Talking to a chatbot named Oscar

This month Avi Golan and Air NZ launched Oscar, a chatbot that deals with routine inquiries, in its first foray into artificial intelligence.

Through the airline’s website, customers get near- instant replies to typed questions. At this stage, speech works only on mobile devices.

The early stage, or beta, creation is learning as it goes. Golan says that is part of the Google approach. The technology may not work perfectly, but is part of an experimental culture, the hallmark of the best Silicon Valley companies.

Oscar uses off the shelf language programs and has a limited orbit of expertise right now ( he’s stumped by anything too tangential, such as “Who is Air New Zealand’s chief executive?”). But Golan has big plans for his creation. He wants his chatbots to know how you feel.

“The vision is for the bots to move from gathering information to activities — changing flights and seats.”

Two- way video communication with a chatbot will also transform the experience and the airline last week met a Kiwi start- up company about creating an avatar presence for Oscar. “We’re looking at technologies where we understand your voice and if we have video we will be able to sense that you’re frustrated and be able to transfer you to a live agent,” he says. Asked whether the bots are there to replace people, he says agents will be doing more sophisticated work referred to them by Oscar and his crew. “AI [ artificial intelligence] is the ability to understand customers better — it helps customers interact with the airline in a better way.” The E tu union covers Air New Zealand call centre workers, who have had to reapply for new roles. One woman who contacted the Herald said this had upset workers. But E tu’s head of aviation, Kelvin Ellis, says while the introduction of new technology headlined by Oscar has unsettled some individuals, there were no job losses, many staff have moved to new revenue generating roles and the airline has worked closely with the union throughout the process. He says in other sectors where technology displaced staff, his union was often called in too late to pick up the pieces.