Chatbots atop the AI heap
David Schatsky
Technology research & insights, content & communications exec, leader of high-performing, gen AI-enabled teams. Creator of profitable insight services that shape executive action and drive growth. Tracking AI & climate.
Chatbots have emerged as a top—and by one measure, the top—enterprise AI application. According to the Omdia Enterprise AI Contracts Tracker, vendor-client deals involving chatbots or digital assistants outnumbered any other type of AI application announced over the last three quarters. Chatbot deals nearly tripled over this period to comprise more than a third of all enterprise AI deals in Q2. The tracker compiles publicly available information about vendor-client contracts, announcements and pilots involving AI in the enterprise globally. Omdia is a division of Informa, the global intelligence, research and events group.
With the pandemic producing major changes in consumer and worker behavior, many organizations have initiated or accelerated investments in automation, including the use of AI, to handle new patterns of activity, including surging call center volume. This is the likely explanation or the sharp increase in chatbot deals.
Enterprise AI activity globally bounced back in the second quarter after a dip in the first calendar quarter. The tracker lists 96 enterprise AI deals in Q2 of which 37 (about 40% of the total) were US deals, up from just 17 in 4Q19. The most active industries over the last three quarters were telecom, financial services, healthcare, public sector, and retail.
The most common technologies mentioned in the most recent quarter’s announcements were deep learning and natural language processing (NLP). The performance of NLP for certain tasks has gotten much better in the last year. The natural language generation model GPT-3, released by OpenAI over the summer, has focused a lot of attention on the language capabilities of AI.
AI is being applied in thousands of ways, so this is perhaps an oversimplified view based on limited data. Does it ring true? What are your organization's top AI applications?
Chat icon by IBM-Design
David, our product is all AI. We take an event that occurs 3-4 times each day–a new US data breach–and apply instantaneous decision making to give consumers and FIs the answer to three questions: 1) how bad was that breach, for the affected consumer (we're the only ones doing this) 2) Among all 12 possible ID crimes, which ones did this breach most raise the risk of 3) Among 51 action steps that prevent or detect ID fraud, which ones deserve the highest priority? And we just won Finovate's 2020 'Best startup technology of the year award'. Would value your input on how to get the word out.
Results-driven Senior Services Sales Consultant who drives growth in professional services and IT solutions | Digital Transformation | Enterprise IT Strategy | Amazon Web Services (AWS) | Machine Learning | AI
4yAs a consumer, I've begun to notice more frequent run-ins with Chat bots. This will be an interesting space to keep watching.