Introduction

What is the latest trend in AI? Not to think twice! It’s GPTs and Generative AI solutions of the world. Conversational AI is the latest trend in the technology world now. Additionally, future of conversational AI is so promising with the rate of current market adoption.

Thus, this article will detail conversational AI trends and the future. Also, we will explore the latest trends that will drive the development of conversational AI solutions. Certainly, the way in which we develop the conversational bots! In particular, we will be discussing the following points in this article: 

• • Current AI Trends & the Role of Conversational AI
  • Latest Trends of Conversational AI
  • Future of Conversational AI
  • Conclusion

Are you an entrepreneur or a business stakeholder? 

Moreover, are you thinking about how to start the journey of conversational AI? By the end of this article, you will get a holistic view of the latest conversational AI trends and future. If you need any further assistance in integrating conversational AI into your business, we are here to help you. Please click the scheduled meeting at the bottom of this article.

Latest AI Trends: Conversational AI the Biggie!

A few years later, the main AI talk was about digital twins, computer vision, and predictions. Thereafter, conversational AI is holding the podium with the advent of Generative AI.

As well as it offers the confidence to adopt AI chatbots for mainstream business operations. Earlier, businesses were afraid of chatbot’s performance because the chatbot could get stumped at any time.

If they don’t have a suitable fallback mechanism, there is a risk of customer churn. Today, anything is possible with the pre-trained transformers model as the backend NLP engine (one used in the chatGPT).

Furthermore, by leveraging generative AI, voice bots become a prominent hyper-personalisation option. Although, there are some other trending spaces in AI. Below is the snapshot of the same.

From here, we will delve into Conversational AI more. Before discussing the latest conversational AI trends & future, we can sneak a peek at the evolution of conversational AI. Check out the below is the snapshot!

Latest Trends of Conversational AI:

Under-the-hood technology tends to improve:

• • Natural Language Understanding (NLU), Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR), and Text to Speech (TTS). These are the technology modules of conversational AI improving at a higher pace. 
  • The maturity of the above technologies will lead to enhanced user experience & newer opportunities.
  • Enterprises are automating customer service with voice-enabled bots.
  • By integrating third-party applications, enterprises are offering multi-language support for customer services.
  • Orchestration facilities are trending to accommodate the larger scale of adoption. 
  • Adoption of workbench tools to manage industry domain-based conversational AI projects. It ensures a harmonized approach.

Matured enterprise strategy:

• • Today, conversational AI projects are not running as POC projects or MVP solutions.
  • Enterprises are branding conversational AI products and solutions as their offerings.
  • Large enterprises are engaging vendor products & solutions as accelerators to improve time-to-market.

Conversational Design is the Key:

• • Adoption of chatbot builder with drag & drop feature is on the rise! Because conversation design plays a crucial role in designing better user experience.
  • Along with NLU design, conversation design determines the success of AI chatbots. It helps to design intuitive & empathetic conversations on the go. 
  • In addition, agility ensured by the no-code platform is irreplaceable in editing the chatbot flow.

Higher Adoption for Multimodal and Multi-channel Interactions:

• • Enterprise interest is growing in multimodal interactions.
  • Is it confusing for you? We can go with an example. Imagine a voice bot explaining a brochure on your mobile.
  • Its popularity is surging with the combo of WhatsApp + voice bot.
  • It offers a richer and more interactive user experience.
  • Days of basic FAQ chatbots are fading away. It will pave the way for immersive experiences.

Build vs. Subscription:

• • Enterprises are not keen on maintaining a full-fledged NLP team. 
  • Businesses are trying to refrain from managing end-to-end conversational AI development. [Designing the NLU model, conversation flow, backend integration, training & testing.]
  • The lack of an in-house technical skill set is also a driving factor in adopting the no-code tool. It also saves a lot of budget spending and easy chatbot lifecycle management. 
  • Eventually, rather than building from ground up, enterprises will hire good architects. They will guide the technology team to subscribe to relevant SaaS No-Code platforms. Building solutions is a less preferred choice now.
  • Therefore, we have shared some insights on the comparison between no-code and traditional chatbot development. 

Hyper-Personalization:

• • Latest AWS research shows that users are willing to share personal information with AI bots.
  • So, more chances of getting to know customers closer.
  • There are endless possibilities for cross-channel personalization for contact centre interactions.
  • Businesses are getting equipped to know their customers with fewer questions. 

Conversational AI-Driven Contact Centers:

• • It ensures a 360 view of a customer profile by enabling the “voice of the customer insights. However, it encompasses a new system to get a holistic customer view.
  • Larger enterprises are steering the customers towards self-help support. 
  • Enterprises are considering this as the right time to invest in automation. It all happens by leveraging voice & chat-based conversational AI integrations.

Future of Conversational AI:

Conversational AI-Driven Search

 

Imagine searching the internet using a conversational approach. You can execute a search as you are talking to a person. So, the search will no longer focus on the keywords and phrases.

Although, it enables the voice-based search as well. Even though, interactive search demands an advanced level of context understanding. It transforms the search engine into a intelligent personal assistant powered with prompt chaining mechanism. 

Not a simple one! An intelligent one, indeed. Search engines can be interactive by asking follow-up questions. For example, if you search for a hotel, it may check with you to reserve a table!

For enterprises, it can be an eye-opener. It can ensure interoperability. Voice-based search can connect with many systems and drive complex operations with ease. Generative AI-powered conversational AI systems can remember the past. It will help the search engines to deliver by understanding the user preferences.

