“Digital Workers” will get a boost from generative AI, Work Execution System startup Laiye says

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) marks a major leap forward in AI technology, akin to a new phase of the industrial revolution. ChatGPT, or more precisely the latest iteration of GPT, a language model developed by OpenAI, is revolutionizing the way people work by leveraging its robust language comprehension and capacity to generate coherent and naturalistic text.

Microsoft has been at the forefront of the shift towards generative AI technology. On March 16, the company generated a lot of buzz in the tech industry by demonstrating how OpenAI’s language model could be integrated into its work collaboration tools like Teams, PowerPoint, and Outlook. This move has the potential to transform the way people work and communicate by providing them with access to more powerful and sophisticated language processing capabilities.

Chinese entrepreneurs, particularly those involved in workplace solutions, are thrilled about the technology and Microsoft’s proactive move as they perceive this as an opportunity to enhance product capabilities and expand their services.

“ChatGPT’s outstanding performance quickly made developers, customers, and the broader community aware of the improved capabilities of conversational bots to solve more problems,” Wang Guanchun, founder, chairman, and CEO of Chinese startup Laiye, told PingWest.

This opens up more opportunities for companies focused on providing tools for work automation and execution, as chatbots of higher quality can now be created at a lower cost and enable smoother automation of tasks, ultimately improving the end-user experience, the CEO explained.

Founded in 2015, Laiye specializes in developing an integrated Work Execution System combined with chatbots, AI-powered Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Intelligent Document Processing (IDP) solutions that help companies streamline workflows and automate routine tasks.

To better serve its clients, the startup built ChatGPT-like capabilities into its conversational AI and RPA solutions, enabling “digital workers” to perform a wider range of tasks more efficiently, effectively, and accurately.

The integration of chatbots and RPA solutions is often compared to building a digital workforce, which can help businesses streamline their operations and improve customer service experience: chatbots can interact with customers in a conversational and interactive manner, providing them with the information they need, while RPA can automate repetitive and rules-based tasks, such as populating forms, scraping data from the web and logging into applications, making processes more efficient.

For example, in the e-commerce sector, chatbots can engage with customers and answer initial inquiries, while RPA bots can handle order processing based on instructions generated from the conversation.

Natural language processing (NLP), the foundation of ChatGPT-like products, also serves a crucial role in both chatbots and RPA. To have meaningful conversations with users and respond appropriately, chatbots use NLP to interpret and understand spoken or written language inputs. RPA bots, on the other hand, make use of NLP to extract language and data from various sources for the purpose of automating tasks like data extraction, entry, and analysis.

To a certain extent, generative AI, which utilizes advanced NLP capabilities, represents the superior brain of the digital workforce. Its implementation can enable chatbots to work in tandem with RPA bots in a more intelligent and seamless manner, leading to improved efficiency, reduced friction, and increased productivity for businesses across different industries.

In addition to riding the coattails of ChatGPT, Laiye itself has extensive experience in pioneering AI-based solutions: starting with the creation of the customer-facing service Laiye Bot in 2016, then, in 2020, it further strengthened its AI capabilities by acquiring Mindsay, an up-and-coming French AI chatbot company specializing in conversational AI solutions for customer service.

More recently, the company’s expertise in conversational AI was recognized by Gartner, a renowned global research and advisory firm. The report, titled 2023 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Conversational AI Platforms, evaluates 19 conversational artificial intelligence vendors around the world and ranks Laiye as a Niche Player; it is the only Chinese company to make the cut.

The potential benefits that generative AI may bring to workplace automation have already been elaborated, however, it’s worth noting that foundation models like GPT could potentially replace some of the low-end automation work that RPA vendors have traditionally focused on. This means that startups in this space need to continuously enhance their automation solutions to remain competitive in the market.

Not only Laiye is doing this, UiPath, the US RPA giant, is also rebranding itself as “The foundation for innovation”, applying AI to various tasks such as discovery, simplified integration, code development, analysis, compliance, and other endless use cases.

Generative AI-powered automation solutions have the potential to revolutionize the way companies automate business processes in a way that previous tools have not, Forbes wrote in a recent article, adding that as these solutions continue to mature, enterprises will increasingly adopt them.

Laiye told PingWest that it had steady growth overall despite all the turbulence in 2022, especially achieving a 10-fold increase in international revenue and forging partnerships with several global customers such as Eurostar and Johnson & Johnson. Looking ahead, the startup, which counts Lightspeed China Partners, Microsoft,  HOPU Investment, and others among its investors, plans to further expand its AI capabilities and intends to scale its conversational AI business in 2023.

Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash