The Digital Human Experience in Customer-Facing Verticals

00:03Oh, sorry. Okay.

00:10Welcome to NASDAQ Trae Talks.

00:12I'm your host, Jill Malengrino,

00:13Global Market reporter at NASDAQ.

00:15We're coming to Live from CES in Las Vegas,

00:17Nevada, and joining me for this segment, we have Danny Thomset,

00:20CEO of Unique Digital Humans,

00:22and we're going to discuss the digital human experience in customer facing verticals.

00:27Danny, it's great to have you with us. Welcome to Tra Talks.

00:29And before we get into how the experience is evolving,

00:32give us some background on Unique.

00:34Yeah, thanks, Jill. So look unique,

00:37as a company has always focused on the way that we interact with machines,

00:41needs to be more human.

00:43And we saw this opportunity in 2016 as we really invested deep in AI back then,

00:48knowing that a lot of use cases that need to really help people,

00:54whether it be sales,

00:56customer service, whether it be healthcare,

00:59even training and education.

01:01There's this way that we will only be able

01:05to adapt that type of technology if we can just be ourselves,

01:09be more human, talk naturally,

01:11interact like we are doing right now,

01:13instead of trying to learn how to be more like a machine, right?

01:17And so unique really focused in on how do we create interfaces that feel natural,

01:23human, and frictionless for anyone to use.

01:25There's a couple points that you made there,

01:27leveraging AI since 2016,

01:29it's become part of the consumer vernacular since, you know,

01:32generative AI made its,

01:34you know, appearance in November 2022.

01:36But the fact is, you know,

01:38this technology has been around and you're building the structure around it.

01:42What I think is also interesting when you think of customer facing verticals, you know,

01:47you call hit one to get XYZ,

01:48or you go online, and it's almost like,

01:50you know, a clippy kind of experience.

01:51But now it's becoming more personalized and not a one size fits all solution.

01:56Title. So to see how this is no longer a concept,

01:59we're living with this and it's being integrated is pretty incredible.

02:03Yeah. I mean, the acceleration that we're experiencing

02:06now is like nothing I've ever experienced in my lifetime.

02:10But yeah, working in AI very early, you know,

02:13we were starting to understand the fundamentals of what was really important

02:19to help people adopt AI and what AI needs to be to be useful.

02:24And we invested a lot of time around the how hoping that the what being how smart will

02:31the technology understand how we will be able to take

02:34huge datasets and provide meaningful insights.

02:38That's the what. But the how is still how do I experience that?

02:41How do I be me in a moment and have that feel

02:45hyperpersonalized and useful in the delivery of information,

02:49not just the access to information?

02:51See, and I think that's a smart way to approach it versus just having AI for AI's sake,

02:55but you're looking at a specific problem to solve.

02:57So when you say like an AI digital human, what does that look like?

03:01Is it a robot? Is avatoar What DFT experience?

03:06So the way we define digal human is really a real time interactive character.

03:11Now, it could look like you and I.

03:13It could look like a character from a movie, the Geico gecko.

03:18You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be lifelike in its image,

03:23but it does need to have a personality and it does need to

03:25understand language and conversation in real time, as you interact.

03:30Reason why that's really important is because the way that we apply this technology,

03:36it's really designed so that if you

03:39have what I call like an interaction problem to solve.

03:43So the difference between maybe a transaction problem,

03:47a transaction problem will be like an FAQ, one question.

03:50An interaction problem will be I'm really thinking about going on holiday,

03:55but I really don't know where I'm going to go.

03:57I'd like to talk about things I enjoy,

03:59and then back and forth conversation takes place, right?

04:02Or I'm trying to buy a new laptop,

04:04and I know nothing about tech.

04:06How do I understand my my my needs to the solution with just normal human talk.

04:13I don't know what a GPU is or memory or CPU, right?

04:16I just want to say, my kids play Minecraft.

04:19I need to do spreadsheets.

04:21That's how we talk.

