Auckland Airport hires its first digital employee

Vai can answer passengers' questions about New Zealand's biosecurity rules

Auckland International Airport now has its first digital employee, working as a virtual biosecurity officer.

Called Vai, which stands for Virtual Assistant Interface (Vai), she is on trial helping the airport’s biosecurity team during peak times by answering simple biosecurity questions from the public.

Vai frees up human officers’ time so they can deal with more important aspects of their work.

She can see, hear and answer arriving international visitors’ questions.

Vai is highly conversational and has been trained through every interaction, as well as data available on the website. She embodies the AI experience with human like qualities, including a friendly personality and emotional understanding.

Vai was built using New Zealand company FaceMe’s Digital Employee platform. FaceMe’s avatar technology uses biometrics to learn human interactions and will interact accordingly to ease the customer’s experience.

Watch Vai in action:

In September 2017, the New Zealand government held a trial of new hologram technology at Auckland International Airport to help international passengers understand the importance of biosecurity at the border.

N.B. Image credit: FaceME

Companies in this story

Auckland International Airport (AKL)

FaceMe