The Alexa team demoed the new feature during the event by presenting a scenario in which Alexa uses the voice of a dead grandmother to read a bedtime story to a little boy
Dale John Wong — Alexa will soon be able to talk using a loved one’s voice (even if they’re dead)
That quote from a recent article builds on the digital resurrection post from June 14th. When they say anyone’s voice — they mean it. Take a look at the video below starting at the 1:01:58 mark, which is a different application of the same scenario — resurrecting a lost loved one. If you have not already responded to the poll below, please provide your thoughts.
Alexa Can Mimic Anyone’s Voice was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
With WhatsApp expanding its capabilities and scope, it is evolving as a platform for conversational commerce, giving rise to the concept of WhatsApp commerce — offering and selling products and services to customers using WhatsApp as the primary channel. This development poses a massive opportunity for Insurance brands to leverage. Now, they can simplify the complex process of buying, renewing, or claiming policies by having simple conversations with their customers on their preferred communication channel.
We spoke to Sushant Khairnar (Head-Digital Transformation, Kotak Life) and Swati Mishra (Strategic Partnerships, WhatsApp) to understand how Insurance brands can reap the benefits of WhatsApp commerce.
You can watch the complete on-demand webinar here or continue to read a summary of the main takeaways discussed.
In this no holds barred candid discussion, the panelists deep dived into the following topics and more:
How insurance brands can power an end-to-end buying journey on WhatsApp
Use of marketing notifications to nudge customers
Providing personalized buying assistance to customers
Handling agent onboard, support & engagement
Key commerce use cases for Insurance
Powering an end-to-end buying journey on WhatsApp
The typical purchase journey for an insurance customer would involve going through multiple web pages filled with text and technical terms. But WhatsApp commerce, with its recent introduction of features and UI elements, is empowering brands to make this entire process a lot simpler and more conversational for their customers. Sushant Khairnar talked about how very few Life Insurance companies have a customer-facing app. And even they were contemplating on having one. But when they saw the pickup on the WhatsApp channel in the initial months, they decided that WhatsApp would play the role of a customer-facing app for Kotak Life.
Here are some critical pointers to help brands begin their conversations on the world’s largest messaging app:
The first and most crucial aspect to consider is driving visibility and discovery. WhatsApp has made it highly flexible for brands to get customer opt-ins. Practically, brands can use every communication channel to get customer opt-ins, e.g., SMS, website, social media, telephone, etc.
By deploying a WhatsApp chatbot solution, brands can streamline and automate processes like collecting information, answering queries, providing policy information, document collection, follow-ups, etc.
Brands can also deliver a frictionless payment collection process on WhatsApp for their customers without them having to navigate between multiple apps.
Use of marketing notifications to nudge customers
People want to hear from their favorite brands in more ways across the customer journey. Earlier, businesses were only allowed to send transactional notifications like order updates, appointment reminders, and account information. But recently, WhatsApp has allowed brands to send marketing notifications , in other words, non-transactional messages. This move is a game-changer for insurance brands since it enables them to proactively engage with their customers at each stage of their buying journey. According to the panelists, the marketing notifications are poised to deliver more results than other forms of brand-related outreach. They are capable of fetching better ROI than Emails and SMSes.
Here is an example of how marketing notifications can be helpful:
Insurance companies can get on-the-spot policy renewal acceptance from their customers by sending policy renewal quotes. They can also direct them to the website to complete the entire renewal process.
Providing personalized buying assistance to customers
Insurance is a serious and complex subject. Customers require constant support like detailed information while evaluating multiple options, making inquiries about their policies, or filing claims. And Swati Mishra believes that AI can play a critical role in meeting this demand; it can enable brands to deliver tailored experiences according to customer preferences. It can also help brands decide which products to bundle together for cross-selling opportunities.
When powered with an AI-recommendation engine like Haptik’s, an insurance chatbot can serve as a virtual insurance advisor for customers. Simulating the behavior of a human insurance agent, it can engage the customer in a conversation and ask them questions to understand their needs and expectations. It can then offer them personalized policy recommendations, help them compare two or more plans, and assist them in getting a clearer understanding of policy options by answering any follow-up questions.
