COVID-19 Spurred Demand for Conversational AI

In the wake of COVID-19, cloud-based artificial intelligence (AI) played a critical role in the transformation of conversational AI, according to ABI Research.

"Cloud AI is accelerating conversational AI. Voice has already made significant inroads into the smart home space and certain enterprise domains," said Lian Jye Su, a principal analyst at ABI Research.

A global emphasis on working from home, combined with advice to minimize COVID-19 transmission from shared surfaces, helped cement the benefits of smart home voice control for millions of consumers and enterprises, Su said.

Conversational AI platforms allow companies to activate, manage, and train AI to resolve tickets, address questions regarding availability and pricing, and aid with complex issues. This benefitted both cloud AI vendors, such as Amazon, Alibaba, Baidu, Google, Microsoft, and Xiaomi, which offer voice control front ends, as well as chipset vendors whose chipsets support the training and inference of cloud-based natural language processing workloads and voice activation and recognition in voice control devices.

"In the short term, cloud AI enables better remote visibility and maintenance, as well as less travel to facilities; midterm, it promotes data-driven decision-making; long-term, it is the cornerstone for many emerging key technologies and strong business fundamentals," Su concluded.

COVID-19 Expands Opportunities for Voice Control

Voice control can minimize the risk of contracting coronavirus from touching shared surfaces, ABI Research suggests.

01 Apr 2020