Gatwick’s Chatbot Just the Latest in Aviation Bots
Gatwick Airport joins the growing number of aviation businesses making use of chatbots to help guide their huge numbers of customers around those sprawling hallways and to the right gate on time, with a refreshing display of commitment and business smarts. Last year, London’s second busiest runway at Gatwick Airport was thrown into chaos by unsubstantiated drone sightings, cancelling flights, with armed police swarming the perimeter and chaos in the terminals. After much hunting, there probably was no drone, but it highlights the problem and potential for drone misuse around any airport. A year later and Gatwick Airport has a drone of its own, a new chatbot called Gail on Facebook Messenger to interact with passengers and visitors. Gail can provide the usual flight information, a range of flight specific notifications like delays and gate changes, plus information about the airport shops, restaurants and other facilities. Ask her for a
How ‘Chatbot’ Narratives Have Evolved in News Media: 1997-2019
It might seem as if words like ‘chatbot’, ‘AI’ and ‘machine learning’ have exploded in news media over the last ten years. That’s because they have and it’s really only in the last five years that the word ‘chatbot’ has become much more widespread and more commonly used by newspapers. Interestingly, it’s only in the last three years that ‘chatbot’ has become a casually inserted term within ordinary articles which are not explicitly about tech or AI: despite the fact that newspapers have been reporting on chatbots since the 1990s. The word ‘chatbot’ has become normalised in news media from its ‘chatterbot’ origins, and while the frequency of articles which casually make reference to chatbots has increased so have articles which mention chatbots alongside wider conversations about artificial intelligence. Ireland provides a useful case-study of the media and chatbots. The Irish Newspaper Archive is one of the most extensive online
The Risks of Chatbot Data Breaches and Privacy Issues Made Clear
With the news that Data Airline is filing a lawsuit against its chatbot provider, among endless IT breaches and disasters, the reality is now starkly clear that chatbots need to be secure and well-managed to protect the business and customers. The cloud is so easy and seductive, sign up for a service, create something amazing and off you go. That flexibility and access has been a huge boon, driving startups and helping departments get ahead of their plodding IT departments. However, in the charge to cool AI and chatbot products, or using the cloud for storage and third-party solutions, the need for cast-iron security becomes all the greater, and most businesses lack the expertise to manage that facet. This issue was brought to light by US airline Delta filing suit against [24]7ai,claiming it lacked the proper security procedures for the product, allowing hackers to alter the chatbot’s source code. And
Chatbots Unlocking Customer Value and More as Technology Improves
As with other aspects of customer-technology, first there was the task, then came the data and then the need to manage and use it properly. Customer spreadsheets and databases became CRM tools, point of sales records became data for recommendation engines and marketing, and so on. The same is true with chatbots, as businesses look to leverage the data they provide to add value. Chatbots are rapidly changing the way that businesses interact with their clients, and how data is provided to their systems. It isn’t a massive change from previous generations, when a sales database became a tool for the whole organization to use, but still represents a change in how companies will work. Naturally, all of this assumes that the data is being stored in a suitable manner, following GDPR and other suitable legislation, and that the users have given explicit permission for you to use the data.
5 Reasons Why Chatbot Coaches Will Dominate the Personal Support Industry
Wellness and financial sanity-check coaches are already flocking to app stores, heralding a huge rise in the use of chatbots as part of the booming “advice” category. The lure of charging customers for using them via subscriptions, or for a business to automate the “wellness” part of their HR system makes a compelling case. Having followed the rise of chatbots, one of the welcome use cases has been in personal support. We have seen students able to talk to chatbots when they felt there was no one else to turn to for counselling support, starting a conversation that they can continue with others or health professionals. Not only are they available all-year round when the faculty office is closed out of term, but they can provide coursework, revision and tutorial guidance, personal and social advice, becoming a permanent fixture for the student. That’s likely to boost their college experience while
Bots and AI Starring in Movies and Literature
Virtual reality, smartphones, gaming, even viruses have long been a staple plot feature of the movies, from the new Jumanji to The Lawnmower Man. Now chatbots and AI tools are officially a thing, that means Hollywood, book writers and TV shows are happy to promote use them as ways to stir the plot and for marketing purposes. While the AIs like HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey and Stephen Spielberg’s AI might have set the tone for how people expect chatbot and robotic technology to evolve, current chatbot ideas have made their way into a growing number of dramas and action shows. Joaquin Phoenix in Spike Jonze’s Her is the fool falling in love with OS1’s chatbot Samantha (voiced by Scarlett Johansson, because all voices should be Hollywood A-listers). One of the first movies to feature a chatbot, New Netflix sci-fi series Another Life made waves recently with the AI/robot
Chatbots: the Travel Agent’s Best Friend
Travel agents ask, or are asked, the same few questions millions of times per year, making them the ideal business to be transformed by a chatbot. Let it do the “beach or touring, snow or city break” questions and save your efforts for the key interactions with your customers. The travel industry remains a cutthroat business with more holiday firms, airlines and hotels hit by closures in recent times due to global uncertainty, high fuel costs and a growth in staycations. Whatever your travel business, from niche boutique startup to growing brand, chatbots provide a key opportunity to expand your operations at minimal cost, and to rein in other expenses. Among all the industry chaos, there are still plenty of booming travel firms, running their own types of niche vacation, so running your own travel agency is still an achievable goal, and the chatbot can help play a key role
Intel’s New Ice Lake Processors Feature AI-on-a-Chip but What Does That Change for Bots?
Mobile processors have had AI features for the last generation or two, but Intel has finally caught up, bringing on-chip AI to upcoming models of notebook and desktop. What does that mean for chatbots, AI services and developers? The processor wars got really boring after the fun of the Intel Pentium vs AMD Athlon battle of the 90s. Since then, notebook processor development has been about regularly shrinking the core to smaller nanometer numbers to gain more speed and power. The key benefit was that they could run cooler, allowing the thin-and-light sexy, quieter, notebook designs of today, with better battery life. But with fewer noticeable end results, apart from less back strain or burning thighs, for the typical user editing documents, typing emails or hanging out on social media. You can run Windows 10 and the usual apps on a 10-year old PC quite happily, only game players (who
Rise of the ChatFAQ or InfoBot
Not all businesses need an AI-powered mega-chatbot capable of answering every question up to and including “what is the meaning of life?” The rise of chatbots handing out specific information in a FAQ-like format is an increasingly popular choice, creating InfoBots that can fulfill a specific function neatly and efficiently while saving the user time without having to ask the obvious questions. We are always on the lookout for changes in how chatbots are being used, and this summer there seems to be a fresh trend in discrete InfoBots offering a succinct feed of information Take the BBC’s approach to The Ashes cricket series between Australia and England. Lots of new and young fans might be tuning into their first series, especially on the back of England’s World Cup win. They might not know much about the series’ 137-year history, the key players and the differences between test and other
Chatbot Tech on the March Into Wider Business and Engagement
As with most technologies, like GPS, apps and VR, they might start out in their own little bubble but are soon adopted by a wider range of services that can make use of them. The same is true with chatbots, with the underlying language features making their mark in other areas. You might think a chatbot is just a chatty piece of code, but behind the front end are smart cloud services to handled the analytics and delivery, AI features to understand semantics, use of language and translation, plus a host of options to link the conversation to other databases, about the customer, the business, a store or local information. All of that comes together as-a-service to deliver what we know of as the chatbot. But, already features like natural language processing and AI translation tools are being used elsewhere, to create real-time avatars, deliver services in new ways, and
Your feature should be between 1500 and 2,000 words in length.
Comments:
No Comment.
To leave a reply, please join the community: