AI is not just chatting with us. It's learning how to turn verbal communications into real-world insights.

• New conversational AI tools are turning verbal communications into actionable insights for market research.
• Business leaders are using these tools to draw deeper insights from their conversations with customers.
• With the advent of LLMs, increasingly sophisticated chatbots are relaying technical data in relatable, everyday speech.
• This story is part of "How Emerging Tech is Changing Everything," a series exploring the transformative impact of tech innovations across industries.

Avery is 23 years old. Like a lot of conscientious Gen Zers, she prioritizes sustainability and has strong opinions about society. If you ask her about her purchasing habits, she'll eagerly give a detailed answer to questions like, "How do you decide when something is worth paying extra for when you're on a tight budget?" or, "Can you give me some ideas for a new on-the-go breakfast-drink brand?"

But despite the conversational responses she gives,  Avery isn't real. Avery is, in fact, a conversation bot made by market research firm Untold Insights, and is part of a new wave of transformative artificial-intelligence tools designed to turn verbal communications into actionable insights for business strategists.

AI is coming for market research

Officially named SegmentAI, the technology nicknamed Avery allows businesses to have conversations with their target demographic market, rather than reading through a traditional slide deck or pen portrait to gain insights. Its knowledge is built on a survey of more than 1,000 Gen Zers in the UK and US that aimed to capture the shopping habits and preferences of Gen Z consumers.

Avery not only processes and presents data but also personifies it, relaying data insights in a conversational Gen Z voice. Conversations with her allow clients to act on the data as well as receive it, as they would with a real-life market-research subject.

"After the somewhat flashy magic of ChatGPT, the real AI revolution is happening quietly behind the scenes," Adelynne Chao, the founder of Untold Insights, said. "You can finally have a representative of your segment in every meeting with you, and they can tap into their vast knowledge base to apply data to your unique situation in any language."

Conversation-intelligence tool aims to enhance customer service

Tools such as SegmentAI are also being used on the customer-facing side of business interactions. The communications-intelligence company Dubber recently launched Moments, a tool that listens to voice conversations and identifies key voice data, such as customer complaints, allowing companies to have rapid oversight of user feedback.

"This goes beyond customer service," Dubber CEO Steve McGovern said. "For example, conversation intelligence can analyze sales calls and provide agents with training to improve how they respond to prospective customers. It can also examine large volumes of call data to identify high-performing sales tactics and scripts that can be leveraged."

By instantly recognizing and analyzing components such as customer complaints, AI can provide rapid insights that enable faster and perhaps more effective responses. Other transformational technology is taking the most important method of information exchange for businesses — the conversation — and turning it into understandable data that can be applied to a business strategy and training system.

"AI solutions can automatically analyze conversations to detect complaints and frustrations, helping customer-service agents tailor solutions," McGovern said. "By examining complaint data and trends, businesses can also identify common pain points and systematically address issues through training, new protocols, or policy changes."

Unlike the older transcription bots commonly used by businesses, AI-driven tools such as the ones from Untold and Dubber understand the structure and nuances of conversations. Because of this, McGovern anticipates that by 2025, 75% of all business calls will be captured for data analytics. 

Using AI to communicate information across languages and technical ability

Elsewhere, Stratio Gen-AI claims to be the world's first chatbot for enterprises that allows anyone in a business (regardless of technical know-how) to ask data-related questions in their natural language and receive answers within seconds. 

For example, you might type in the question, "What was our most popular product in Q3?" and Stratio Gen-AI would generate an answer instantly, removing the need to liaise with various departments and data analysts. The technology uses a large language model with a user experience similar — but not related — to ChatGPT, enabling it to deliver information and data insights in conversational speech, as well as understand varying user languages. The tool can converse in a variety of languages and respond to people with varying technical backgrounds.

Founded by the entrepreneurs Oscar Méndez Soto and Ernesto Funes in 2014, Stratio BD completed its 65 million-euro Series C funding round in 2022, and its generative-AI tool is being used by several large banks, including Santander, HSBC, and BBVA. "Generative AI cannot understand or manage technical data unless it is available in a unified business layer and given business meaning," Soto said.

However, Soto emphasized the need for businesses to access high-quality data before generative-AI systems could reach their full potential. 

"Many businesses face significant data-quality challenges for a whole host of reasons, including lack of resources, valuable data remaining in silos, and datasets being spread across multiple cloud and on-premises locations," Soto said.