Mellwood Creative

The company uses a chatbot interface inside of their app to take applications and claims, through a series of tickboxes, forms and touch finger signatures. The company claims that it takes 90 seconds to start, and just 3 minutes to make a claim.

The app uses Maya, a “Personal Insurance Assistant”, to guide you through the process. In the into screens, the app says that it is powered by AI, but Maya does not introduce herself as a bot at any point. Maya has a profile picture and a star rating, as if she is just another sales representative.  At first I though that maybe the first few messages were automatic and I would eventually be transitioned to a sales member under the Maya persona, but I was wrong. The app UX even features a typing state  - even though a bot can answer instantly.

Startup company Soul Machines are doing a similar thing with their chatbot for the disabled. It features a 3D virtual assistant, which can answer questions and do computerised tasks.

So why are people making bots that act like people?

We humans are narcissistic. We create in our own image, project human qualities on animals and inanimate objects, and fall head-over-heels with the ones that best reflect our humanity back to ourselves.

From the classical tale of Pygmalion, a sculptor who falls in love with a statue, to the futurist film Ex Machina where an intelligent robot successfully tricks an entire human cast, our fascination with human-like constructs spans the centuries and creates ripples across fields from science to art.

Source: http://www.topbots.com/artificial-intelligences-successfully-mimic-humanity-loebner-prize/

With chatbot technology on the uptrend, developers are trying to infuse a convincing dose of “human-ness” to conversational AI. Since people intrinsically place more premium on an artificial intelligence that communicates like a real person vs. one that responds robotically, businesses are hoping to better engage their markets using simulated human conversation, however not everyone thinks this is a good thing:

There’s a debate in AI circles right now is whether bots should present themselves as humans or machines, and if gender should even apply in either case. I don’t think as a industry we’ve agreed that to humanize our agents is the best thing to do

Dennis Mortensen of x.ai

Thought point: Why are most the virtual assistants out there female?

What if we can’t tell a human from a bot?

Inability to distinguish human from bot has major implications for society. Every day, scam artists send millions of automated messages that trick victims into handing over cash or sensitive personal information. Twitter estimates that approximately 23 million of their active accounts are automated bots. To jumpstart their growth, even respected Silicon Valley startups like Airbnb used Craigslist bots posing as rent seekers to convince homeowners to list on their site instead.

While “humanness” in artificial intelligence allows us to scale positive human qualities like empathy, compassion, respect, and kindness, we can also scale malice, negativity, indifference, manipulation, and hate if we are not careful. When we share white supremacist views with Tay or curse at Siri, we are not only mistreating technology, but teaching our computers how we want to be treated.

Development of bots without personalities

Google initially purposefully avoided humanizing its bot creation: the Google Assistant acted as an all-purpose agent with no distinct personality (although its voice is female). But of the major tech companies, Google was virtually alone in this approach. Most had opted to present a strong human persona with clearly feminine voices, including Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Microsoft’s Cortana (only Siri lets you switch easily to a male voice).

Since the creation however, Google found a natural sounding voice assistant can only achieve so much without being relate-able to its human users. That's why Google is now taking a page out of Apple's and Microsoft's books in hopes to build a character, and even a backstory, for the new Google Assistant. The company has turned to Ryan Germick, head of the Google Doodle team, and freelance artist Emma Coats who will help shape the new personality.

Over the past couple of weeks, companies have been pulling advertising from YouTube over Google’s inability to ensure ads won’t appear next to hateful and offensive content. The Wall Street Journal reports that YouTube videos centered around racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic views are still scooping up ads from brands like Coca-Cola, Amazon.com, and Microsoft. There was even a jaguar pre roll placed before an ISIS recruitment video. Google has promised companies it would solve the issue and implement better tools and moderation practices.

On Friday, Wall Street Journal reporter Jack Nicas tweeted a screenshot of an ad for a YouTube Red original movie appearing as pre-roll on a user-submitted video called “Michelle Obama Dancing to Alabama Ni**er.” The revelation came moments after it was announced that Walmart, Pepsi Co. and Starbucks are among more advertisers that had either suspended or pulled their spend.

So what’s the deal? Surely people know that an ad before a video, does not mean endorsement of a video? 

Adweek ran a survey which found that 1/3 of people when they see an ad around controversial content, see it as an endorsement by that brand. Which I personally find surprising. But remember, we work in advertising. We know how ad buys work and how random they are.  And moreover, as a marketing manager there is nothing more scary that seeing a screenshot on Twitter of your bands logo next to something they don’t want to be associated with.

But surely this is not just an issue online...

So what now?

These ad issues occur when people do a general buy, casting the net wide over the whole ad network.