Any change that has ever brought about a major shift in the human way of living has always been accompanied by a change in how we communicate. Be it the great industrial revolution, the sociopolitical changes in the early 20th century, the Cold War or the advent of the information age at the end of the 20th century. Communication and its advancements have always played a vital role in human history. 

 With the dawn of the information age, we have faster communication channels. We have communication channels that use different transport mediums to transmit data. Information itself is no longer just text. Information can now be in the form of voice, video or text. The mode of access to information, too, has many varied end points of consumption. This complexity in information, introduced by the information age, prompted the formation of governing bodies that would advise people and organizations on ways to secure one's data.  

Companies that provide in-app communication services are numerous in today's world- such a solution is Sendbird. "Sendbird's mission was to extend the WhatsApp and WeChat experience into applications like Paytm", said Shailesh Nalawadi, Head of Product, Sendbird, in a conversation with INDIAai. Sendbird has taken the core messaging experience that you get from the public messenger apps and turned them into the brand-centred experience. Payments apps, E-commerce apps, and ride-sharing apps- all have a messaging component. 

Impact with AI 

With the surge of LLM models, Sendbird is aiding its clients to deploy LLM-powered AI experiences in their mobile applications. They facilitate the creation and deployment of LLM-powered AI bots within conversational experiences. 

 "We are experimenting with creating matchmaking bots; we have customers in the wallet and payments application space. We are creating AI chatbots that can provide support to our customers. You can converse with an AI bot and say – 'How much money did I spend on coffee in the last six months'- it's a free-form query. The AI bot can go through all your transactions and give you a response", said Shailesh talking about the role of AI in Sendbird. 

 Sendbird's customers are spread across all three major geographies of the world. Within India, they have Paytm and Dream11 that uses their solutions. 

Will AI replace humans? 

"Every time a new disruptive technology comes along, there is this theory that says there's a fixed pool of labor of work to be done", said Shailesh. 

 He believes that the nature of work changes when productivity increases, with the advent of novel technologies. It creates more work and has a higher level of intellectual capabilities. Therefore, Shailesh opines that the nature of white-collar work will change and potentially improve.  

He added that the nature of specific jobs will change, but in the long run, the equilibrium will be restored, and people will be able to do more intelligent work.

Ensuring data security 

 Today, the best LLMs tend to be the ones that are offered by the largest companies in this space - Open AI, Google has some LLM services, AWS and so on. One of the major reasons that customers prefer these big techs is the data security they offer. 

However, data security is not a major concern at Sendbird. Sendbird does not provide generative AI services in the context of the user journey of our customers. Their customers are dating and fintech applications, which are on-demand applications. 

 "The use cases at Sendbird are constrained. The things an AI bot can do in the context of a buyer-seller or classified application are limited. And that is why the ethics problem is not as serious because it's not a general-purpose q&a system”, stated Shailesh. 

Going forward  

Shailesh is a strong believer in R&D. Engineers and product managers at Sendbird is very much at the forefront of looking at the tech that exists today, looking at the trend lines of this technology, and asking where these lines intersect. 

 "What new things are we capable of? And what can we do to build towards a future?" Shailesh wonders. 

 Presently, Sendbird is investing time to build prototypes of conversational AI experiences on top of large language models, and they are building those prototypes in conjunction with their customers across the globe.