This series has, so far, defined the Digital Person and described its evolution, and how the Digital Person compares to ChatBots and Virtual Personal Assistants. This article will explain the advantages and disadvantages of using the Digital Person in business situations.

There are several key benefits to utilizing a Digital Person, and they are as follows:

  • Time management for employees: A Digital Person can increase your staff. For example, a call center (as mentioned earlier in this series) is one of the best use cases of the Digital Person. Real agents are totally inundated with phone calls and email messages, and the end result is a long wait time for the end user, and increased levels of frustration. The Digital Person can alleviate these problems by being available 24/7, 365 days a year.
  • Analysis of Data: The Digital Person also has a repository of where previous conversations with end users are stored at. This information can then be pulled as a reference point for future conversations with the end users, so that it can be customized and tailored.
  • Ideal for recruitment: With the recent round of layoffs, many people are now looking for jobs. In this realm, a Digital Person can act as Human Resources Representative and conduct an online interview with a candidate. It can also scan through resumes very quickly and provide feedback to the human recruiters as to which candidates they should take a closer look at. An example of this is illustrated below:

(Source 1)

  • The healthcare industry: During the COVID-19 pandemic, Telehealth received a gargantuan boost. This is where a patient could have a video conference with their doctor, as opposed to the in person visit. However, the Digital Person has now become the front end in this scenario, relieving the doctors to attend to more serious matters. But it should be noted here that the Digital Person at this point can only handle simple Telehealth visits, not complex ones.
  • Availability: As previously mentioned, the Digital Person can be made available on a 24/7, 365-days-a-year basis. So, if your business is required to have a support line staffed at all times, the Digital Person would be a great option to meet that need.
  • Use in training videos: Rather than having a human being deliver the content, the Digital Person can work just as well. But since the technology is still evolving, they can only be used for simple training purposes, not complex situations where a human being is still required. Another obstacle that needs to be further addressed is the type of interactive questions that can be asked of the Digital Person in these videos. For instance, it would initially need to be trained in a wide range of questions, before it could provide an answer.

The Disadvantages of The Digital Person

The Digital Person also has its share of drawbacks, which are as follows:

  • Lack of customization: Depending on the platform you use, there could be constraints on how customized you can make your Digital Person, especially for “niche” markets.
  • Lack of understanding complex commands: A complex query can be viewed as where the end user makes a series of requests in one sentence. Rather than breaking them down individually, the Digital Person will interpret all of it as one large query. As a result, separate sentences must be created for each query, in order to ensure that the right outputs are computed.
  • Difficulty with multi-language support: At the present time, the Digital Person can only support the most widely used languages, such as English and Spanish.
  • A lack of offline functionality: If for some reason the power goes off to the server that hosts your Digital Person application, it will no longer be able to fully support 24/7, 365-days-a-year availability.

Concluding thoughts about the Digital Person

While the Digital Person can be used in a variety of scenarios, it does also pose a serious Cybersecurity risk as well. For example, if a hacker is able to exploit the platform upon which one exists, the Digital Person can be used to launch a Social Engineering Attack over time.

A hijacked Digital Person can be first used to develop a respectable dialog with the end user, to build up a sense of trust. Then, it can be subsequently used to con the end user to give up their confidential information and data (such as credit card numbers, bank account info, etc.) in very subtle ways.

The Digital Person can also be used as a Deepfake. In this case, a fake Digital Person can be used to con an end user to send money for a certain cause, such as a political donation, or humanitarian effort.

As with anything else that is related to AI, a sense of caution must be used. In this regard, the best thing to do is to literally “trust your gut.” If it simply does not feel right, then the use of the tool should be discarded immediately.

Sources/References:

  1. Shutterstock

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Ravi Das is an Intermediate Technical Writer for a large IT Services Provider based in South Dakota. He also has his own freelance business through Technical Writing Consulting, Inc.
He holds the Certified In Cybersecurity certificate from the ISC(2).

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