Metaverse is an amazing example of modern days

It is still hard to understand what the metaverse really is, nobody knows for sure at this point. However, the interest in the metaverse is affecting every industry — even food brands are attempting to capitalise on it by developing virtual reality interfaces. Kore.ai led the development and deployment of AI-first virtual assistants by businesses across all industries and regions. We spoke to Prasanna Kumar Arikala, CTO, Kore.ai, for a quick insight into metaverse. Excerpts:

DQ: What are the actual Metaverse Solution?

Prasanna: The way we understand the Metaverse is that it’s the combination of physical with the digital or virtual forms/avatars. 

In today’s scenario, if we go on a website or a mobile app, we’re able to pay bills or apply for a loan digitally. Well, if we go to a branch of that bank, we can physically meet the loan officer or teller, have a conversation, and accomplish something. So, on one hand, we have a web or mobile application where we can manage things on our own. On the other hand, we can go and meet people.  The Metaverse is somewhere in between, as we see it. 

Instead of going onto the web to do something, if you use your HoloLens and then walk into a branch and meet a virtual loan officer or a virtual teller and have a verbal conversation with them like you would have with a human and accomplish what you wanted to. So, you don’t have to get into your car and drive to the branch. Now, you could’ve done the same thing on the web but I think the Metaverse lends itself to a type of metaphysical experience that takes you into certain locations where it is better than a web experience. But it all depends on the use cases.  

And that’s where Conversational AI comes through, because the avatar that you are going to be meeting in the Metaverse would be a bot. We believe that for those use cases that lend themselves to the Metaverse, over a period where there’s a virtual service provider of some sort, conversational AI is the basis of that avatar for its very existence and functionality. If avatars are the basis of the Metaverse, then conversational AI is its engine. That’s where we see conversational AI being the biggest enabler within the Metaverse.   

DQ: How will it affect businesses?

Prasanna: So just like in the middle part of the 2010s, where a lot of customers were unsure about how they planned to implement and use conversational AI but still valued its potential, I would imagine that in the next few years, there are going to be many PoCs and experiments, out of which will emerge use cases that are valuable for the enterprise in the Metaverse.  

As of now, no one knows for sure which are the primary activities that are going to be more popular than others in the Metaverse. 

Could it be that opening a bank account will be more popular in the Metaverse as the virtual teller who appears as an avatar engages the customer better and generates more upsell opportunities? Maybe, yes.

But for it to happen, there must be some good reasons in those business processes that lend themselves to being there physically that’s preventing them from doing so digitally. The same is the case with the post office or, for that matter, a lot of educational services. 

And if you think of telehealth, going into the Metaverse and meeting a virtual representative of your doctor who can check your vitals, could potentially be one of the more stronger use cases. 

Any which way you look at it, there are no humans in the Metaverse. You are not there in a human form, nor is that avatar that you are meeting over there. Your voice is going to go through your lens, but on the other side you are going to meet an avatar, often a machine that needs to engage with you, in voice or in text, and which is what conversational AI-powered solutions are supposed to be doing. 

DQ: How will it integrate into cloud user experience?

Prasanna: Virtual and 3D worlds in the Metaverse will require greater computational power, higher security, and accessibility at large scale. They will be hosted on the cloud environment. The cloud computing power and infrastructure will enable accessing Metaverse everywhere at scale over the internet. The cloud environment will enable seamless experience across omnichannel. The Web 3.0 will most likely play a key role in enabling decentralization of identity and content with greater authenticity. 

DQ: How companies are improving their presence and user experiences and CX in a virtual world?

Prasanna: With more people opting to join the Metaverse bandwagon, there will be routine tasks that require more advanced and intuitive communication. Be it mailing a letter, purchasing land, or opening an account there must be a proper way to scale communications through artificial intelligence. Technologies like conversational AI will allow brands to design more appealing and engaging user experiences in this burgeoning virtual environment. 

Today, almost all customer-centric organizations direct their conversational AI use cases toward improving customer engagement, especially where huge volumes are involved and there’s a need for faster redressal or resolution. 

In the digital-first society that we are living in, enterprises are using conversational AI to drive conversational IVR, self service automation, omnichannel experience, personalized services and AI-enabled agent experiences. 

While natural language understanding is foundational for all of these, the real ingenuity lies in applying this technology for enterprise-specific use cases. 

Companies that have a forward-thinking view invest their R&D into understanding what kind of experiences they want to deliver to their customers and employees and build use cases related to those based on domain-specific know-how, which is supplemented by NLU. 

Providers like Kore.ai specialize in designing and building sophisticated conversational experiences that power voice and digital interactions by understanding context, executing natural human-like conversational flows in a personalized way, and providing a wide breadth of use cases and consistency across multiple channels.  

DQ: Harnessing the power of important tools/technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Mixed Reality (MR), Extended Reality (ER) to enable metaverse, how increased use of technology is enabling rapid adoption of metaverse?

Prasanna: With the evolution of technologies like biometrics, augmented reality (AR) and other similar technologies, we expect Metaverse to really pick up speed in the coming days. I would focus more on researching and identifying the right use cases and building solutions for them. When it comes to the early stages of the Metaverse, gaming is obviously the most easily identifiable utility. But what are the truly valuable use cases from a consumer point of view or an enterprise point of view? Whether it’s asynchronous or continuous, voice or chat, or anything else. We haven't found anything being attempted yet, as it’s still very new to everyone. 

The early use cases are potentially in the areas of education or enablement and collaboration in verticals like healthcare, higher education and wealth management. There may also be use cases that are valuable in virtual shopping for retail or e-commerce, and many more that will be useful for enterprises and consumers in the years to come.

DQ: What according to you, are the challenges and opportunities with metaverse?

Prasanna: As more retail, banking and technology companies begin to leverage the Metaverse, the need for intelligent and relatable customer service programs will be crucial to driving success in this new arena. And, in order to achieve this, it has become increasingly clear that conversational AI must be the foundation of the Metaverse, especially for experience delivery. 

Whether it is a virtual post office, bank, or fast-food restaurant, the interactions will be between a human controlled avatar and a virtual assistant, so these avatars must have a streamlined way to communicate in order to effectively reach their goal. 

With advancements of technologies in high performance parallel processing, large scale AI models trained with billions of parameters, AR/VR and web 3.0, are definitely shaping up enormous possibilities in the metaverse.

Specific to Life Sciences, we envision multiple high-value opportunities to leverage conversational AI in the Metaverse.  These include discussing the recommended treatment plan after a difficult cancer diagnosis; obtaining clinical consent for an experimental therapy; exploring past emotional trauma as a portion of psychological therapy; Identifying non-obvious psychological traits which predict an ability to work independently; and highly relevant today, determining emotional readiness for return to a collaborative working environment assessments. 

While the opportunities are exciting, it is interesting to see how this entire ecosystem will evolve. We believe that a lot of it will depend on what kind of players will emerge in this space, which technologies they will work with, and what innovations they plan to bring to build the right use cases that are relevant for users of different demographics. We’re in for some  exciting times and with conversational AI, we believe we will be in the forefront of creating those virtual experiences that make Metaverse a reality.