The next phase of consumer interaction with AI technology will move far beyond chatbots, according to a panel of AI experts speaking at CES on Monday ahead of its official Jan. 7 kickoff.
AI agents, or autonomous systems that can perform tasks and respond to users without human intervention, will dominate brand engagements, customer service interactions and avatar-led gaming experiences.
The Future Is Here
Future-forward brands seeking to advance beyond chatbot interactions are requesting these capabilities now, said Jessica Berger, Senior Vice President of Innovation at Publicis Media. But the specific format depends on a brand’s specific needs.
“No one’s asking for another chatbot-type scenario, but we’re all looking for how can we be more interactive, more engaging, and how can we bring a consumer journey to life in more interesting ways,” she said. “Conversational can come to life in many different forms. It doesn’t need to be a character; it doesn’t need to be a chat render. But where can we be there in that moment to create something interesting? That’s what they’re asking for.”
Identifying Brand Value
For Jordan Cuddy, EVP, Global Head of Brand Experience at Monks, it starts with pinpointing the value a brand is providing. “When you think about conversational AI, you’re talking about a two-way conversation… This is not sophisticated search. This is truly, how can I interact with a conversational AI, however it’s embodied, and get something of value for myself? Otherwise, why participate? So that comes down to the experience. It really starts with, what does the brand have to offer?”
As an example, Monks is working with a large retailer in the ecommerce space for whom styling—typically done one-to-one, in person and in store—is a part of its DNA. But the company wants to scale that interaction.
And that’s where conversational AI comes in. “We’re currently working with them on their app to scale personalized styling. So this changes the entire dynamic, realistically, when it comes to the customer experience, because you no longer go to the search bar and say, “floral, bikini, black dress,” et cetera. You say, “I’m going to Tulum for four nights and I need this outfit and this outfit and this outfit. And it curates a completely different set of results.”
A First-Party Data Source
In addition to achieving more engagement, AI agents are mines of valuable first-party data for brands. And Cuddy believes that companies without those capabilities are actually missing out. “If you don’t figure out your own digital brand persona—give it a personality, give it a value-add—you’re going to lose out on major, major first-party data. And what you can do with that data is exponential,” she said.
Take the million-dollar Whopper campaign Monks did for Burger King last year, which gave consumers the opportunity to customize their own Whoppers online by adding edible toppings of their choice. The result was the creation of three million mini-commercials, rendered on the backend according to user preferences, plus a treasure trove of user data.
“That’s a great return on investment. But what we’re really talking about is return on innovation. When you look under the hood, what you’re actually starting to understand is that you have a newer and richer data set that you can leverage,” Cuddy said. “You need to think beyond the immediate return and think, okay, what do I want to know about the consumer?”
The Cost Issue
Yet highly-technical campaigns are, of course, highly expensive. “What has always been stymieing us is how to scale it and how to scale it naturally,” said John Canning, Director of Developer Relations at Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. “You run the numbers, you start asking the question of, who’s going to pay for that? These things have cost.”
Moreover, the technology requires a value exchange between consumer and brand—along with expectations about how the experience will play out. “You have to give something to get something,” Canning said. “But what am I giving? What personal data am I giving up to get a personalized response? And where is that personal data going?”
The Growing Importance of Legal
Panelists agreed that in order to prevent fair use violations and ensure compliance, legal teams must be incorporated into the creative process from the outset. Cuddy is seeing more clients insist on drawing up and signing off on technical designs before even beginning to think about what an experience will look like creatively. “I think we’re going to see more approaches like that, because otherwise you’re going to just spend a lot of money and likely get denied at the last moment,” she said.
Particularly when creating digital human characters, you have to consider the rights that are surrounding the subject used as inspiration, Canning said. “Starting with the digital character creation from a human scan, what are the rights around what that human participated in [for] the scanning process? What did they sign into the contract? How were they being used?”
“You want to make sure your legal team, your internal legal team is up to speed as well,” Berger said. “You can’t do it all by yourself. You can’t point out all the red flags. You have to have a team that is just as nimble or up-to-date, as much as possible, as you.”
Virtual Humans
Legalities and mitigating risk aside, Jake Becker, Founding Team and Director of Creators at Genies, believes that “avatars are the new username,” particularly in light of gen Alpha’s obsession with social gaming. “An AI agent isn’t just going to be a chatbot forever, but [will] continue on a course of bringing that persona to life as some type of visual representation in mixed reality,” Becker said. “You’re not going to be a floating user. You need some type of 3D asset to represent you.”
His team’s goal is to power that next standard form of identity, allowing people to design their own avatars and wear or create any type of digital goods or props that they desire—and then make those assets interoperable across any platform.
AI Agents and Customer Experience
AI agents are also capable of revolutionizing the customer experience, according to Kumaran Ponnambalam, Principal AI Engineer at Cisco Systems. He is working on solutions that will improve the service experience by enabling an AI agent to fix an issue without the need for human interaction. This type of multimodal experience could involve a phone call, videos sent back and forth between agent and the customer, and instructions given by the AI to solve the problem.
“You can have a collaborative troubleshooting experience with the user so you can get it instantly, unless you need spare parts. That’s the kind of experience we’re looking at,” Ponnambalam said. He’s most excited about the potential for AI to both eliminate the need to call service centers only during working hours and bypass long wait times to speak with a human employee. “With generative AI coming in and driving conversations, both of these problems will go away—and you are going to get instant solutions.”
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