Artificial Intelligence (AI) has boomed in recent years and AI in event management has become a giant trend. But what is it, and how can you use it the event industry?
AI is a branch of computer science to develop intelligent machines to think and work like humans. Computer systems perform tasks that usually need human intelligence. These include visual perception, speech recognition, planning, decision-making, problem-solving and translation between languages.
Most of us are now familiar with voice recognition systems such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home, Siri, and Cortana. The driverless car has been developed which senses its environment and move safely with little or no human input.
Increasingly more intelligent devices are being used in homes through thermostats, lighting, and home security systems. AI is already being used in marketing, customer service, medical research, entertainment delivery, shipping/product delivery and much more.
‘Wordly’ is a system that uses voice recognition to instantly translate an event presentation into over 50 languages. All that is required is a patch from the sound system into the internet-based application. Attendees access the information via their mobile devices using Wi-Fi.
The cost is lower than providing human interpreters, sound booths and issuing audio headsets to attendees. Although this system will not replace the need for human translators for high-end events, it enables simultaneous translation for a broad range of events.
Airlines are testing facial recognition for boarding passengers. iPhone users can use it to unlock their phones. Hotels in China are using it for room check-in. If a conference delegate adds their picture upon event registration, cameras on arrival recognise them and print the badge automatically. This speeds up the process while increasing security.
For more information about facial recognition, take a look at our previous article.
Tracking attendee numbers, demographics, and mood anonymously: iPhone cameras can be used for facial recognition to collect estimates of the number of attendees, their age, gender, demographics, reactions, the amount of time spent and what they are looking at in an exhibition or other event area. It can be used anonymously, so there is no concern about privacy.
Chatbots can provide good support and reduce the number of staff onsite. They can conduct conversations using text and respond humanely and are available 24/7.
Similar to a chatbot, organisers can use ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. The “Chat” in ChatGPT refers to the model’s ability to engage in conversation and generate human-like text based on the input it receives.
ChatGPT is designed to understand and generate coherent and contextually relevant text. It is pre-trained on diverse internet text data, allowing it to capture patterns, context, and information from various sources. Users can interact with ChatGPT by providing prompts or queries, and the model generates responses based on its training data.
It’s important to note that ChatGPT operates based on patterns in the data it was trained on and doesn’t have real-world knowledge or understanding. It may generate plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical responses, so take it with a pinch of salt.
The premium version of ChatGPT has recently been updated to include up-to-date information and the latest news, meaning it can generate more factual and relevant information.
Organisers can use this to pull data, create reports, compile checklists, write copy, and so on. It is a handy tool to save time and resources.
Matchmaking programmes driven by AI can analyse registration data, social media feeds, surveys, agendas, and badge scans to suggest matches for event attendees and exhibitors. Attendees can be given recommendations to attendees on the best sessions, speakers, and panels to attend. This ultimately could improve attendee ROI.
Software like ChatGPT can analyse data and make predictions more quickly and deeply than doing this manually. It can be used for better attendee personalisation, to provide more accurate data for decision-making, to streamline communications, to plan content and improve sales.
AI can monitor online content, remember what a user clicks on and prioritise future content based on these clicks. It can also provide links to related content sources. In the case of an online newsletter, each reader could receive a customised page based on their interests.
There will be more development of AI in event management and beyond, as the adoption of these tools becomes widespread. It has already taken the industry by storm; we’ll be keeping watch on what becomes capable of in the future.
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