Channel AI Breakthroughs: AT&T, Nvidia, GoTo, Twilio

Throughout 2023, Channel Futures will take a close look at how artificial intelligence is profoundly impacting the channel. This week’s news features updates from Nvidia and AT&T, GoTo, PolyAI and Twilio.

Before we delve into those, it’s important to note recent milestones from Microsoft and Google surrounding generative AI. Microsoft said it will bring AI to tools such as Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and Word. This should change how millions of people accomplish work each day, the company said. Microsoft announced its AI “Co-pilot” tool, built on the same technology that “underpins” ChatGPT. Co-pilot will help users edit, summarize, create and compare documents, among other tasks.

As for Google, it released this week its generative AI tool, Bard — though it only “will be available to a limited number of users in the United States and Britain,” reports the New York Times. Eventually it will accommodate additional users, countries and languages over time, Google said.

While some companies in the channel have implemented generative AI, other organizations are focused on additional artificial intelligence tools.

Nvidia Helps AT&T Enhance Sustainability Goals Through AI

AT&T and Nvidia are collaborating, using Nvidia-powered AI to enhance AT&T’s sustainability efforts. AT&T is the first telecommunications provider to explore the use of a full suite of Nvidia AI offerings.

The company will transform its operations by using the AI for processing data, optimizing service-fleet routing and building digital avatars for employee support and training.

Andy Markus is chief data officer at AT&T.

“We strive each day to deliver the most efficient global network, as we drive towards net-zero emissions in our operations,” Markus said. “Working with Nvidia to drive AI solutions across our business will help enhance experiences for both our employees and customers.”

The company will implement data processing using the Nvidia AI Enterprise software suite. This includes the Nvidia Rapids Accelerator for Apache Spark. They will also enable real-time vehicle routing and optimization with Nvidia cuOpt. Furthermore, AT&T will adopt digital avatars with Nvidia Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine and Nvidia Tokkio. Finally, they’ll utilize conversational AI with Nvidia Riva.

AT&T, which has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2035, has instituted broad initiatives to make its operations more efficient, the company said. A major challenge is optimizing energy consumption while providing network infrastructure that delivers data at high speeds.

AT&T processes more than 590 petabytes of data on average a day. That is the equivalent of about 6.5 million 4K movies or more than eight times the content housed in the U.S. Library of Congress if all of its collections were digital.

Telecoms aiming to reduce energy consumption face challenges across their operations. Within networks, the radio access network (RAN) consumes 73% of energy, while core network services, data centers and operations use 13%, 9% and 5%, respectively, according to the GSMA, a mobile industry trade group.

GoTo To Implement ChatGPT Integrations

GoTo is integrating two new features for using ChatGPT into its own IT management and UCC tools. Users will benefit from the new integrations with …

… streamlined communication and collaboration, improved customers service and increased productivity.

Automated AI capabilities have become increasingly popular since the advent of ChatGPT. ChatGPT can respond to user prompts and answer questions in near real-time. While robots were once seen as a threat to people’s jobs, this new AI is becoming a valuable tool for workers who need to get a lot done in a short amount of time, GoTo said.

GoTo plans to release beta access to a ChatGPT integration for GoTo Resolve, its all-in-one IT management and support solution. This integration aims to make creating and running IT automation scripts for device management simpler. Administrators need only tell the tool what they want to do to automatically create a script and execute a task. With IT teams constantly pressed for time, GoTo believes ChatGPT is the perfect platform to further optimize productivity in IT teams by consistently automating administrative and repetitive tasks.

In the U.S., ChatGPT capabilities are also available in GoTo Customer Engagement as a message assistant in beta. This integration makes writing messages and responding to inquiries quick and easy with just a few clicks. This allows customer service representatives to easily create effective SMS campaigns by generating messages tailored to the campaign objective, target audience, and desired call to action. The AI-powered message assistant can also suggest responses to incoming messages based on previous customer interactions and keywords.

PolyAI Broadens Partnership with Twilio, Offers Customer-Led Conversational Assistants

PolyAI and Twilio have partnered to integrate PolyAI’s customer-led conversational assistant with Twilio Flex and Twilio Programmable Voice, a flexible contact center platform. Twilio Flex allows enterprises to deploy a 100% cloud-based contact center in days, not months, the company said.

This partnership between PolyAI and Twilio comes on the heels of a recent $40 million funding round for PolyAI, in which Twilio Ventures participated.

PolyAI’s Michael Chen

Michael Chen is head of partnerships at PolyAI.

“PolyAI’s unique delivery model for conversational assistants now allows Twilio Flex customers to access PolyAI’s proprietary technology along with our expertise in speech recognition, conversational design, machine learning and dialogue design,” said Chen. “This allows them to deploy solutions that elevate the typical call center workflow into a branded conversational experience.”

PolyAI’s integration with Twilio Flex and Programmable Voice solutions allows customers to use PolyAI conversational assistants to resolve customer queries over the phone and transfer calls back to contact center agents, when necessary. This handoff includes vital metadata about the interaction to enable personalization and power business intelligence.

There’s an abundance of self-service options available to customers; however, only 9% of queries are fully resolved in digital self-service channels, according to Gartner. Seventy-one percent of customers prefer to phone even when their queries could easily be fully resolved online.