Virgin Atlantic is piloting an OpenAI agent in to help with the 'customer journey' For all the talk of the "agentic era" from AI vendors like OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and just about everyone else in the space, corporate use of the technology is still tentative. Virgin Atlantic has been conducting flight tests of its website with an AI agent called Operator, and early results are promising, …
"Why are we having an "AI" agent click buttons on a web page,"
If it will also solve captchas, I can think of some nice little ventures that might only be a penny/click, but thousands of automated clicks per minute. Hmmm, power it all with solar and make sure it will auto-reset after a power or network interruption so I can enjoy a nice tropical beach without worrying my income stream can get derailed.
It does not matter whether I've been dealing with AI agents, phone or web, from FedEx, UPS, Subaru, Toyota, Dell, United, or anywhere that could do more or was faster than a simple selection tree. All were so limited in capability they were no better, but were less transparent, so slower. And if your problem isn't so common that it exists on a selection tree (conventional or AI), the AI has no clue either. As far as I can tell, the AI is just limited to translating what you say/type into a behind-the-scenes selection tree click. If have an issue that I can't resolve myself so I need CS, I now just immediately go straight to a customer service human, which of course, the AI systems are designed to make that as difficult as possible, if not outright impossible. Then, the CS humans often had their own capabilities trimmed so low that one has to escalate through several manager levels.
AI customer service agents are a perfect example of a solution looking for a problem.
"AI customer service agents are a perfect example of a solution looking for a problem."
CS isn't a high paying job so lots of effort is being expended to find a way to make the least paid employees redundant while at the same time being a bigger irritant to customers.
in exposing agentic AI to the miasma of dark patterns† that many of these businesses' web sites exemplify.
They drive the sanest human around the bend so I can imagine it could make a real mess of an AI agent.
† one airline in these parts made it nigh on impossible to book a flight without (junk) insurance. Sufficiently egregious that it was a rare occasion that the corporate regulator intervened.
I can't wait to see all those imaginary flights to imaginary places leaving from nonexistent gates on invisible aircraft.
With fake references to made-up court cases and pleadings. of course.
AI does speak truth sometimes, of course. Unfortunately what it says about Musk and Trump is what we already knew.
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