'For customer service, press 1...' Perplex City's software development takes another step forward. Call centres may become a thing of the past. Eventually.
By CHO KAPLAN
Exacache Software today announced the release of Janet Three, the next generation of the company's popular business-use artificial intelligence software. Improvements added in this release are numerous, and include significantly improved experiential integration, some performance enhancements, and an entirely rewritten pattern analysis algorithm that allows Janet to recognise when an unusual situation is cropping up more frequently so that she can bring them to the attention of human operators.
"Our new Janet Three is as competent as a human employee when she is well-trained, and of course able to take on a significantly higher volume of work," boasted Exacache President Joachim Felderhoff. "There is no doubt that Janet is the benchmark for computer-assisted corporate customer support, and with her new enhancements, we are confident our customers will begin to find an even wider array of applications for her."
Exacache says it is already hard at work on a fourth Janet release, which would include enhancements to recognise vocal stress patterns and alter Janet's behaviour to suit when the person she is interacting with becomes agitated. Industry analyst Sonja Heme said that this sort of emotional reactiviy "will really break open the AI market to a more diverse array of applications," but said that she does not expect a huge boom in market penetration from Janet Three.
Although Exacache does not publicly release specific sales figures, industry analysts estimate that to date, roughly three thousand separate Janet instances have been deployed, with the majority of those performing simple customer service operations. Exacache shares on the PCX rose to PCL573.20 on the news this morning.
