AI For AI: Air India Becomes First Carrier In The World To Launch 'Maharaja' AI Assistant

Air India employs ChatGPT to analyse complex questions, enhancing the customer experience in subsequent interactions.

In the upcoming months, Air India intends to roll out advanced features driven by patent-pending technologies.

Source : Facebook/Air India

Air India has marked a historic achievement by deploying 'Maharaja,' the world's inaugural Generative AI virtual agent, powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI service. Launched in March 2023, Maharaja has efficiently addressed over 500,000 customer queries and currently manages more than 6,000 daily inquiries in Hindi, English, French, and German.

The Maharaja AI Agent adeptly handles a wide array of customer queries, spanning 1,300 areas related to flight details, baggage allowances, check-in processes, and more. Speaking four languages, it provides rapid responses to over 80 per cent of daily queries, automatically transferring the remaining 15 per cent to Air India's contact centre for further assistance.

How Air India's 'Maharaja' Works

By fully utilising generative AI technology, Air India employs ChatGPT to analyse complex questions, enhancing the customer experience in subsequent interactions. This approach allows the airline's latest customer service channel to continuously learn and improve, adapting to natural language nuances. Air India adopts a strategy that integrates various traditional machine learning techniques with generative AI to deliver a compelling consumer-grade experience while implementing safeguards to prevent biased or harmful language in its conversational AI system.

Diverging from rule-based or keyword-centric chatbots, generative AI solutions comprehend user queries' intent and context, generating natural and coherent responses. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also reduces the reliance on human intervention, automating routine tasks like booking, cancellation, and confirmation. This automation liberates human agents to focus on more intricate and value-added interactions.

In the upcoming months, Air India intends to roll out advanced features driven by patent-pending technologies. This encompasses an innovative user experience, revolutionising how customers interact with AI agents through a blend of textual and graphical interactions to potentially expedite customer interactions. Some of these innovations, incubated for over two years, aim to enhance the existing AI agent with data-driven deep-personalisation capabilities, transforming it into a dependable personal assistant for all air travel needs. The AI agent's expanded capabilities will include travel inspiration and streamlined booking experiences, with plans for additional support for Indian languages in progress.