Amex GBT, Amadeus: AI Usage is Getting Cheaper, Voice May Be a Gamechanger

Skift

2 days ago

Generative AI is becoming more accessible in several ways: At large businesses, costs per transaction are falling, and voice-to-voice interactions may provide an ease of use that brings AI to the masses.
While building cutting-edge AI models remains an expensive proposition, the actual cost to use them is nosediving.
That's the view of Rodrigo Acuna Agost, head of research and the AI Center of Excellence at Amadeus.
"In 18 months, I think it's decreased ... 240 times less," Acuna Agost said, referring to the cost per token in GPT-4. He estimated the cost of using "voice-to-voice and phone" is roughly $1 per conversation.
Marilyn Markham, vice president, AI strategy and automation at Amex GBT, agreed that the "cost per transaction is decreasing ... it's actually quite inexpensive," but pointed to other factors that need to be considered in the financial equation.
"But the investment to transform the systems still needs an ROI," Markham said. "So because of that, it doesn't automatically decrease the price of service because of all it takes to actually get to that point and maintain it. And all of that is done by people, so it's kind of displacing where the cost actually is for servicing our customers."
The two discuss these trends during an on-stage discussion at the Skift Data + AI Summit in New York Wednesday.
Here are some other takeaways from the session.
AI May Be More Useful in Leisure Than In Business Travel
"I think business travel restricts us in using the full power of AI unless we decide to do more bleisure," Amex GBT's Markham said.
She said leisure travel is more collaborative — you plan trips with your friends — than business travel, which has strict rules and policies. "So applying rules ... going to Gen AI for that is not going to be your best bet," Markham said.
The Effort to Get Employees to Adopt AI
Markham said sometimes when the company onboards generative AI, "the rumble in the room is there goes my job."
It takes "a lot of human labor," including team meetings and town halls, "to bring people along," she said. "Sometimes just giving them a taste of the drug and getting them a little addicted, and going like this is amazing, it helps me in my work."
Voice to Voice Interactions Could Be the Next Big Thing
Acuna Agost of Amadeus said voice-to-voice interactions — talking to an AI agent and listening to its answer — may democratize AI because writing skills are not required.
His research team is experimenting with voice-to-voice in multiple languages.
"We switch from Spanish to French to English, and you get the response in natural language," Acuna Agost said. "So imagine all people, different nationalities, all will have access to AI."
Data for Personalization 'Is Not Fully Exploited'
Business travel is not taking advantage of the data it already has to enhance personalization.
"You're not the only person who travels for this project," Markham said. "I have your data, and I have the data of all your colleagues who go back and forth. If we could extract and use that data, you would find that we can leap forward in personalization and get something that's pertinent, even if it's your first time traveling to the New York office. Others have done it. We know how it works. We can recommend. So I think there's this data. It's not fully exploited yet."