By : Pankaj Gupta, CEO and Founder of EnableX.io
The future of Face AI is bright and is expected to grow at a formidable rate to generate huge revenues in the coming years
How do you see the growing adoption of video in the coming days?
Video as a medium of communication has arrived and is here to stay and evolve. It is accessible and easy to implement for businesses and enterprises. The pandemic has given a fillip to video as a mode of communication, and with the focus on remote working, organizations are looking forward to new and innovative ways to communicate – externally and internally. Video is indeed the next voice.
Both business and personal communication has moved to video and it will most definitely be the default channel of engagement for next-generation consumers. We already see this becoming a reality with all of us using video in ways we never imagined before – be it our healthcare needs, shopping, or even social engagements.
Business-wise, video is driving massive growth across Retail, Healthcare, Telecom, BSFI and even HR functions across the board.
Can you elaborate on the EnableX Face AI product?
The EnableX FaceAI engine is the most powerful, privacy-compliant, emotion and sentiment analysis engine available. It allows for real-time analysis of the emotions of participants in a live video call.
FaceAI is designed to identify demographic features i.e. the likely gender and age; facial features such as hair color, cheekbones, eyes; and emotions such as anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, empathy, surprise, to name a few. Besides these, it also measures the attentiveness and liveness of the person, which can be helpful in developing a deeper understanding of the customer or caller’s sentiments and affective state.
How is the response so far for Face AI and emotional recognition solutions?
The Face AI is a revolutionary offering in the present context of economic and socio-cultural shift. It is a perfectly timed, high-demand solution for many industries and business. There is a lot of interest from organizations across industries and functions looking to use sentiment analysis and emotion recognition for customer engagement, interviewing candidates or attention tracking during examinations!
In your opinion, which are the sectors that are showing a faster adoption AI? Are they consumer-facing or B2B enterprises?
The adoption is equally agresssive from a B2B as well as B2C aspect. Needless so say that the early adopters included the likes of Education for obvious reasons, and banks needing digital on-boarding as an alternative to KYC and Healthcare providers could continue caring for their patients to put it simply.
We saw a huge spike in the use of our platform by educational institutions ever since the pandemic hit the world, pushing schools, colleges, and other institutions to turn to digital platforms to ensure continuity of operations. Using EnableX, they could seamlessly enrich the teaching and learning experience with security solutions that are packed with collaborative features such as screen sharing, co-annotation, and whiteboarding.
The BFSI sector is in an evolutionary phase where its priority is to provide safe transactions and fraud prevention as well as improve processes and customer experience. With EnableX, one uses cloud-communication platforms for various processes and services like KYC, self-service video kiosk, and video-enabled customer service which streamlines the business by integrating voice, video, chat, and everything into the banking application or workflow.
Even in the healthcare sector, virtual care has become almost normal for doctors, nurses, clinicians, and patients especially when visiting a doctor is a challenge. With EnableX.io carrier-grade platform and scalable APIs, healthcare providers could easily and quickly integrate high-quality and secure video and audio calls within their telehealth app, allowing patients to seek medical consultation remotely. Moreover, the HIPPA compliant platform comes with encryptions for added layers of security.
In fact, Face AI is a massive game-changer for HR functions across industries. Not only has it made the hiring process easy, it also allows recruiters to be more efficient and precise as it facilitates informed and data-driven hiring decisions. It makes application tracking easy and also mitigates unconscious biases and stereotypes in hiring, thereby providing a level playing field for the candidates.
How fast are you growing?
We are growing almost at a rate of 100% quarter over quarter. This growth is more exciting for us as a major part of this growth is coming from different geographies across the world! We now have more than 30% of our business coming from outside of India
What opportunities do you see in the future on Face AI?
We have just hit the tip of the iceberg, if you ask me. Opportunities and possibilities are immense for Face AI not only in the Indian context but globally too. Right from preventing ATM thefts to reporting duplicate voters, passports miss-representation, and visa verifications, all are easy possibilities in the near future. I can see government bodies and insititutions leveraging it for hosting and verification of cadidates during the Civil Services, SSC, IIT, MBBS examinations to begin with.
Ecommerce is another major area where this technology will bring about a transformation. Online advertising & product promotions will get triggered based on real time emotions of the shoppers!
The future of Face AI is bright and is expected to grow at a formidable rate to generate huge revenues in the coming years. We have seen many sectors have welcomed Face AI with open arms and others will follow soon.
How does facial recognition technology improve safety and security? Can you give some specific industry instances?-
We are already seeing examples of this being implemented in countries where CCTV camera’s across cities are capturing and analyzing live video streams and using facial recognition to identify ‘wanted elements’. Similarly, there are security solutions that are using these technologies in controlling access in buildings etc.
At this pace of growth, what is your vision 5-10 years down the line for the organization?-
We are moving to become a video-first world and EnableX will emerge as one of the leaders in providing the platform that will enable communication in the future.
How do you see the retail sector changing given the AI opportunities?
For retailers, it offers scope to be creative. Retail is a highly competitive landscape as consumer loyalties are constantly shifting and digital native consumers are having expectations that go far beyond price, discounts, and convenience. Technology has become a key enabler.
The growth of data-driven retail is accelerating further with the shift in consumer preferences and the need for a digital experience. AI, VR/AR, and chatbots are some of the examples in which this shift is being witnessed. We continue to see the adoption of technology as standard personalization tools for consumer interface. Voice assistants and chatbots have successfully established their relevance for customer support, while AI and data analytics are powerful currencies for services and experiences.
Experiential retail is set to be smarter – whether it is virtual reality, social commerce, artificial intelligence, new mobile technology, or a combination of all, the task for the retailer will be to transform even basic shopping into something like beer and skittles.
