The Idea In 60 Seconds :

  • Open AI recently released ‘Assistants’ at their November ’23 developer conference.
  • Assistants are the first steps towards adding conversational interfaces to a company website.
  • When assistants evolve in to agents, there will be less “Human In The Loop.”
  • It seems likely that these things together disrupt search results and business models – e.g. SEO performers / comparison sites.

Now – Assistants – Later – Agents

OpenAI’s Developers Conference in November 2023 demonstrated fast progress on the delivery of their roadmap. One of the major ideas delivered at the event was ‘assistants’ for your website Assistants operate on a website. They engage with visitors to that website, conversationally and execute tasks the user require of them.

For example, imagine a retail website that sells clothing online. A user could interact with the businesses website Assistant by saying something like, “I’m looking for a red dress in size medium.” The Assistant (this is an Open AI software component), understanding the user’s request and the website, could then navigate the website’s inventory, find a selection of red dresses in size medium, and present these options to the user either verbally or visually. This could significantly streamline the shopping process and improve the user experience.

Assistants are already making material inroads to some sectors of the economy. Software Developers can now use an AI Assistant to help them write the code they are producing and a lot of them are using it. The tool tracks what they’re typing, the notes they’ve made in the code, links between the code and calls it makes and suggests helpful information. It’s not a bad example of how AI Assistants will help us all; proactively monitoring our lives, answering specific queries and suggesting improvements.

It’s an interesting development in AI and has the potential to change how we interact with websites although there will be a few steps between now and then.

Open AI have released Assistants for websites.

The first generation of conversationally enabled phones are on their way. Open AI have released ‘Assistants’ for websites. It’s likely that the two of them will work together.

Why Assistants and Agents Should be Taken Seriously

People like things which are useful; those which help them solve real life problems. People are also lazy and time poor.

There are 2 overlapping trends occurring, the first will drive the second.

  1. Humans in the loop – less human, more AI over time : People are currently required for most operations, even when AI is involved. Chat GPT will produce your first version of your document but you need to fact check it and finish it. Your doctor will use AI to help diagnose your Xray but it works best when he/she sense checks it.
    1. Over time, the amount of ‘Human in the loop’ will decrease. AI Assistants (link to previous article) will turn in to more capable Agents – more capable meaning more autonomy and therefore, less “Human in The Loop.”
    1. What is an Agent? It is an entity with an ability to execute tasks in the pursuit of a goal independently. Agent Smith, James Bond and Mata Hari are all examples of Agents. The more an Agent is self possessed, the less human in the loop is required.
  2. eServices being enabled : Many website facilities are available now as eServices. If you want to open a bank account or top up your prepaid plan recharge, you can do that online. Those are eServices which are available to humans.
    1. Companies will need to make these eServices available to Assistants / Agents.
    1. If you built it, they will come : Over time, as companies realise they need to make their websites accessible for eServices, an increasing number of companies will make an increasing number of eServices available.

It seems likely that those 2 trends will overlap. The result will be a lot more work getting done by increasingly autonomous Assistants / Agents which are increasingly able to execute what users want using eServices.

Summarized Roadmap

Those trends suggest that the most likely roadmap will be…..

  • Current State: AI assistants like Siri are limited. In simple terms, I think most people know, asking Siri to do it is likely to take longer than doing it yourself. Current assistants understand sentences but not paragraphs with context. Sometimes they redirect the user to search results – and if the user had wanted those, they’d have asked for them.
  • Near Future: Essentially putting an LLM like Chat GPT or Bard in to your phone to operate as an Assistant you can interact with conversationally. (link to devices article in this series.) This step offers an improvement in understanding and contextual awareness will make AI assistants more versatile and reliable. Humans are still in the loop but demands on them reduce over time. Importantly, businesses start to build out their eServices, making them available on their websites through assistants for Assistants to access.

Before we speculate about the future, consider what your phone (soon your agent) knows about you and what they could know about you They will learn not just from direct commands but also from observing behaviors and interactions. They know how far you walked, how well you slept, who you flirt with, who your friends are. This deep learning capability means they can offer services personalized to a degree currently not possible. Imaging you had a butler who knew all that?

  • Medium Term: Increased autonomy and agency in AI assistants, they become capable of performing a wider range of tasks and adapting to individual user needs and preferences. The vision is for AI personal assistants to become indistinguishable from human assistants in their capabilities, offering functional, engaging, and personalized assistance.

Your Assistant will become an Agent and it will offer highly personalized services across an increasing range of eServices.

Alt Text : Imagine Jeeves the butler knowing that much about you and how useful he would be.

Assistants will evolve in to Agents – Now We Need More eServices

The evolution of AI personal assistants is moving towards a future where they become increasingly autonomous parts of our daily lives. That’s likely to disrupt search results and could, as my friend Rikard points out, lead to a whole new type of SEO – AI Optimisation where people compete to provide the be the best answer for an AI assistant to use.

In a business context, there seems to be an interesting paradox. People get frustrated that Generative AI produces inaccurate results. That means I have to check everything myself! Yes, “Human In The Loop” is why you still have a job. The day Generative AI can do it without you is the day you lose that job.

For me, the key step is the eServices. Every company in the world is going to have to revisit their website and make their services available to Assistants / Agents. It’s so important, I’ve written a separate article outlining the effect I think they will have on existing brands including a framework to work through the process of what is required.