What is interactive AI?

Executive summary:

Interactive artificial intelligence (IAI) represents the next evolution beyond traditional AI chatbots and language models. While current AI systems follow predetermined paths, IAI engages in dynamic collaboration, learns from each interaction, and proactively solves complex business problems. IAI combines advanced agentic AI capabilities such as persistent memory, multimodal processing, and autonomous decision-making to deliver unprecedented business value through real-time problem-solving, adaptive learning, and intelligent automation across enterprise operations.

Contact Talbot West to explore how interactive AI can drive innovation and efficiency in your operations.

Unlike chatbots that merely respond to queries, interactive artificial intelligence engages in dynamic collaboration with users. IAI has the potential to boost productivity across all industries. This technology is changing how we use computers and handle complex tasks, but it also raises questions about governance and balancing AI abilities with human control.

Talbot West helps you develop interactive AI solutions to meet your specific business requirements. Our expert team teaches you how to harness the power of IAI to streamline operations, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation in your industry.

IAI engages in dynamic, real-time collaboration, creating a more natural and responsive interaction between humans and machines.

As the state of interactive AI develops, its technologies will have one or more of the following characteristics, most of which go above and beyond previous types of generative AI (such as ChatGPT):

1. Persistent memory: maintains long-term memory across sessions, recalling past interactions and user preferences.
2. Multimodal mastery: processes and generates multiple modalities (text, speech, images, video) in real-time conversations.
3. Physical world integration: interfaces with and manipulates the physical environment through robotics or IoT devices.
4. Proactive engagement: initiates interactions based on user context, learned patterns, or anticipated needs.
5. Real-time learning: continuously learns and improves from each interaction, updating its knowledge base on the fly.
6. Personalized cognitive modeling: builds and maintains detailed models of individual users' knowledge, preferences, and cognitive styles.
7. Transparent reasoning: clearly articulates the logic and evidence behind its responses and decision-making processes.
8. Interdisciplinary problem-solving: seamlessly integrates knowledge across multiple domains for holistic analysis and solutions.
9. Ethical agency: incorporates sophisticated ethical reasoning to make nuanced decisions in complex scenarios.

IAI is moving fast. To keep up—and to understand how it might fit into their internal workflows—enterprises turn to Talbot West. We’ll work with you to craft feasibility studies, develop and run pilot projects, and even get your knowledge base up to par for AI ingestion.

IAI is in its infancy but is already gaining adoption. Here are some of our predictions for how it will transform the way industries and organizations operate:

• Healthcare: IAI systems will maintain comprehensive, long-term patient histories. They will participate in doctor-patient consultations, recalling relevant details from past interactions and adapting their language and approach to the patient's evolving health literacy. IAI will learn from each interaction, refining its understanding of individual patient needs and preferences over years of care.
• Manufacturing: Future factories will incorporate IAI-driven production ecosystems that evolve. IAI will remember past production challenges, successful innovations, and worker suggestions across the years. It will engage in ongoing dialogues with both machines and human staff. It will propose improvements based on cumulative knowledge.
• Education: Universities will offer IAI learning companions that stay with students throughout their academic journey and beyond. These AIs will remember a student's learning style, struggles, and achievements across multiple courses and years. They'll engage in Socratic dialogues, adapting their teaching methods to the student's evolving interests and career goals. The AI will even maintain contact post-graduation, offering personalized continuing education recommendations. In the future, students may select one university over another based on the quality of their IAI tutors.
• Financial services: Investment firms will use IAI systems that maintain multi-generational financial histories for families. These AIs will engage in nuanced discussions about long-term wealth strategies, remembering past financial decisions and their outcomes. They'll adapt their advice to changing family dynamics, evolving risk tolerances, and global economic trends.
• Retail: Stores will feature IAI concierges that remember your purchasing history, style evolution, and lifestyle changes over the years. These AIs will engage in natural conversations that reference past interactions. They’ll track how your preferences have changed over time. They'll proactively suggest products and experiences that align with your journey and will also adapt their recommendations to seasonal trends and personal milestones.
• Legal: Law firms will employ IAI legal assistants who maintain a comprehensive memory of the firm's entire case history. These AIs will participate in strategy sessions, recalling relevant precedents from years past and adapting their advice to the evolving legal landscape. They'll remember individual lawyers' strengths and preferred argumentation styles, and will also have the full context of each client and their individual legal history.
• Human resources: IAI systems will follow employees throughout their entire career within a company. These AIs will engage in regular check-ins and remember past performance reviews, career aspirations, and personal milestones. They'll adapt their support and recommendations to an employee's changing skills, to changing company needs, and to industry trends.
• Urban planning: City planners will collaborate with IAI systems that maintain a living memory of the city's development over decades. These AIs will engage with multiple generations of planners and citizens, adapting urban development strategies to long-term patterns in population dynamics, economic shifts, and environmental changes. The AI will learn from past urban planning successes and failures, continuously refining its recommendations for sustainable city growth.
• Marketing: Teams will work with IAI platforms that cultivate long-term relationships between brands and consumers. These AIs will remember individual customer interactions across multiple campaigns and years, adapting brand messaging to reflect the evolving relationship. They'll engage in creative sessions with marketers, drawing insights from cumulative customer data to propose innovative campaigns that resonate with long-time brand advocates while attracting new audiences.
• Research and development: R&D departments will utilize IAI research partners capable of maintaining knowledge across multiple scientific disciplines over many years. These AIs will engage in complex problem-solving sessions, drawing connections between seemingly unrelated fields and past experiments. They'll adapt their research approaches based on cumulative learnings, proposing novel hypotheses that bridge traditional disciplinary boundaries. The AI will remember the strengths and interests of individual researchers, fostering unique collaborations that drive breakthrough innovations.
• Defense: Military organizations will deploy IAI systems that maintain secure operational knowledge across missions and deployments. These AIs will participate in strategic planning sessions, remembering past tactical decisions and their outcomes while adapting to evolving threat landscapes. They'll build deep understanding of unit capabilities, terrain considerations, and mission parameters over time. The AI will learn from each engagement, continuously refining its support for commanders while maintaining strict operational security protocols. See how our CHAI framework is better for military applications (more secure, configurable, interactive, and explainable).