04:21And that's really why digital humans in real time,

04:25need to be so good at being quick, having personality,

04:28and making you feel comfortable to engage that back and forth, like an interactive.

04:32That is such a perfect example.

04:34I mean, I cover tech, but I'm not a tech guru by any means.

04:37And when you check these things off, where, you know,

04:39here's three different solutions,

04:40check off what means the most to you, some of it's great to me.

04:43I don't even know what I'm checking off.

04:44So that's a game changer.

04:47You're also collaborating with an airline with the technology.

04:51So again, this goes back to this how would you use it in real life. Tell us about that.

04:55Yeah, I mean, for us,

04:57you know, we've really focused on, you know,

04:59Fortune 500 companies and companies that really

05:02trying to differentiate through better customer experience.

05:06But also, there's a customer journey.

05:09Their customers, their journey has some level of sometimes complexity to it, right?

05:14So an airline, some things can be really simple. Is really hard.

05:18And so, working with airlines,

05:20we're really focused on how do we make a hard experience like changing flight times,

05:25trying to understand which airport to

05:27maybe divert through when your flights being canceled.

05:32All these kind of things are harder challenges.

05:34And it also comes with feeling and emotion.

05:37I think this is super important for what we do because as humans,

05:41we have feelings, but most IT systems are based on logic, not feeling.

05:46And a feeling and that example would be high anxiety,

05:49stress, the fear of the unknown.

05:52So how do you deal with that? Well, digital human

05:54can actually show up and say, Hey, I'm really sorry.

05:56Through it's tough, but don't worry.

05:59We're going to take care of it. That reassurance could change your experience completely.

06:03Yeah, can you deploy these in people's homes to

06:06manage meltdowns and so forth? That would be amazing.

06:09Let's talk about the company in terms of what's next, right?

06:12Understand you're going through fundraising round.

06:14What will that allow you to do?

06:15What's next in terms of the growth trajectory?

06:17Yeah, I think now we've moved out of that research and development phase.

06:21We're really working with hundreds of customers.

06:24Now, for us, it's scaling,

06:26and we're really going deep into use cases where we know this technology works great.

06:33Training is a big area for our customers,

06:35helping customers from education,

06:38do simulation with digital humans and learn through practice.

06:42That's perfect for sales, recruitment, HR,

06:45even working with universities and students so

06:49that they have new ways of learning where the old systems well for them.

06:53All the way through to like we talked about,

06:55sales and customer care.

06:57So how do we help people along the journey?

07:00Make decisions a lot of emotions often involved.

07:04And how do we deal with emotion?

07:05It is It's amazing.

07:06Even just sort of third year covering the event,

07:09and this used to kind of be like the EV hall to showcase, like, really cool cars.

07:13And all these technologies that were concepts are now being

07:16applied across multiple verticals, multiple industries.

07:19It's not just EVs. We have,

07:21you know, corning. We have tractor companies.

07:23We have a fire engineer. All of the automotive tech innovation that we use every day,

07:28it's becoming a real thing now.

07:30And it happened really quick,

07:31I feel like over the past 12 to 18 months,

07:34where concept is now this is what life is going to look like.

07:37It really stuck out to me this year.

07:39Would you agree?

07:40Oh, 100%.

07:41I mean, here's you're talking to a guy in 2016 that was trying to

07:45convince everyone AI was going to be part of everyday life,

07:48and the way we interact with machines was going to be the same way we

07:52interact with people and interfaces People laughed at me back in there, right?

07:57But I tell you, now, it's so accepted.

08:00If you go around everywhere in CES,

08:02the interface is now either language driven or visually with avatars,

08:07the way that people are expecting machines to obviously take more ownership,

08:10more intelligence, like self driving, drones and delivery.

08:14It's a crazy feel device here the sure definitely has been a shift.

08:18Alright, we appreciate the insight, Danny.

08:19Thanks for joining us on trade talks,

08:20and thanks for joining me from CES.

08:22I'm Jill Malan trino, global market two reporter at NASDAQ.