They can help you get an appointment or order a pizza, find the best ticket deals and bring your attention to the fact you are spending a lot on entertainment instead of investments. We are talking about AI virtual assistants, which have already become a familiar part of our daily lives. But what technologies are under the hood of AI assistants and how can you leverage them in your business? Find all the answers in this article. Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVA) also known as Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA) are AI-powered agents capable of generating personalized responses, pulling from contexts such as customer metadata, prior conversations, knowledge bases, geolocation, and other modular databases and plug-ins. The Intelligent Virtual Assistant market, experiencing rapid growth in the 2020s, is forecasted to reach USD 6.27 billion by 2026, according to Mordor Intelligence.

A 2019 survey by PWC showed that over 90% of consumers aged between 18–64 years had sought knowledge about voice technology, while over 70% had used it at least once. This massive wave of consumers adopting voice technology for home improvement and ease-of-usage has ushered in a new age for voice assistance. The new consumer trend has also had a positive impact on the business world. The voice assistant market that was worth USD 11 billion in 2019 is now expected to grow by 17% by 2025. As a result, every year more companies are exploring AI-based voice technologies and finding ways to implement voice assistants both internally and externally for cost savings, automation, business intelligence (BI), and better customer experience.

Toyota Motor Corp. announced Thursday its launch of new models for its luxury sedan Lexus LS and hydrogen-powered Mirai equipped with assistant technologies that allow drivers to take their hands off the steering wheel in designated lanes. The new LS went on sale Thursday at a price starting from ¥16.32 million ($148,800). The Mirai will be sold from Monday, priced from ¥8.45 million, the company said. The autonomous driving technology equipped with the new models is a level-2 assistant system that could help with driving on an expressway or other motor-vehicle-only roadway. The technology can help with keeping the vehicle in its lane, maintaining the distance from other cars and navigating a lane splitting.

Conversica, the leader in conversational AI for business, today announced that its AI-based sales assistant technology is now deeply integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is available from the Microsoft AppSource online marketplace. The Conversica AI Sales assistant integrated with Microsoft Dynamics 365 enables Microsoft customers to easily leverage Conversica's state-of-the-art conversational AI technology to automatically follow up with leads in their CRM and marketing automation systems. Conversica assistants, powered by advanced natural language processing and machine learning technology, carry on natural, two-way conversations with leads to engage and qualify them for sales. This automated lead follow-up ensures that 100 percent of marketing's leads are contacted 100 percent of the time and results in more meetings and, thus, more opportunities for sales. "Microsoft Dynamics 365 customers are some of the most sophisticated marketing and sales teams; however, they can still struggle with ensuring all the leads generated by marketing are qualified and handed off to sales at the right time," commented Victor Belfor, Senior Vice President of Business Development of Conversica.

"Alexa, why are you winning the smart home market?" It seems every appliance that's any appliance is adding Alexa support at CES 2017, giving Amazon a commanding lead in the race to become the de facto smart home standard. As someone who lives in Australia, where Amazon Echo hasn't launched, though, I'm left wondering when we'll get to join Alexa's gang. In the battle to become the brand that's synonymous with the smart home experience, building a global footprint will become important very soon. In a global market, selling to two of 200 countries won't keep you in the driver's seat for long.

I recently had the opportunity to learn more about Inbenta, a provider of Natural Language Search technology for intelligent assistant and web self-service technologies. I spoke with global marketing director Julie Casson and Kelly Foster, linguist, to gain insight into a company I didn't know much about. Inbenta originated in Barcelona, and now has offices in the United States, France, Singapore, Brazil and the Netherlands. Casson and Foster are located at the office in Sunnyvale, California. Prior to our conversation, I knew that Inbenta offers intelligent assistant technology and an extremely innovative 3D avatar, called Victoria.