Handling agent onboard, support & engagement
The panelists talked about how life insurance brands offer technical products requiring human intervention to understand their features and benefits. They also stated that long-tail queries can also become a challenge. In that case, a handover to a relevant channel can help customers get the desired support.
With the chatbot automating routine mechanical tasks, insurance agents can solve more complex customer issues and have more meaningful interactions with current or prospective customers. Insurance chatbots also help enrich agent interactions with customers by gathering data about the customer’s intent, requirements, risk profile, etc., providing the agent with more context about what the customer wants.
Key WhatsApp commerce use cases for Insurance
1. Automation of lead generation and qualification process
Building a solid sales pipeline is essential for growing any business. With the help of a WhatsApp chatbot, the lead generation and qualification process can be made seamless. While interacting with prospective customers, the insurance WhatsApp chatbot can collect critical information: contact details, monthly income, premium paying ability, etc.
As the customer provides all these details in an engaging conversational way, rather than filling a long static lead form, the chances of drop-offs get reduced. When routed to agents, the collected data about the customers’ intent and requirements can help them have more meaningful interactions, leading to higher conversions.
Kotak life has been using WhatsApp chatbot for lead generation and seeing a good lift. The percentage of conversions through WhatsApp for the brand is at par with their other performing sources.
2. Policy information and recommendations
Offering customers not just general information but concrete recommendations through chatbot increases the likelihood of the customers exploring the purchase further. Also, with an insurance WhatsApp chatbot available 24/7, insurance companies can guide customers at every stage without waiting for a sales or customer care representative. The chatbot can answer basic customer questions about plans, premiums, coverage, etc.
3. Follow-up with leads
Many leads get lost because customers become unresponsive or forget to share the required documents. The open rate of WhatsApp is more than 90% which makes it an excellent channel for follow-ups. And now, with the advent of WhatsApp’s marketing notifications, it has become even easier to nudge customers towards the desired action; e.g., if the customer hasn’t sent the documents, the WhatsApp chatbot can send a reminder message.
4. Document submission
One of the central pain point areas for insurance companies when onboarding customers for any service is the collection of documents like income slips, address proofs, ID proof, medical statements, etc. WhatsApp makes it extremely easy; the customer has to just scan the documents and share them. And that’s why our experts urge brands to leverage WhatsApp’s inherent rich-media capabilities. According to them, they are powerful when used for the right use-cases.
To sum up
The world has changed and digitized more than anyone could have imagined in the last couple of years. Today, businesses focus on meeting the customers where they already are rather than pulling them to specific platforms where they want them to. And looking at the sheer scale, it is evident that WhatsApp is the channel for brands to be. According to Sushant Khairnar, WhatsApp is more than a channel; it is a habit, and that’s why it sees a pull from the customer’s side. With the expansion of WhatsApp’s commerce capabilities, it is emerging as the most efficient channel to buy and sell digitally.
Are you looking to leverage the full potential of WhatsApp Commerce?
The Echo Show 5 is the cheapest Echo with a screen, and it’s designed to be the perfect bedroom partner with Alexa built-in. And, while this smart display can do a lot more, that’s where it really shines.
The 2nd-gen Show 5 has been refreshed for 2021, and it still does its job effectively, but small upgrades mean there’s no incentive to replace your old Show 5 with this model.
If you were planning on hooking it up to some nicer speakers, you might think again about choosing this one over the original one (no audio jack here).
However, you might want it for the relatively improved camera (2 megapixels over 1). This improves its video calling capabilities with other Alexas (no Zoom here), as well as its capabilities as a smart security camera.
However, if you’re looking for either of those characteristics in your Alexa-enabled smart display, the Show 8 is the clear winner, thanks to a far superior camera and a faster processor. You’re getting a lot more bang for your buck for an extra $45 there.
We’ve been using the second-generation Echo Show 5 for a few weeks now, and here’s our full review.
Design and characteristics of the second-generation Echo Show
The design is identical to the first-generation model, with a few minor changes, such as a slightly altered camera shape that allows for a little beefed-up camera (now rocking a whopping 2 megapixels).
The 5.5-inch screen (which is actually smaller than most smartphones) with its underwhelming 960 x 480-pixel touchscreen is nonetheless surrounded by a large, thick bezel. The camera still has a privacy shutter, and Show 5 has the same cubic-shaped back that holds the speaker.
