Conversational AI is a catch-all term for natural language models for artificial intelligence that can interpret human words, speak to people, or carry out tasks or computation with natural language. They can tell you jokes, answer factual questions, and even respond to multiple queries without the need to keep repeating a wake word, but conversation or chit-chat is still very much a human endeavor. To share progress towards deep learning designed to carry a conversation, Google today introduced Meena, a neural network with 2.6 billion parameters. Meena can handle multiturn dialogue, and Google claims it's better than other AI agents built for conversation and available online today. It even told an off-the-cuff joke.

The market is filled with automated UI solutions that claim to be enabling conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) -- that is, AI that can interact with users through an interactive interface, one that "speaks" and reacts to human conversation in its many forms, and that can be used in a variety of business scenarios. Given the hype around the increased use of conversational assistants among consumers such as Alexa and Siri (which are not, it should be pointed out, analogous to conversational AI for business), it's understandable that enterprise decision makers might be confused, if not a bit overwhelmed, by what conversational AI could mean for their businesses, and which solution is the best for their purposes. If your company is seeking to automate human-like engagements at scale in order to make operations more efficient while maintaining and elevating customer experiences, we believe we can cut through the confusion easily. Allow us to explain why Amelia is the clear choice to enable conversational AI within your enterprise. Many digital solutions can claim to be "conversational." Indeed, humans have had the ability to converse with digital systems using regular language as far back as the 1960s.