Technology that lets software understand what people say or type in everyday language and respond in a natural way. It combines language understanding with machine learning, and powers modern chatbots and voice assistants.
Example
A customer types 'kuch cotton ka hai for office, under 2000?' on Meera's WhatsApp. A rule-based menu would fail; a conversational AI assistant can understand the mixed Hindi-English request and suggest cotton kurtas under ₹2,000.
How you'll hear it
“The old bot only understood button taps; we need conversational AI so people can just type.”
Don't confuse it with
- Chatbot: the interface; conversational AI is one way to power it.
- Generative AI: creates new content; conversational AI is about dialogue, and may or may not use generative models.
In India: Indian customers often mix languages, such as Hindi and English in one message, so test any conversational AI on real messages from your customers.