Since its launch in November 2022, ChatGPT, the chatbot developed by OpenAI, has taken the business world by storm. Following this success, Microsoft has increased its investment in OpenAI and has launched a new version of its search engine Bing that provides users with generated answers in response to searches, as opposed to providing them with thousands of links to choose from. Not surprisingly, Google, as the incumbent in the search engine market, quickly reacted and is launching Bard, its own attempt to create an AI chatbot leveraging the power of large language models and integrate it into the search process. (“Large language models” are deep-learning algorithms for natural language processing that can summarize, translate and generate new text.)
Create Winning Customer Experiences with Generative AI
The launch of ChatGPT will be remembered in business history as a milestone in which artificial intelligence moved from many narrow applications to a more universal tool that can be applied in very different ways. While the technology still has many shortcomings (e.g., hallucinations, biases, and non-transparency), it’s improving rapidly and is showing great promise. It’s therefore a good time to start thinking about the competitive implications that will inevitably arise from this new technology. Many executives are wrestling with the question of how to take advantage of this new technology and reimagine the digital customer experience? For value creation to happen, we have to think about large language models as a solution to an unmet need, which requires a precise understanding about the pain points in customer experiences. From finance to healthcare and from education to travel, industry observers expect an explosion of service innovations and new digital user experiences on the horizon.