Her domain Our digital humans
TECHNOLOGY
The new breed of ‘‘digital humans’’ that are being developed to provide customer service for businesses are ‘‘overwhelmingly female’’ and that is no coincidence, one of the country’s leading experts in artificial intelligence says.
‘‘Kiri’’ will start working in Vodafone stores later this year, topping up people’s pre-paid phones without being paid a cent, but always keeping a smile.
The phone company is the latest to embrace digital humans that are underpinned by artificial intelligence and that can mimic emotional intelligence.
Air New Zealand has experimented with a digital human called ‘‘Sophie’’ to answers questions about New Zealand as a tourism destination and about the airline’s services.
ASB Bank has trialled another called ‘‘Josie’’ to answer questions about setting up small businesses.
Vodafone customer operations director Helen van Orton said Kiri would complete simple transactions for customers and not just answer questions.
Colin Gavaghan – an expert in artificial intelligence at Otago University – said the number of female digital humans ‘‘was way beyond the point where it could be coincidence’’.
‘‘They will have found there is a certain core of customers who, for whatever reason, are happier being waited on by a woman.’’
Gavaghan said he could only speculate what was behind that.
‘‘The other question is what is the impact of this, if they are all going to be that way.’’
There might be concerns, especially if digital humans had been programmed to show a degree of subservience and put up with things real people wouldn’t, he said.
Van Orton confirmed Vodafone had selected Kiri’s gender and characteristics after market research with a large number of customers, about 60 per cent of whom preferred interacting with a digital female. ‘‘Bizarrely, the female voice was preferred.’’
Van Orton said Kiri was designed to be ‘‘very smiley’’ and to be engaging, but was not subservient.
‘‘Our customers did not want a digital human to come across as ‘vanilla’. They wanted personality that came across as confident, smart and savvy and able to help, but in a very ‘Kiwi’ way.
‘‘Kiri does respond to you. I have seen videos where you see every range of emotions that she can display. If the customer is happy you will get a much broader smile. If they are looking a little worried, Kiri might give a sort of quizzical look to check they are OK – so it is a very interactive and empathetic way of communicating.’’
Kiri – like ASB’s Josie – was developed by Auckland technology company FaceMe.
FaceMe’s technology meant Kiri would be able to distinguish when a customer approached wanting help, van Orton said.
Kiri would ‘‘learn’’ from interactions from customers, but that would be supervised so any reactions would be vetted and approved by Vodafone.