@tjrobertson52

AI customer service has largely been a joke up until now, but we might have just reached the point where they can actually replace humans. My prediction is that within a year, we will more often be talking with an AI than with a human when we call a business. You might have just seen, as it was reported by Venturebeat and a few other publications, that phony AI has reached a 99% accuracy, and 70% of people can't tell that they're speaking with an AI when using that service.

Now, digging into the story, all signs point at a coordinated PR stunt. The three companies involved, Foley AI, Grock, and my TIE, all released statements simultaneously. All the numbers come directly from them, so I don't think there's any reason to trust those statistics or their claims specifically.

However, what is clear is that we're getting to the point where the latency of AI is roughly the same as the latency of humans, where AI voices are indistinguishable from human voices, and where the software allows these edges to schedule appointments, answer common questions, or have a human call the person back. Now, there's a lot of debate online right now about whether this is the future or if people are going to hate talking to AI and would prefer to talk to a human.

And I think we can confidently say yes to both of those. Here's the thing. Yes, AI fatigue has already set in most people Would rather talk to a human than to an AI.

Although anti social millennials and a lot of Gen Z might actually prefer talking to an AI. But here's what I think we can say confidently. Once people get used to an AI answering the phone and helping them with their problem, once these AIs actually feel human and aren't terrible at their jobs, the one thing everyone's gonna hate even more than talking to an AI is waiting on hold or being sent to voicemail.

Yelp and a few other companies are already making it really easy to have AI answer your unanswered calls, meaning your customers only speak with an AI if a human was unable to answer the call. My prediction is within one year, most companies will have set this up already. The average consumer will be completely used to it.

It'll be normalized. And then the experience of calling a business and not having your call answered, it's just gonna be intolerable for the average consumer. So I'm not judging whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

I know a lot of people are gonna lose their jobs, and I hope more jobs are created, but none of us really know what that's gonna look like. What I do know is if you're a small business owner, you need to figure out a way where every call to your business gets answered, whether that's by a human or an intelligent AI.