TechTarget’s Don Fluckinger rounded up industry experts to explore Google Meena’s next-generation conversational AI. He always brings together a great group for a productive and thoughtful conversation.

Leading digital analyst Brian Solis believes that Meena represents a potentially significant leap forward in conversational AI.

Today, chatbots are largely used in rule-based engagements, sitting on top of structured data to perform a set of limited operations. They connect customers to common information or facilitate everyday transactions. In the more effective cases, AI is used to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of chatbot responses while also aiming to improve the humanness of engagement.

Google’s conversational AI seeks to introduce a new layer of intelligence into the mix, by expanding how systems more intuitively interact with people and connect them to desired outcomes.

“The challenge with existing chatbots is that they were designed to scale automated experiences with the semblance of human engagement, but I’d argue they were not trained based on real one-on-one conversations — they were developed upon existing platforms such as knowledge bases,” said Brian Solis, an independent analyst, digital anthropologist and author. “Google’s Meena was developed to respond sensibly to any given conversational context. Build upon that, and you have a platform for delivering intelligence, accuracy and humanity over time.”

Google customers already using its contact center AI platform may also be early Meena users.

“Google’s AI is industry-leading, and contact centers are a natural place to augment and automate existing processes,” Solis said. “Every enterprise vendor is going after this space. While some executives focus on cost, others will focus on experience. Google is hyper-focused on using conversational platforms to deliver human-like experiences.”