Unfortunately, the 3.5 mm audio port has been removed, so you won’t be able to connect this to external speakers with a cable like you could with the original Show 5 (which is still obtainable for $5 cheaper).
There are more colour possibilities in terms of design, including blue and a revamped white, as well as a chameleon green option if you choose the Kids Edition. For an extra $10, you can get a year of Amazon Kids + service (although you can add Amazon Kids + to any Echo device during setup).
Aside from the camera, there are no internal changes, so you’ll get the same MediaTek MT 8163 chipset processor as the original Show. The other adjustments, on the other hand, are software-based.
The new Show 5 has home monitoring (more on that later), a person recognition option for Routines, and a tap-to-snooze feature. Aside from that, it has all of the same features as the original Show 5.
This has a brilliant screen with a wide range of backgrounds and clock faces to choose from. We chose the latter because this device is suitable for use as a bedside alarm clock.
However, despite the fact that it supports Prime and Netflix streaming, the screen is not up to par for watching videos (but oddly not Hulu — which is on the bigger Shows).
The screen adjusts to the brightness of the room, so if you want it to dim when the lights go out, it will. Although, when used as a bedside clock, we found it to be a little too bright, especially when compared to the Google Nest Hub, which is an all-around better bedside companion.
On the top, you’ll find the usual controls: volume up and down, a mute switch that turns off the microphone, and a physical shutter that covers the lens and turns off the camera’s power — useful if you’re keeping it by your bed.
The speaker in the back, as it was in the original form, is quite remarkable. It’s not particularly loud, but it’s pleasant enough to listen to in bed or at work if you keep it on your desk.
The microphones, on the other hand, aren’t as good. The Show 5 (and its larger sister, the Show 8) are the least responsive to orders of all the Echos we’ve tested, possibly because the mics are directed away from you if you’re facing the screen.
When we asked Show 5 to perform something, around seven times out of ten, another Echo in the home responded.
As an alarm clock, the Echo Show 5 (2nd generation)
The Echo Show 5’s size and style make it suitable for use as a bedside alarm clock. If you still have a Casio alarm clock next to your bed, this is a great update.
Simply said, you can use touch or voice to create and adjust alarms directly from the device. Then, with a tap or a command, dismiss or snooze them.
You can set up Routines to be triggered when you dismiss an alarm if you want to get fancy. With just one word or a tap on the screen, you can have Alexa read you the news, gradually brighten your smart lights, raise your smart shades, set your connected thermostat to the proper temperature, and start playing your favourite radio station.
We also like the sunrise effect, which starts 15 minutes before any alarm set between 4 am and 9 am and gradually brightens the display. It’s a gentle way to get you up before your alarm goes off.
When it comes to the alarm, we like how there are so many different alarm tones to choose from (you can only set these in the Alexa app, however). It’s always a laugh to wake up to the antics of The Grand Tour hosts (at least it was for me when I set it for my son’s alarm on the first day of school — it caused him quite a scare).
The tap-to-snooze function is a lovely touch. In tests, it gave you an extra 10 minutes of sleep without you having to say a word or blearily tap at the screen.
The finest feature here, though, is the one that we all love about Alexa: on-demand music and radio. Overall, the Show 5 has excellent speakers for its size, and listening to music on it is one of our favourite applications, particularly in a tiny space like a bedroom.
As an added benefit, if you subscribe to Amazon Music, the display scrolls the lyrics of the songs, making it a great karaoke machine in a kid’s room.
If you’re light-sensitive, the only true complaint as a bedroom smart speaker is that the screen is still a little too bright at night.
Alexa and Everyday Use with the Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen)
While all of the advantages of utilising the Alexa speech assistant are right and available (see our comprehensive guide for more information), the Show 5 falls short as a touch-screen controller for your Alexa-powered smart home.
You can access smart home controls for compatible devices like cameras and lighting by swiping from the right, but the touch interface is so slow and the icons for each device are so enormous that if you have more than a few connected devices, you’ll give up and use voice control instead.
In an emergency, the new Home Monitoring feature, which allows you to check the footage from the Show’s camera remotely using the Alexa app, comes in handy. However, the wedge shape tilts the camera up, causing you to stare at the ceiling. Only useful if Spiderman is breaking into your house.
