Bluecore’s alby, an AI shopping assistant, wants to be less of a chatbot and more of a “true shopping companion.” Enhancements include a human-like, conversational product advisor, in-context product recommendations and recollection of a shopper’s in-session behavior. A Playbooks feature will help brands train alby to handle specific shopping scenarios.
I’d like DX tool vendor Easysend better if “Accept” were not the only consent option on their website. But we’ll still note that they’re upping their AI game with AI-powered digital journeys, fillable form creation, and workflow management. They’ve also announced an integration that will permit the launching of digital journeys from within Salesforce.
Vendors love to tout their latest AI achievements, but the actual state of AI deployment is considerably less rosy. A survey of 60,000 COOs by PYMNTS finds that autonomous operation is still restricted to a few repeatable, low-risk use cases. Even tasks like accessing information or creating summaries of emails and reports need the human touch in 50% to 100% of cases (depending on industry).
BetterUp and Stanford Social Media Lab define workslop as “AI-generated content that looks good, but lacks substance.” Their survey of 1,150 full-time desk workers in the U.S. finds that 40% received workslop in the last month, costing $186 per month per employee. For a 10,000-person company, that’s $9 million annually.