This Startup Is Making Chats With AI More Natural

No matter how impressive a customer service, tour guide or sales avatar may appear to a metaverse visitor upon first sight, if their conversations are only skin deep then the human-AI relationship tends to fizzle fast, just as it would between two people in real life.

Weili Dai, the billionaire co-founder and former president of Marvell Technology, has returned to the market with a startup called MeetKai that’s developed a ‘multi-turn’ conversational AI platform which better reflects the way humans naturally communicate. From guides and teachers to customer service agents, MeetKai creates AI-powered experts that possess deep knowledge on any subject, and that convey information to virtual visitors in a more intuitive manner.

Driven by a mission to improve the lives of everyday people around the world, Dai and her family have invested into MeetKai, which applies machine learning to create conversational AI solutions capable of leveraging any form of multimedia to instantly interact with end users, at a fraction of the cost and 10 times the speed, using first in the industry real time reasoning capabilities.

A surging market

A recent survey found that 60 per cent of tech leaders said their budgets for AI language technologies increased by at least 10 per cent in 2020, while 33 per cent reported a 30 per cent increase. In the call center industry alone, conversational AI deployments will reduce agent labor costs by $80 billion by 2026, according to the market research firm Gartner Inc.

Worldwide end-user spending on conversational AI solutions just within contact centers is forecast to reach $2 billion in 2022, and Gartner projects that one in 10 agent interactions will be automated by 2026, up from just 1.6 per cent that are currently automated using AI. More than 50 million customers are currently deploying MeetKai’s conversational AI platform from a variety of enterprise use cases. Los Angeles Chargers just named MeetKai as its ‘Official AI Partner’, and through this partnership MeetKai is developing new in-stadium and at-home virtual experiences for team fans such as virtual locker room tours.

MeetKai’s product innovations also include an AI imagery solution that enables non-technical users to create metaverse spaces. The company’s 3D graphics platform, MeetKai Reality, allows users to create three-dimensional spaces based on quick videos shot with standard digital cameras.

Women and their strengths

At the heart of all MeetKai’s innovations lies Dai’s commitment to creating cutting-edge and democratizing AI solutions for mapping the real-world and enhancing real-life experiences. “We’re building intuitive products that empower people around the world to make their lives easier and more productive,” she says.

As a highly successful woman in the tech industry – she’s listed as No. 21 on Forbes’ 2022 America’s Self-Made Women, with an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion — Dai remains committed to helping other women follow in her footsteps. But it isn’t solely a desire to help women succeed that drives her in this mission. Dai firmly believes that women must contribute to the advancement of AI and metaverse technology in order to produce positive outcomes that are possible for everyone.As a wife and mother of two who’s a standout role model of success for other women in the technology industry, Dai champions women’s inherent strengths as teachers and communicators. “Women understand that AI tech should reflect how humans naturally engage with their environments and each other,” she says. “The need for women to make valuable contributions to Artificial Intelligence has never been clearer than now,” she says.