Yo!
I’ve not had much to do with Artificial Intelligence, even of the primitive sort, since my final year computer science engineering project years ago. This morning inspired by an article that said virtual assistants like Siri were the Next Big Thing, I finally decided to give it a shot. I asked it to look up the last missed call on Truecaller. Nope, can’t do that. I then asked if it could convert 6pm IST to EST in October. Even though it reproduced the question it muttered that it had no idea about some place in Iceland and added “How silly is that”. You can say that again. But I’m sure they’ll eventually get it right and then it raises questions on the whole search for information process.
If my phone can answer most questions – by researching the web – what is the revenue model going to be for the web? If, say, Siri gets its information on the rating of a restaurant directly Zomato and pushes it to me – the human views on these sites are going to drop dramatically. Moreover I’m going to be using the interface on my virtual assistant for the Search rather than Google or Bing, and after a while I won’t really care about the algorithms behind it as long as the results work. Microsoft is putting the pieces together – searches on Cortana take place through Bing only. Microsoft last month created a new AI and Research Group, staffed by 5,000 engineers and computer scientists, merging its Microsoft Research and Information Platform Groups with the teams working on Bing, Cortana, robotics, and “ambient computing” environments.
AI-driven information voice search is going to be awesome as a consumer. It would be able to merge your ‘personal’ info – say photos on your device – with the context eg where you are or what time it is and recommend a solution to your query that is appropriate. As marketers I’d imagine websites or the future equivalent of the same would be optimized to deliver data to these virtual assistants as fast and efficiently as possible without wasting time on “look and feel” that the machine doesn’t care about. You would have to figure out revenue models that incentivize the virtual assistants to ‘suggest’ your products even as the virtual assistants will want to maintain their neutrality. I also think that as the relationship and trust with your virtual assistant grows you may stop looking at social data and count on the assistant to look at aggregates of user feedback instead.
So much happening! And yet the window of opportunities for brands continues to shrink as the consumer finds newer ways of getting their work done, and competitors figure out the best way to harness technology to address these fidgety customers. You’ve now got to master technology, no matter what your job description says. One good way to do that is of course to participate in programs specifically designed to help you understand the role of tech in marketing and business. Paul Writer offers some good programs in this space. We have a by-invitation only CMO Roundtable coming up in Mumbai on November 10th and a tweetchat co-hosted with IBM and practitioner experts early November. As the Secretariat for INDUS (Indian Users of SAP) we’re looking forward to the upcoming Conclave in Mumbai on November 15th.
You can view the recording of our previous webinar co-hosted with Kiran Ajbani, Head – Enterprise and Digital Marketing Solutions at IBM and Sanjay Tripathy, Vice President – Marketing, Product, Analytics, Digital & E-Commerce at HDFC Life.
Have a great weekend!
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