Our Bureau
New Delhi
Air India has marked a historic milestone as it deploys ‘Maharaja,’ the world’s inaugural Generative AI virtual agent. Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI service and launched in March 2023, Maharaja has efficiently addressed over 500,000 customer queries and currently manages more than 6,000 daily inquiries in Hindi, English, French, and German.
Speaking 4 languages, it provides rapid responses to over 80% of daily queries. The Maharaja AI Agent adeptly handles a wide array of customer queries, spanning 1,300 areas related to flight details, baggage allowances, check-in processes, and more.
By fully utilizing generative AI technology, Air India employs ChatGPT to analyze complex questions, enhancing the customer experience in subsequent interactions.
This approach allows the airline’s latest customer service channel to continuously learn and improve, adapting to natural language nuances. Air India adopts a strategy that integrates various traditional machine learning techniques with generative AI to deliver a compelling consumer-grade experience while implementing safeguards to prevent biased or harmful language in its conversational AI system.
Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India said that after the emergence of Large Language Model-driven generative AI capabilities, it is increasingly seeing a definitive shift in guest preferences to use chat interactions to get the information and support they need quickly.
“We are dedicated to providing the best possible service and experience to our valued guests across channels. We also want to be very responsive to their changing preferences. After the emergence of Large Language Model-driven Generative AI capabilities, we are increasingly seeing a definitive shift in guest preferences to use chat interactions to get the information and support they need quickly and directly as compared to browsing several web pages,” he said.
In the upcoming months, Air India intends to roll out advanced features driven by patent-pending technologies. This encompasses an innovative user experience, revolutionizing how customers interact with AI agents through a blend of textual and graphical interactions to potentially expedite customer interactions. Some of these innovations, incubated for over two years, aim to enhance the existing AI agent with data-driven deep-personalization capabilities, transforming it into a dependable personal assistant for all air travel needs. The AI agent’s expanded capabilities will include travel inspiration and streamlined booking experiences, with plans for additional support for Indian languages in progress.
