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This LocalGlobe-backed AI startup has entered into new collaborations with Google and Facebook

Converse AI, a startup which offers businesses off-the-shelf AI-powered chatbots, has entered followed last month’s high-profile collaboration with Facebook to unveil a new partnership with internet giant Google.

The firm, which has previously been backed by London-based VC LocalGlobe, launched at Google I/O in California, will allow companies to build their own voice and rich media, that is video and audio in marketing speak, through the Actions on Google platform.

Actions on Google is the search behemoth’s development platform for those developing apps for the firm’s Alexa rival, Google Assistant, with the new partnership seeing Converse AI’s tech powering the bot interactions.

The company, which has offices in Edinburgh and San Francisco, has also launched a competition with Google to hunt for the best Google Assistant app built on the Converse.AI platform, with the winner receiving a $5000 prize.

Tony Lucas, co-founder of Converse AI commented: “We’re thrilled to announce this latest partnership - one of several that we have put together over the last few months.”

“There has been lots of hype around bots but we are already seeing the huge benefits that they can have in communications with customers.

“The next stage will be enterprise focused chat bots - enabling enterprises to build conversational workflows for internal and external use - and we have a number of strategic partnership discussions underway in that area”

The company has been well placed to capitalise on the chatbot boom with research and preparatory work by Converse AI’s co-founders developing since the company launched back in February 2016.

With a focus on support AI-enabled customer interaction, the startup has been looking to implement some obvious and some not so obvious uses for the technology, with a particular focus on large, labyrinthine enterprise firms looking to automate many of their services.

Lucas said: “We have always believed that chat bots can solve real business problems with conversational workflows.

“A business on Workplace by Facebook could use chat bots to onboard a new user or put through an expense claim. Companies using the Google Assistant could create chat bots to engage with customers.”