Insight: Is NZ Ready for Artificial Intelligence?

New Zealanders are used to the idea of automation and industrial robots in manufacturing and some homes have those disc shaped vacuum cleaners roaming the house of their own volition in order to keep everything spick and span. Many people have exchanged messages with chat bots online in order to get a few questions answered. But a New Zealand company, Soul Machines, has taken the chat bot idea to the next level and developed so called "digital humans." Just over a month ago, the Natwest Bank in the UK started testing an artificial intelligence-powered "digital human" called Cora who will converse with customers from a terminal in bank branches, with the aim of cutting down on waiting times. The bank hopes Cora's artificial intelligence will eventually expand to answering hundreds of different questions, but at the same time insists the avatar is there to complement, not replace humans.