The news: Our most recent forecast shows that conversational AI adoption is growing. In 2021, 64.2% of US adults between the ages of 25–34 used a voice assistant. Overall, 46.9% of US adults will use a voice assistant in 2022, 48.2% by 2025. Conversational AI is on track to become a mainstream technology in practically every vertical. 

The problem: Conversational AI tools are popularly limited in use to voice assistants (Siri and Alexa) and chatbots due to issues with user experience in other tools like more advanced voicebots. 

Why it’s worth watching: A series of technological breakthroughs over the past several years continues to expand the number of use cases for conversational AI beyond the most well-known call center and chatbot applications.

• Innovation around speech data and voice synthesis is transforming the way voice assistants and chatbots behave, according to Nvidia’s recent developments. 
• Deepmind recently revealed an algorithm that can read and answer questions at a near human level, and better than any existing software. 
• Openai added new capabilities to GPT-3 including getting rid of limits to who could use the API.
• Google launched a bot-in-a-box tool that promotes conversational AI by using natural language processing (NLP) and Google’s Dialogflow software to allow developers to build chatbots without writing code. 

The big takeaway: If companies can effectively build consumer trust through addressing issues like privacy and AI ethics, the number of use cases for conversational AI is destined to expand to nearly every business vertical. 

Now comes figuring out where these tools would be most advantageous for companies and mastering the user experience.