4 Surprising Industries That Have Started Using Conversational AI Chatbots

LOS ANGELES, July 19, 2021 (Newswire.com) - Conversational AI is helping people have unique, educational and entertaining interactions with bots every day. AI assistants such as Siri and Alexa help many of us manage our daily lives, and chatbots populate e-commerce websites and healthcare platforms, helping users find what they need with 24/7 service.

However, a conversational AI chatbot can also be used in a variety of industries beyond these more common examples. Here are four industries using conversational AI chatbots in innovative and boundary-pushing ways.

Raising awareness for social issues

Charitable causes have made some of the most interesting and compelling use cases for conversational AI.

UNICEF launched a U-Report chatbot that allowed young people to report abuse through text messaging. This tool was already integral to uncovering widespread sexual abuse in Liberian schools.

The DoNotPay chatbot is designed to give free legal advice to people who can't afford the professional help of an attorney, such as people facing homelessness or refugees. While it may not be a proper replacement for a lawyer when the option is available, the first "robot lawyer" can provide invaluable resources to those who can't afford legal fees.

New pathways for interactive storytelling

Both Disney and Marvel have begun tapping conversational AI chatbots as a tool for storytelling.

As a promotion for the 2016 movie Zootopia, Disney launched a conversational AI that allowed users to work with one of the lead characters on solving mysteries. Although the chatbot's dialogue was largely scripted, it was able to respond to a variety of human replies and provide suggestions more nuanced than rudimentary keyword-based triggers.

Marvel launched a chatbot that allowed people to talk to several iconic characters including Star-Lord and Spider-Man. These chatbots didn't actually use conversational AI, leaving their responses sharply limited to a certain set of designed dialogue triggers, but they did combine their text responses with images straight from Marvel comics — an integration that could be a fascinating way to make chatbots more immersive and engaging.

Customizing your daily news intake

NBC began to use conversational AI to help people curate their daily news feed on Facebook messenger.

The NBC Politics Bot used conversational AI to learn user's preferences and interests in terms of which news stories to highlight and which weren't as relevant for individuals. It would then direct users to relevant video clips and headlines, giving a custom daily briefing to anyone interested.

Getting out the vote

GoVoteBot was a conversational AI chatbot designed by America's Ad Council and the ad agency R/GA to help get out the vote for the 2016 U.S. elections. Operating on Facebook Messenger, the chatbot was designed to be a well-informed friend who could answer questions about when and how to vote, if they were registered to vote and — proving that sometimes chatbots can do what friends can't — even register people to vote.

From its launch to the 2016 election, GoVoteBot handled more than 100,000 interactions, although the company didn't release how many registrations it actually turned out. Similar initiatives included VotePlz and HelloVote.

Source: iQuanti, Inc.