If you don’t want anyone in your household to be able to check in on you, you can disable the Home Monitoring option. However, if someone tries to look in, the Show displays a helpful warning on the screen and gives you the choice to shut them down straight on the device.
While the 2-megapixel camera improves video calling slightly, it only works for Alexa calls (not than Zoom, as on the Show 8), and the wedge design, along with the smaller screen, means that everyone is looking right at you.
Person detection for Routines is also possible with the camera, allowing you to use the movements of a person in front of the camera to start a routine.
Create a Routine that plays “Dogs Barking,” turns on all the lights, and sends me a notification when a human is detected; this works best as a security feature.
We found it to be rather patchy when we tried to set it up for a home automation routine that switched on a ceiling fan whenever someone entered the room. For the camera to work properly, the individual must be directly in front of it.
When someone hits your Ring Video Doorbell or you ask to see the feed of your Blink camera, the Show 5 can pull up live feeds from any of your compatible linked cameras.
We found the feed to be a little slow to load, but once it did, it looked fine and the audio was clear.
5th Generation Amazon Echo Show
The Echo Show 5 is a fantastic small device that works well as a bedside alarm clock. However, the second-generation model’s minor improvements aren’t enough to make it a must-have if you currently own a Show 5. This small smart display is largely overshadowed by its more powerful brother, the Show 8. It’s an excellent choice for a child’s bedroom or a great bedside alarm clock for you at this price point. Look elsewhere in the Echo lineup if you want to utilise it as a smart home control screen.
PROS
A higher-quality camera
For its size, this speaker is quite good.
Video calling has been improved.
Option for home monitoring
Shutters for privacy
CONS
The touch screen is laggy.
Hearing impairment
There is no audio jack.
The smart home controller is broken.
Don’t forget to give us your 👏 !
Amazon Echo Show 5 (2nd Gen) was originally published in Chatbots Life on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
It is easy to get spooked by the fiction of robots taking over the human world when in reality robots being a part of the human workforce is great.
Robotic process automation eliminates the barrier of employees’ need of performing mundane tasks and enables them to focus on other productive business activities.
Working and Collaborating with RPA Bots
In this article, we are going to discuss the top 5 ways that keep you on the right track for RPA bots collaboration.
But first, what are RPA bots?
RPA bots are software robots that perform tasks in a digital environment. These bots aim to automate repetitive tasks and therefore, they are also known as the “digital workforce”.
RPA in Organizations
In traditional automation tools, software developers have to create a list of actions to automate the tasks and interface to back-end systems using application programming interfaces (APIs).
In contrast, robotic process automation develops the action list by performing the task in the graphical user interface (GUI), and then automatically repeating these tasks directly in GUI.
But integrating daily standard operating procedures (SOP) and establishing an SOP for maintaining, updating, and re-evaluating automation is challenging. Once this is achieved both companies and employees will reap the benefits of automation.
Introducing employees to the present and future of work and automation can help businesses grow leaps and bounds. For instance, imagine the benefits if an employee can shift their focus from analyzing the spreadsheets to developing several pivot suggestions based on AI’s analysis!
5 Ways to Foster Collaboration between Humans and Robots
1. Understanding RPA benefits
There are various reasons organizations are implementing RPA as a solution to increase productivity and efficiency for their business. Working with robots and sharing their benefits would help your employees access the importance of automation in the workforce.
Of the most cited benefits of RPA, customer satisfaction & speed to market are the best ones after productivity and product quality.
Here are a few reasons employees can look forward to benefiting from their digital co-workers:
Boosted productivity: By taking advantage of the automation provided by RPA bots, the human workforce can get back their time to focus on more valuable tasks.
Better accuracy: RPA bots act as helping hands in tasks that have an added risk of human errors, such as in data entries.
More reliability: Bots react and respond to events in real-time performing processes while employees focus on other things, to keep their workflows running 24/7.
2. Accessing business needs for RPA
Overview your existing tasks, workflows, and processes, and understand what can be changed to optimize these processes? When starting with RPA, identify your systems that need to change so that your human employees can spend time on tasks suited to them.
The time wasted on repetitive tasks, and the money lost per year as shown in the statistics above are the two solid reasons why your business needs RPA, along with human resources.
