Welcome to the forefront of conversational AI as we explore the fascinating world of AI chatbots in our dedicated blog series. Discover the latest advancements, applications, and strategies that propel the evolution of chatbot technology. From enhancing customer interactions to streamlining business processes, these articles delve into the innovative ways artificial intelligence is shaping the landscape of automated conversational agents. Whether you’re a business owner, developer, or simply intrigued by the future of interactive technology, join us on this journey to unravel the transformative power and endless possibilities of AI chatbots.
AI is slowly taking over the world, infiltrating every element of our day to day lives. There are a ton of useful purposes for AI companions, whether it be image or video generation or helping speed up boring admin tasks like clearing up your email inbox and I’ve slowly become obsessed.
While artificial intelligence has made a positive impact in certain areas of my life, there are also some parts of my life which I just don’t want to deal with AI.
Let me paint a picture – something I think almost everyone can relate to. I noticed my electricity bill was increasing one month and I wasn’t entirely sure why so I decided to call up my supplier. As the automated voice on the other end starts to speak, telling me to press different buttons to speak to different departments, I followed the instructions and was then met with hold music.
Suddenly the automated voice of doom returned to tell me “You are number 57 in the queue.” Great. Instead of sitting in the queue for hours on end to speak to a person, I hung up and opted for the modern day solution… emailing customer service, this wasn’t an urgent matter after all.
As I emailed asking for details about this price increase, I was met with a response within 20 minutes, so much faster than waiting in a 57 deep mobile queue. However, the downside was that the response didn’t actually answer my question meaning I had to follow up not just once but 11 different times.
I kept pushing for an answer and I realized quite quickly that ‘Craig’ at the other end of the email chain was an AI chatbot – which hadn’t at all been clarified during my exchange. It began to repeat phrases over and over, seemingly stuck in a loop.
So I decided to straight up just ask “Am I speaking to a real human or is this AI?”. Within 8 minutes, my question was followed up with another email from a different person called ‘Mo’ who immediately answered my original question and clarified that I was speaking to a chatbot in my previous exchange which had led to my frustrating experience.
While I was glad that my question had been answered, it took so much effort to reach this conclusion and I felt even more annoyed that I had sent 11 emails which had seemingly fallen on deaf ears prior to this and it took me having to call out the usage of AI for a human to answer my email.
I’m quite lucky that I work with AI quite closely and can easily recognise hallucinations or AI looping, but this isn’t the case for many. Would they be able to notice that they’re speaking to an AI bot? Would they be able to call this behavior out?
Sometimes I can appreciate that AI chatbots are able to provide answers to simple questions but the bare minimum I feel like it should be clarified when you’re speaking to an AI bot and not a human being. I was entirely misled, with a human name being added to the bottom of the email and while I was able to recognise this, some other customers wouldn’t be able to and may be met with an equally frustrating experience.
Some companies ‘Help’ portals require you to use an AI chatbot before you’re even provided with a contact number to call up the customer service department and speak to a real person. This is a super convoluted experience and while companies may think this helps with the bottom line as it leads to less phone calls, all it actually does is put me off as a customer.
AI chatbots can be helpful at times but they should not be incorporated into customer service strategies, especially not deceptively or by force.
I’ll be honest: I’m not a fan of gaming headsets. I’ve tried many over the years, including some from some of the most popular brands out there, and there was always something wrong with them. Be it poor audio, a terrible microphone, or a lack of reliability, they always failed me in one way or another.
However, over two years ago, I was gifted the SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 for my birthday. I can now confidently say that this is the only headset I’ve ever recommended to gamers, even after having tried around a dozen in the past few years.
If you’ve had enough of AI-generated images filling up your search results, then the DuckDuckGo search engine is here to help.
The Pennsylvania-based company recently announced an easy way to filter out AI-generated images from search results on its privacy-focused search engine.
Over the past few months, all eyes have been fixated on Apple and what the company is going to do with AI. The pressure is palpable and well deserved. Google has demonstrated some really compelling AI tools, especially with Project Astra and Mariner, that turn your phone into something like an all-knowing, forever-present digital companion.
The likes of Microsoft, OpenAI, Claude, and even Amazon have shown some next-gen AI chops that make Siri feel like an old prototype. But there is a fine distinction between using AI on phones and how they flesh out on a computing machine, like a MacBook Air.
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