AI Voice Assistants as Customer Service Tools

High-quality customer service is one of the key standards in the hospitality industry. While AI tools as hospitality phone agents are not yet as widespread as consumer-oriented generative AI tools, they represent another niche that significantly contributes to the automation of business processes.

In restaurants, these AI-powered tools are typically available 24/7 via phone and can provide consultations on general topics such as dress codes, seating arrangements, cuisine, food allergens, and they also manage table reservations.

What Do Virtual Host Offer?

AI integration is especially advantageous for restaurants, as this automation saves time for the administration by answering questions that are often already covered on the restaurant’s website. Every customer’s call is answered promptly, speeding up the reservation process and enhancing the overall customer experience.

Moreover, this helps avoid issues related to human error. Employees might be overwhelmed or tired, which can lead to distractions during interactions with potential customers. As a result, reservations might get mixed up or double-booked, requiring a call to the customer to cancel or reschedule, which usually leads to dissatisfaction.

Machine learning also uses predictive analytics, drawing on statistics to forecast future needs and optimize the restaurant’s operations. It can even personalize recommendations for customers, predict which tables are most often selected, forecast spikes in customer traffic, or anticipate last-minute reservation cancellations or no-shows based on past data.

In real time, AI can also be integrated to analyse waiting lines, estimate wait times, and provide updates via SMS or apps, improving the efficiency of queue management in the future.

Additionally, AI voice integration into reservation systems allows for automated reminders or confirmations of existing reservations, ensuring that all available tables are utilized efficiently. If a spot opens up, it can be quickly rebooked for another customer.

Using virtual hosts in dining establishments not only improves the business’s internal processes and efficiency but also offers significant benefits to customers, which is the key focus. Faster responses, personalized offers, and recommendations help enhance the guest experience and elevate it to a higher level.

It’s important to remember that successfully integrating new technologies requires proper preparation and testing. There are still cases where AI voice assistant may not understand a question or the query falls outside its programmed scope.

Data protection is also a critical issue here. It’s essential to choose quality, trusted data protection measures to ensure the safety of customer information.

Final Word

Virtual host enables restaurants to create a high-quality and elevated hospitality experience by automating certain processes and fully integrating AI. As a result, the importance of machine learning systems is steadily growing, becoming a vital component of successful business operations.

Sources: Loman.ai, Forbes, Wired

AI-Generated Voices Technology

Imagine a situation where you need to record your voice. It is likely that you won’t get it right the first time, and even in subsequent attempts, you may find things that make you doubt or want to start over, whether due to sound peculiarities or background noise disturbances.

Current AI capabilities can easily resolve these issues and simplify voice recording. AI voice generator tools can deliver impressive results, transforming written text into speech that sounds very realistic. Moreover, it offers a great opportunity and alternative for various business productions.

The main advantage of these apps is that they now feature highly natural voices, often indistinguishable from genuine ones. They also offer options to adjust the pronunciation, tone, pace, or even the emotional expression of the speech.

There is a significant demand for such apps, each catering to specific user needs and desires in different ways:

1. ElevenLabs stands out with its large voice library and an excellent filtering system. The library includes over 300 voices, featuring licensed AI-generated real voices, such as the sound of television actress Christy Carlson Romano.
2. Speechify focuses on human-like cadence. The app makes it quick and easy to achieve high-quality results with attributes such as consistency, appropriate pauses between words, speed, and more.
3. WellSaid allows users to adjust individual words or phrases to adapt their pronunciation characteristics, such as setting the pace or volume separately.
4. Respeecher offers the ability to include different vocalization and alter storytelling styles when inputting text. Users can also record their voices, which can then be used as templates for synthetic sound.
5. Altered focuses on a variety of storytelling styles. It also features an editor that allows users to adjust and adapt their own audio recordings.
6. Murf not only includes various voice adaptation features but also provides articulation control, allowing users to emphasize specific words more prominently.

Market Situation

The success of AI voice startup ElevenLabs demonstrates the rapid growth of the voice technology market and the importance of timely solutions. The company has achieved significant results within a few years, raising $101 million in investments. This rapid development is driven by new technologies – deep learning neural networks and generative AI.