No matter how great the bots are, humans are still better at critical thinking, strategizing, and problem-solving. So, RPA bots are not here to replace employees, but to assist them with efficiently getting their jobs done.
To get the best experience with collaborative robots, focus on your human employees, and when you have learned the benefits you can jump right in and automate everything.
3. Find your Automation Approach
Not all bots are created equal, different bots serve different purposes. There are mainly two types of RPA bots, attended and non-attended, and the third one, Intelligent process automation still in its infancy.
Attended bots help you complete your everyday tasks easier but with human intervention. These tasks go into action when a user commands them. On the other hand, unattended automation work behind the scenes. These bots get triggered when an action such as a file being added into the folder is performed.
Both of these automation types are important for human collaboration with robots, and companies can use one type of mix, whichever suits the employee’s needs better.
4. Automate Processes with RPA Bots
As you start implementing RPA and automation in your organization grows, you’ll be able to provide an RPA bot for all your employees. A great RPA solution is that which can provide bots for the right optimization.
Problem: Too much wasted time on routine, manual tasks from employee on-boarding to customer account management.
RPA Solution: After bringing RPA culture to the organization, these processes were streamlined and over 300,000 customer accounts were migrated to the new system within 24 hours.
Benefit: Achieved 3,800% ROI within 5 months
→ RPA in Telecommunications
Problem: Manual logging into websites to capture and consolidate customer billing information, more than 40 employees were assigned to this tedious error-prone task.
RPA Solution: Software bots are taking over these repetitive and manual tasks. MetTel also combined automation with remediation to improve the response times.
Benefit: Replaced 75% of their manual efforts with software robots.
→ RPA in Healthcare
Problem: The traditional claim management system accepted only one claim file each day from 837 daily generated files.
RPA Solution: Baptist Health automated the daily transfers of these files to the FTP server which resulted in greater centralized control over thousands of file transfers that occur each day.
The final step for reaping benefits from collaboration between the human workforce and bots is to maximize the collaboration and make the most out of the RPA bots. RPA bots can give your employees more time while improving their work-life balance. Collaborative robots can fill in and work 24/7 with a little time off allowing your employees to enjoy their freedom.
RPA bots can also help you automate your tasks such as website monitoring, that require 24/7 attention, so instead of having a human employee monitor the status of the webpages, you can implement website automation for the same.
Transform your Business with RPA
We all are already familiar with the idea of automation, it has made our lives easier, and better.
Streamlining your business tedious tasks helps you save time, reduce costs and increase efficiency in your business processes. Introducing RPA bots in your business doesn’t mean that you are taking their jobs away, but simplifying them by automating repetitive and mundane tasks.
Singapore, 9 May 2022 – Noodle Factory, Singapore’s leading AI-powered EdTech platform, is pleased to announce their partnership with Vygo, an Australian-based one-stop hub for student support, offering complementary pilot programmes for educational institutions. While Noodle Factory leverages AI to scale exam preparation and tutoring, helping educators save up to 400 hours a year, Vygo hosts all sorts of peer and student support initiatives for universities and higher education institutions, engaging students and transforming student experiences, and is on track to champion 1,000,000 students before the 2020 student cohort graduates in 2023. Together, they allow higher education institutions to scale experiences for both audiences to new heights.
“We believe that EdTech plays an essential role in education. Thus, developing a paradigm for EdTech to instil flexibility and resilience into the system is key. With this partnership with Vygo, we are able to move the needle and meet the needs in developing longer-term strategies, contributing to the EdTech ecosystem and creating a robust and dynamic learning environment for all,” said Yvonne Soh, co-founder and CEO of Noodle Factory.
Addressing needs of educators and students as institutions rethink edtech strategies
As higher education institutions transition to a post-pandemic era, more are rethinking their long-term strategies for deploying EdTech. The pandemic has prodded educators and students to make major decisions and changes in their approach to teaching and learning, finding solutions to meet the needs and expectations of learning. This partnership enriches the long-term strategies for EdTech as Noodle Factory and Vygo are able to achieve this by streamlining the learning and teaching process, while providing expert mentorship for student support and career success. Together, this collaboration value-adds to the education landscape whereby students and educators can both benefit from this approach.
