Digital biosecurity officer launched as part of a trial of virtual assistant technologies at the airport
Visitors arriving into Auckland’s International Airport are getting a very hands-on experience with virtual assistants after the airport launched what it claims is the first ‘digital’ biosecurity officer worldwide.
Vai, which stands for virtual assistant interface, started her official employment onsite last week as part of a trial of the technology in the airport’s biosecurity arrivals area. The trial is being conducted by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI) in partnership with Westpac’s Innovation Fund and is about taking some of the load off its officers during peak times, MPI detection technology manager, Brett Hickman, said. Vai will do this by screening the public using simple biosecurity questions.
Vai is the brainchild of New Zealand company, FaceMe, and is based on avatar technology that uses biometrics to learn human interactions, as well as natural language processing.
“Digital employees also learn from every past interaction to sharpen and perfect their skills,” FaceMe CEO, Danny Tomsett, said.
“Vai is highly conversational and has been trained through every interaction, as well as data available on the website. She embodies the AI experience with human-like qualities, including a friendly personality and emotional understanding.”
While Hickman said nothing will replace human interaction and relationships, having Vai in place frees up officers to deal with the “really important aspects of their role”.
The Westpac Innovation Fund is a $10 million initiative established jointly by Westpac and the New Zealand Government. Westpac head of public sector strategy, Brent Chalmers, said the fund saw value in supporting the trial of AI-based avatars in different parts of government.
“The aim is to help create services and experiences that help grow a better and more innovative New Zealand,” he said.
Findings from the trial are expected to be published in April.
FaceMe isn’t the only New Zealand-based company getting into the AI-powered avatar space. Soul Machines, another startup in the land of the long white cloud formed by Mark Sagar, has created a number of avatars including Nadia, a virtual human voiced by Cate Blanchett that’s now being trialled by the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA). Nadia was designed to operate across multiple channels from the outset to create a consistent interaction for clients, with the face being just one representation.
Another example of Soul Machines’ virtual humans in action is Sophie, a pilot customer interaction project for Air New Zealand.
Follow CMO on Twitter: @CMOAustralia, take part in the CMO conversation on LinkedIn: CMO ANZ, join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CMOAustralia, or check us out on Google+:google.com/+CmoAu
Creating a strong company culture may sound like a daunting task, but it’s actually pretty straightforward. In fact, company culture is created in exactly the same fashion as a religion or democracy. Behaviours created from the organisation’s inception are reinforced over time by leadership, attracting like-minded people and eventually reaching critical mass to become an accepted ‘truth’.
The question I get asked most regularly these days is: ‘Do I need to rebuild my company’s systems on Blockchain?’ And the answer, every time, is ‘No, you’re asking the wrong question’.
Throughout my career, I have witnessed a litany of brand names that profess to have a unique customer value proposition (CVP). In reality, however, they’ve had little more than a ‘value proposition’: A simple list of benefits applied to a general audience.
In this bonus last episode of this new podcast series, BrandHook MD, Pip Stocks, talks with former ANZ group general manager of marketing, Louise Eyres, talks about the importance of thinking like a customer and using intuition to solve customer painpoints.
RE: Sales and marketing SLAs, often the choke point isn't the teams but them getting the data into the tools they want to use with the da...
Ed Fry
Why sales and marketing alignment is more important than ever
Amazing article Mitchell. I really enjoyed the read. Chatbots will be critical in the future evolution of banking and financial services ...
Giridhar Prathap Reddy
7 businesses successfully implementing chatbots
Thank you for the good and very helpful information. It is very interesting. I love all the things you share and see your beautiful creat...
รัตนาวดี ภูมิวรรณ
Former eHarmony marketing chief joins telco startup
Colin Kaepernick, not Mike Kapernick.
thisisw
Zenith's innovation leader: Mid-digital age not benefitting media, brands or consumers
AGA KHAN HOSPITAL is in need of kidney donors for the sum of 2 crore, Contact us today if you want to sell your kidney for money, and thi...
Sebastian Friedrich
Mindshare gets behind blockchain advertising alliance