In April 2019, Haptik received a $100mn strategic investment from Reliance Industries that further fuelled our drive to build enterprise-grade, consumer-first products and brings us closer to our goal of becoming a globally admired Conversational AI platform. We have grown to become a full-stack Conversational AI solutions provider with 135+ implementations, and we continue to increase our R&D investments to stay ahead of the curve and bring innovative solutions to our customers. 

Few initiatives we have taken up recently:

• We have formed a dedicated R&D center in Bangalore that aims to build innovative AI algorithms to enhance end-customer experience. The team is currently working on language problems to help expand conversational AI to more users.
• We have also set up Haptik labs in Bangalore, where the team primarily focuses on building new future-looking AI products that are different from the day to day business line.  
• Voice is the natural way of communication with machines today, but it comes with its own set of challenges. We partner with start-ups and companies working on fixing these voice challenges 
• We recently acquired Buzzo.ai to invest in conversational commerce
• We also work with renowned universities on various research projects in AI space 

In the dynamic business environment today, enterprises face all kinds of problems and have multiple expectations, yet for all those cases, IVAs have been the common solution. But, there is much more to them. 

AI to know you better than you know yourself: What the future holds?

Recently, NVIDIA showcased a massive improvement in Conversational AI. It had managed to drop the time taken by a computer to understand and respond to the spoken word to milliseconds! The implications are huge, as it allows AI-driven conversations to become far-more human-like. This is the key today to Conversational AI. Even when people know they are having a conversation with a computer, they expect empathy. Haptik is one of the few companies to have a dedicated conversational designer that ensures that the IVA reflects the brand's personality and ethos.

Along with replicating human-like conversations, facial emotional analysis has also become a domain IVAs are being used for, becoming a USD 20 billion dollar industry today. Machine learning algorithms have become so sophisticated that they can analyze and interpret the emotional content of facial features, and understand the most complex language of all-body language. 

Through supervised learning that exposes an algorithm to millions of images of humans expressing specific emotions, machines can detect the emotional state of the user. In a world where we are increasingly spending time with our computers and smartphones, teaching them to recognize how we are feeling can help deal with feelings of loneliness or other emotional outbursts. Although it may sound straight out of a Black Mirror episode, the idea is being already put to use. Cambridge University student Rana el Kaliouby developed a device that helped children with Asperger syndrome read and respond to facial expressions. She called it the "emotional hearing aid", thus giving birth to a brand new branch of affective computing, which is considered the next big thing in the world of Intelligent Virtual Assistants. 

AI-driven conversational assistance solutions can don infinite hats to be the next retail superstar, most efficient virtual healthcare service provider, travel expert, shopping guru to being a 1am friend we desperately seek sometimes. As per Capgemini's report 'Smart Talk' it is estimated that over the next three years, 70% of consumers, on an average will replace their visits to the dealer, store or bank with their voice assistants. Everywhere in the world and across industries, we are seeing brands incorporate Conversational assistance solutions to enhance the user experience.

The change is not restricted to business alone; it can and is positively impacting the society we live in. Our chatbot Akancha, made for the initiative' Akancha against harassment' started by Akancha Srivastava, has empowered thousands of individuals in their fight against cyber-harassment by guiding them through legal labyrinths. People have found immense utility in IVAs, and they are enjoying the personalization they can offer and are looking forward to defining the kind of relationship they have with such solutions. In the future, IVAs will be the cornerstone of the AI industry, enabling the transition from being just a virtual assistant to a friend, helping people deal with real-life scenarios through empathy rather than just analysis, and serving as a holistic guide-by-the-side for humans in an isolated world.

Image Source: Haptik