The need for education is constant. Thus, the need to rethink longer-term strategies for EdTech to re-imagine learning will become an integral part of education, resulting in a more responsive and adaptable learning environment. It is crucial to think ahead based on the current approach, distribution, and pedagogy in education for greater heights of success in the Edtech space.
“For us at Vygo, we put personalised support at the fingertips of every student. We ensure no student would be ever left behind as we aim to empower students to support one another and higher education institutions to create impactful peer mentoring and student support programs. We are excited to partner with Noodle Factory to establish a stronger ecosystem in EdTech,” shared Ben Hallett, co-founder and CEO of Vygo.
This partnership will offer them the means to do so and move forward on an upward trajectory, scaling optimised and engaging experiences for educators and students alike.
There is a need for an innovative approach to make headway and identify key elements of the EdTech evaluation process. This alliance between Noodle Factory and Vygo offers the opportunity to narrow the gap and immerse themselves in modern technologies while taking it one step further.
Furthermore, there may be opportunities for this alliance to be extended to other complementary EdTech companies. This will create and build a collaborative and thriving EdTech ecosystem that benefits not just educational institutions but also all educators and students as they enter the classroom of the future.
At Bot Libre we have always been developing artificial intelligence for the Metaverse, we just did not have a name for it. The Bot Libre AI engine has always been designed to have a mind with multiple senses, it’s just that with plain chat user interfaces, those senses could not be truly actualized. The Metaverse now provides a rich multi-sensory environment, and we are extremely excited to evolve the Bot Libre AI engine and platform to navigate the Metaverse.
We are developing new 3D and VR apps and SDKs to integrate the Bot Libre platform with the evolving Metaverse. We are integrating Bot Libre’s NLP, vision, and spatial artificial intelligence algorithms into the Metaverse environment.
What is the Metaverse
The Metaverse is a term used to describe a new vision for the Internet as a decentralized 3D space. The Metaverse includes various technologies including:
3D — 3D Worlds and Spaces
VR — Virtual Reality
AR — Augmented Reality
AI — Artificial Intelligence
Web3 — Crypto Currencies, NTFs, Block Chain
Why the Metaverse Needs AI
The Metaverse needs chatbots and AI to enable immersive interactions with users.
VR/AR user interfaces are based on speech, chat, and 3D interaction, blending well with chatbots
Metaverse is 24/7, businesses, events, online schools, and games that engage users in this space require chatbots and automated interactions
The Metaverse is multi-sensory, AI bots need to integrate NLP, vision, audio, spatial awareness, and navigation.
Why AI Needs the Metaverse
To evolve, AI needs an immersive multi-sensory environment which is the Metaverse. Existing AI models are single-purpose, single-sensory. True intelligence requires multi-sensory learning and a rich environment to interact with other intelligence entities.
The Bot Libre OMNI Deep Learning Model
The human brain is not a single neural network, but a kludge of multiple networks all interacting with each other at multiple levels. The concept of the Bot Libre OMNI model is that if you feed the output nodes and deep links from multiple deep learning models, actively processing continuous input from multiple senses into OMNI meta models, you can achieve a higher level of intelligence than possible from a single model.
Join Us
We are looking for businesses, organizations, and developers that are interested in being early adopters of the Metaverse technologies, in order to shape, play, participate, and even profit from the Metaverse, by working with us to drive our open source metaverse AI solution.
We will be starting our Bot Libre Metaverse Beta Program soon. If you are interested in applying to be part of the program please contact sales@botlibre.biz.
Now, if you ask Alexa to use Cortana for some reason you will just hear Alexa says “sorry, the service is no longer available”. The main reason behind this is the removal of the deal that Alexa had made with microphone Cortana a few years ago. Both of them wiped the integration away without making much noise among fans. Officially the climax of this connection was made on September 18 but didn’t get much spotlight.
Cortana and Alexa
Cortana and Alexa tied their connection for Cortana to reach a much wider audience than it had with their own Cortana products. But now, there’s nothing to wonder about the decision behind this disconnection as it’s pretty obvious. However, the importance of the deal always remains iconic as back then Alexa was just a new platform that was providing the ability to run Microsoft programs like Outlook through Cortana. It’s not like they have disconnected themselves from other integration as Alexa can still work on Windows PCs.
