Humanizing Customer Support with AI

A digital assistant that has the ability to understand both tone of voice and body language? Autodesk’s Rachael Rekart introduces us to AVA, the Autodesk Virtual Agent.

In 2016, the Autodesk digital assistant was a line drawing named Auto that responded in text to a limited number of set queries. Today, she’s AVA, a humanoid avatar with advanced natural language skills and the ability to understand tone of voice and even body language. In this AU Theater presentation, Rachael Rekart shares the process for creating AVA and explains why they decided to make her female, how they avoided the dreaded “uncanny valley” that so many other human-like robots and avatars fall into, and more.

About the speaker

Rachael Rekart is an AI leader who evangelizes human-machine augmentation for customer engagement. She is the vice president of Customer Success at Soul Machines. Previously she worked with Autodesk as director of Machine Assistance. She holds a master’s degree from Pepperdine University.

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