Indian telecommunications giant Jio has unveiled its patent-filed artificial intelligence-powered Video Call Assistant at India Mobile Congress (IMC) 2019. This all-new AI bot would allow businesses to take their customer service to the next level by allowing them to automate their communications. Furthermore, the best thing about this bot is that it is not just powered by AI but when it comes to accessing it, it can be done via a 4G phone call, without even using/installing any other application.
This entire project has been done in collaboration with one of the subsidiaries of Reliance Industries in the US called Radisys.
The bot is built in such a way that it is capable of listening and understanding a customer’s queries. And Jio has even demonstrated the system at IMC 2019. When a number was dialled a video chat option also popped. And upon tapping on that option, a human-looking bot appeared on the screen. To show the bot’s capability, they even asked a question which it managed to answer.
The Bot Maker
The AI bot is not the only thing that the telecommunication giant has introduced, Jio has launched the Bot Maker which is also a part of the AI Video Call Assistant. The bot maker is essentially a toolkit for the developers. The main reason behind this launch is that Jio wants to help small businesses to come up with their own AI-based bots as this toolkit can help them build and deploy the AI assistant in a small fraction of time.
That is not all, one of the features that seem to be great is that the AI Assistant can be customised according to the brands need even if it’s an avatar. And all this is possible with the bot maker.
Bots That Made History
When it comes to phone bot, Google is already in the game. If you remember, last year, the company has launched the feature where the AI assistant could mimic a human voice. Powered by Google Duplex (a service that uses AI to call restaurants and speak on our behalf to book a table), the AI bot uses a very natural speech pattern which includes fillers like ‘er’ and ‘mmm’, ‘hmm’ so that it sounds more human.
Despite its capability of mimicking human voice, the AI bot came under the controversy in May this year. It has been revealed that a quarter of Google Duplex calls are actually placed by humans. And Google responded to the entire event by saying that it helps in obtaining data to train its AI. And eventually, it would also decrease the need for human involvement.
Outlook
In the past couple of days, Reliance Jio has made several headlines. It recently announced that it is going to charge 6 paise per minute for voice calls made to subscribers of other telcos to account for the termination charges it pays its rivals. The company has been under criticism since the very moment it has made this announcement. But now with this latest launch, the company seems to be gaining that rapport back.