How about a combo of LLMs, Synthetic Voice and Avatars?:

 

Think of a virtual avatar in professional attire greeting customers! There are some more. How about handling multi-language interactions with a convincing voice? Is it an incredible combination? Of course, yes! There are three main modules to it:

1. LLM – LLM has an excellent fallback mechanism. Suppose a user’s input doesn’t match a predetermined intent. LLMs will explore the user’s original message to identify matching synonyms so that the conversation will continue without a break.
2. Synthetic Voice – Generative AI can use any voice tone. But it may need further improvement to handle regional diction and all. All we can say is that it will happen in the near future.
3. Virtual Avatars – Consider integrating the above modules with a virtual avatar. Goodbye to Robotic Voice. Interacting with relevant pauses and expressions then, customers will get engaged more.

 Hang on tight! As a customer, you are going to experience moments of delight pretty soon.

Metaverse + Conversational AI:

Conversational AI can amplify the experience in a virtual world on how we socialize & work. Following are the areas it will contribute: 

• • Enhanced Social Interaction: As we discussed earlier, virtual avatars can have human-like interactions with users. It will bring a real-world feel to the virtual world by making it more live and responsive. 
  • Automated Help: Finding locations, answering product queries, virtual guides, and tutors! The list will go on. It can go beyond the generic FAQ. It can ensure an enhanced customer experience beyond the chat interfaces with a virtual avatar.
  • Personalized Experience: Metaverse experience can be hyper-personalized based on user preferences. For example, A virtual shopkeeper can recommend items based on your buying history. Also, it can infer preferences from user interactions. 

 

Chatbots With High Emotional Intelligence: 

Although, we need something more than personalization to put a hook with customers. High emotional intelligence is required to achieve empathetic customer service. It will enable the bots to understand the voice modulations & inner meaning of the phrases used in frustration. 

We can ensure that the era of high EQ bots is near based on the current advancements. It is not limited to customer service. Bots with high emotional intelligence can contribute to psychology and mental health space. 

Customer Engagement in Proactive Mode:

Even though there are many perceptions to this. For example, how about an e-commerce giant reaching out to you with compelling offers? 
Are you booking something through an app and getting stuck somewhere? How good would it be to get a ping from the support team? Above is the pathway to mature from conversing with to engaging customers.

Next-Gen No-Code Chatbot Builder:

As no-code is the latest trend, how you build chatbots is evolving. With the advent of Generative AI, users may move away from the drag-and-drop mechanism in the future. 

Prompt engineering will be the new way to develop conversational AI development. What an irony! It will be like prompt it and get it.

For example, the prompt will be “Create a chatbot for abc.com”. Then, users can further fine-tune the bots by leveraging the prompt chaining method.

Ethical AI:

Ethical AI will come into the main stage with the growth of conversational AI. Data privacy and usage ethics will be the key as they become part of our daily lives.

The need for strong AI governance will arise to ensure security, quality and ethical use. Conversational AI workbenches will arise to track bias levels in AI conversations. Unbiased AI will become the prime goal of implementing Ethical AI in enterprises.

Moving beyond ChatGPT:

GPT models showed the value of conversational AI. But we should remember that it is the tip of the iceberg. There are many more advancements to come in the future years. 

Today, it is not effectively handling the conversations with emotion & empathy. Advancements in reinforcement learning! However, with reinforcement learning, agents will learn on their own. 

They will be in a competitive mode to learn & unlearn based on the rewards they are getting from the users. Their motto will be to maximize the rewards and fine-tune them to be in better shape to talk sense. 

Conclusion

From ELISA in 1966 till today, we have seen a significant transition in conversational AI space. If the businesses need to adopt latest trends and future of conversational AI, they must keep an adoption checklist handy. From our past experiences, we are sharing a brief checklist below:

• • Design a conversational AI strategy after identifying AI touch points.
  • Forecast the demand for AI use cases and plan the solution development.
  • Test, engage, and subscribe to conversational AI builder tools.
  • Focus on setting up a conversational AI workbench rather than an NLP team from scratch.
  • Develop a culture of citizen developers—nurture citizen NLP engineers by leveraging no-code tools.
  • Ensure responsible AI and Ethical AI to accommodate conversational AI-integrated offerings.
  • Follow the latest trends and develop POCs & MVPs to test how it works for your business. Engage third-party vendors for the same.

 Sign up with us for free to develop chatbots! Enjoy the fun of no-code development in creating chatbots.

Still feeling a bit puzzled?

Our experts can help you decide on what’s best for your business. Schedule a meeting with our experts now.

Schedule Meeting

Let Us Help You Grow

What is the difference between WhatsApp Business API and App

What is the difference between WhatsApp Business API and App

How To Get WhatsApp Green Tick Verification for Your Business

How To Get WhatsApp Green Tick Verification for Your Business

How do You Master Whatsapp Marketing with Whatsapp Automation and Broadcast

How do You Master Whatsapp Marketing with Whatsapp Automation and Broadcast

Frequently Asked Questions?

What is Conversational AI?

Conversational AI lets computers understand and respond to human language. It includes chatbots and voice assistants. These tools make communication with machines more natural.

How is the future of conversational AI different from now?

The future will have more advanced AI interactions. This will be due to better natural language processing. We’ll also see more proactive and human-like AI behaviours.

Why are ethics important in conversational AI?

Ethics ensure AI respects user privacy. It helps avoid biases. Transparency in AI operations is also vital. We want AI to benefit users without causing harm.

How are recent trends shaping the future of conversational AI?

New trends like multimodal interactions are emerging. These combine voice and visual interfaces. Generative AI models are also gaining traction. They offer more flexible and dynamic interactions. Another trend is AI being more proactive, predicting user needs before they ask.