The company offers several services. Firstly, Dubbing Studio—a service for dubbing any film, creating transcripts, and translations. Secondly, Voice Library, where users can sell their AI voice clones, and finally, the Mobile App Reader, which converts text and URLs into sound.

Another step forward is the NotebookLM feature, which allows users to listen to discussions about uploaded sources. Without incorporating personal information into model training, it helps users understand complex information from provided sources. The sources are discussed in a two-person dialogue format, not only reviewing them but also connecting themes and making summaries.

This feature is still experimental and will require continuous improvement. For now, it is only available in English, and the overview is based solely on uploaded sources. Nevertheless, it represents an innovative step into the future and provides an opportunity for those who learn and understand through listening.

The Challenges of AI-generated Voices tools

However, for now, such advanced solutions face significant challenges. The greatest threat is the misuse of these capabilities. AI voice cloning is sometimes used for less honourable purposes, becoming a tool for fraudsters.

Intellectual property and potential theft are also important concerns. Legal regulation, the initiation of necessary laws, and the introduction of licenses are essential to mitigate these risks.

Final Word

Despite the emerging challenges, this is a big technological leap and a new reality in everyday life. Although there is still a lot to be done to make these AI generated voices tools even better, we can already see how such solutions offer versatile possibilities and adapt to the user.

Sources: TechTarget, Google, Zapier

Election Campaigns That Gained Attention Through AI

It cannot be dismissed that there are disadvantages of AI in politics. Artificial intelligence is not always used for noble purposes. Increasingly, it is becoming a tool for spreading misinformation to mislead voters and steer them in a desired direction.

For instance, during the voting in India, the two largest parties— the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party and the opposition Congress Party— accused each other of using AI-generated misleading video and audio content in their campaigns. This content was intended to misinform the public about politicians’ actions and positions.

In the 2017 French elections, it was observed that groups operating out of Russia used bots to post false statements attributed to candidate Emmanuel Macron on social media. These same claims have also been repeatedly levelled to other Western governments whom potentially are not doing enough to stop the intervention of third-party interference from countries with allegiances elsewhere.

Earlier this year, another scandal drew attention when New Hampshire Democrats received phone calls supposedly from Joe Biden, urging them not to vote that day and to withhold support for Donald Trump. This incident was investigated as there was suspicion that the calls were fake, and that Joe Biden’s voice had been cloned.

Additionally, a photo shared on Twitter depicted Donald Trump with the infamous Jeffrey Epstein and a young girl. However, it was later identified as a fake, AI-generated image.

One of the most recent incidents involved a post on Donald Trump’s social media platform, Truth Social, where a photo showed the famous singer Taylor Swift allegedly endorsing Trump in the upcoming United States elections. This post garnered attention as it was likely created using AI and shared information that Taylor Swift herself had not confirmed.

The Use of AI to Monitor Election Campaigns

Despite the challenges and risks associated with AI in political campaigns, it is also evident that it can become a valuable tool to streamline campaign processes.

For example, in the same voting in India, candidates used avatars to ensure greater voter engagement. With over 968 million voters, this approach allowed campaigns to reach isolated voters, establish connections with them, and build political appeal.

Additionally, this technology was used to reach voters who speak different languages; for instance, Modi’s speech was translated in real-time from Hindi to Tamil.

AI can also be utilized to monitor and assess voter attention and reactions to campaigns, allowing for adjustments to be made, and to predict election statistics and future results.

Is the world of politics better off with the prevalence of AI?

AI in politics presents growing challenges in the voting context. The deliberate creation of false information and defamation, for which AI is particularly well-suited, is becoming more and more common. However, AI can also be used in analytical processes and to create personalized content.

Nevertheless, there is a very fine line between the two, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish truth from falsehood. In one way or another, this influences voters’ choices, opinions, and can determine election outcomes, which may not always be accurate.

In the future, this will require careful legal regulation and other measures to prevent or identify content created through the unlawful use of AI. Sources: Brennan Center, NBC News, X, Asia Pacific, The Guardian, Truth Social.