However, it’s not the time for Cortana to dissolve because it’s still available in other terms, it’s just done with its smart speaker abilities. You can still use it via Microsoft Outlook to set up any conference or join just by commanding.
Conversational AI startup platform Kore.ai crosses $73.5 million series C funding round as Nvidia has added $3.5 million to their funding round. And this investment is indicating the sign of teaming up for the integration of Voice AI technology for customer service centers.
Kore.ai and Nvidia
Kore.ai has made its name by creating a wide virtual assistant platform to build, test and deploy voice and text-based customer service. As soon as their name spreads, the company claims to be a giant tech who has managed more than a billion interactions. However, the company has already funded $73.5 million where an extra of 3.5 million has been added by Nvidia. The investment has been made to tie up with kore.ai and work for advanced conversational Ai projects and platforms.
According to Kore.ai, Nvidia Riva’s specially designed SKD will help to build an advanced technology AI brand voice to enhance customer service and other relations. Riva is the part of expanded conversational AI of Nvidia.
Nvidia’s GPU also makes any Ai much accurate and faster than others to provide a more instant and effective response to customers.
“This relationship will allow us to further optimize the contact center experience for customers and agents thereby improving the speed of business for enterprises, large and small,” Kore CEO Raj Koneru stated.
Nvidia is gradually extending their advanced Ai technological services from allowing cars to park themselves automatically to virtual humans whereas, kore.ai helps to boost enterprise’s business by optimizing customer service experience. Thus the tie-up between these two companies is quite significant.
Chatbots are software tools created to interact with humans through chat. The first chatbots were able to create simple conversations based on a complex system of rules. Using Flask Python Framework and the Kompose Bot, you will be able to build intelligent chatbots.
In this post, we will learn how to add a Kompose chatbot to the Python framework Flask.
Pre-requisites:
You will need a Kommunicate account for deploying the python chatbot.
Kommunicate is a no-code, hybrid chatbot platform that is built over a powerful Conversational AI system.
Also, you will need Python and the Flask framework installed on your system. To read more info about the Flask framework, please follow this link.
We will be using Flask in this tutorial. If you are looking to add Dialogflow chatbot to the Django framework, you can see this tutorial.
Steps to Create a Chatbot using Kompose and Flask Python Framework:
Step1: Login to your Kommunicate dashboard. If you don’t already have a Kommunicate account, you can create one here.Navigate to the Kompose bot builder category and create a new bot by selecting the “Create Bot” button.
Step 2: Navigate to the Kompose Bot Builder, select your bot and click on the “Settings” option present at the top right corner.
Click on the Webhook option present on that page. Here, we need to put the Webhook Name and Webhook URL.
Step3: Create Webhook URL using Python with Flask and enable the webhook server using ngrok
The webhook requires a URL, and it should be an HTTPS protocol. The webhook URL will receive a POST request from the Kompose Bot every time an intent triggers the webhook.
We are using the Python programming language and the Flask framework to create the webhook.
Create a file (for example — app.py). Import all the necessary libraries (ex: os, JSON, flask_ngrok, request) needed for Python. Please check if you have Flask on your system. If not, install it using pip, and here’s the documentation for the same.
To handle all the agent webhook requests, we need to define and add a route/webhook method with a POST request. This URL /webhook will receive a POST request. It executes all the methods inside the method.
After setting up the Python process, let’s use flask ngrok to create a public URL for the webhook and listen to port 5000 (in this example). For Kompose webhook, you will need an HTTPS secured server since the local server (localhost) will not work. You can also use a server and point a domain with HTTPS to that server.
Copy the URL you created (https://85e6-203-189-248-8.ngrok.io/webhook) — in this example and paste it into the Kompose webhook URL field. Here, I have written the Webhook name as “Test.”
Step 5: Create an intent by clicking on the +Add button under the “Answer” section and “Train the Bot.”
Here, I have created Flask intent and added a training phrase as “What is Flask?”
Step 6: Click on the “Bot Says” option and select the webhook that you created earlier. Here, I have selected the Test webhook created earlier. Now, click on “Train Bot.”
There you have it, a Python chatbot for your website created using the Flask framework. If you want to read more about how to build a chatbot, you can visit our blog post here.
