Digital Project Manager, Zara Kerwood wrote an article for George P. Johnson UK on using AI for experiences.

You can read the original piece here

Here’s George. He works for for the George P. Johnson (GPJ) digital team – our latest recruit.

And he’s just started his journey into the world of AI.

George recently read a blog called ‘Wait But Why’ and he thought it answered the whole ‘Where are we on the AI Road?’ question quite neatly. George thinks we’re at a pretty interesting place right now.

“But, you have to remember something about what it’s like to stand on a time graph: you can’t see what’s to your right, So here’s how it actually feels to stand here:” www.waitbutwhy.com

Once you start reading about AI (and seeing it in action) it’s all pretty mind blowing.

At GPJ, we love blowing minds. Including our own. And George’s. That’s why he joined us. He’s seen how we’re already using AI to blow the minds of our audiences; and create better experiences.

Personalising experiences

We’ve been using IBM Watson to analyse our audience’s Twitter feeds and LinkedIn profiles to uncover their personality traits. We identified four key personas and illustrated how our clients could help each one of them.

We then brought these personas to life using fun, eye-catching avatars. Each one could be personalised and shared with the World. Our audience loved it. And so did George.

You can check it out here: http://watsontalent.mybluemix.net/

The geeky bit – The Watson Personality Insights API trawls through social profiles and provides scores for different personality traits (such as adventurousness) depending on the tone and language of the copy. We then interpreted those scores and assigned personas to members of our audience.

Storytelling

Ever heard of Anki Overdrive? It’s the world’s most intelligent battle racing system. And these toy cars are a big hit in the GPJ office. Each Supercar is a self-aware robot, driven by powerful AI and equipped with deadly strategy. Whatever track you build, they’ll learn it.

Nowhere is safe. Especially when George is at the controls. They’ve turned him into Mad Max!

The financial sector is renowned for being competitive. And our participants didn’t disappoint. When we challenged them to represent their company – and race to the top of the financial leader board – they didn’t need a lot of encouragement.

Gaming experiences

At GPJ, we do experiences the fun way – showcasing the potential of tech using AI powered products. At a recent major event, we hacked a Sphero robot enabling it to find its own way around a maze. Then we challenged our audience of developers to do the same. They thought it was ‘amazing’ (sorry, George wrote that!)

The geeky bit – George thinks there’s too much to explain right here. So, we’ve put the code on Github. Take a look and use the code to hack and navigate your own Sphero. Here’s the link: https://github.com/GPJDigital/Sphero-maze.git

Measuring sentiment

One of George’s favourites. For Mobile World Congress 2017, we collaborated with IBM and partner agencies to create the first thinking sculpture. It was the perfect way to tell the story of how everyone can ‘Create with Watson’.

Want to see it in action? You can watch the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JypHWXLrF7Y

So what’s next?

Using AI for creativity

A hot topic right now. And one that at GPJ, we are exploring with our clients and for our own processes. AI can help us obtain deeper insights – and quicker. And we can use it to aid the design process and end user experience.

But George says he will miss our Creatives. So we won’t be losing them just yet… 😉

Watson for VR experiences

We’ve started using AI in our VR experiences. And it can be a real mind blower. AI enables us to personalize projects and it’s a great way to measure audience reactions. Judging by George’s reaction, we’re doing something right.

The geeky bit – Want to know more? George suggests you check out the Watson for Unity plugin here – https://developer.ibm.com/open/openprojects/watson-developer-cloud-unity-sdk/

Chatbots for recommendations and agendas

AI concierge or chatbot? Yes please! We want our audiences to receive relevant information quickly – and in a way that’s useful to them. But as George knows, it’s important that the chatbot gets it right.

We’ve noticed that chatbots are becoming more and more popular. But we’ve also realised that they need to be trained properly. You can feed an AI with a huge amount of data, but until you train it to pull insights that are relevant to you, it won’t be useful. You need to provide your chatbot with feedback. You need to track its accuracy. You need to make sure it solves the problem.

One of the most important things to remember is that your chatbot can place things in context. There’s nothing more annoying than receiving the wrong answer. If your chatbot doesn’t know the answer, it shouldn’t guess. Even George knows that.

Our recommendation

At GPJ:D we use the Slackbot and Watson Conversation Service. The great thing about these services is that you don’t need to code to be able to create them.

Onwards and into the unknown…

We can’t wait! We’re all looking forward to what the future holds – but no one more than George.