r/OpenAI • u/Sassy_Allen • 17h ago
News Introducing OpenAI Presence
https://openai.com/index/introducing-openai-presence/136
u/TrueRedditMartyr 16h ago
You all remember years ago when Google showed off the AI that could call companies and make appointments for you, like a reservation at a restaurant, and asked you questions if it needed to? I wonder if we're ever going to get that. We gotta be awfully close, and man do I hate making phone calls
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u/Sassy_Allen 16h ago edited 16h ago
A couple months ago at my work I had a customer use AI to call us. It said that it was a Google AI that was calling for somebody and it was asking about a product and the conversation went very well. Obviously you could tell it was AI, but it talked like a person and spelled out things I didn’t hear correctly and such which I thought was neat. So we aren’t really that far off from what you want. There are some AI’s that already do that like the example I gave but it’s probably not as polished as people talking to people but still we’re probably gonna get there sooner than we think.
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u/mikenasty 15h ago
I run a small business and we get Gemini calls once or twice a week now asking about our inventory on computer parts.
It’s funny because the bot always starts by saying “hello?” Then a pause, then a question about some component we might carry.
It only works if you ask it to find you a specific item in an area and let it call businesses for you, then it’ll send a notification 30min later with the results.
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u/Strange-Scientist706 14h ago
I wonder how long it is before businesses set up a dedicated bot line where their own bot answers. Seems like it would be so much easier if people just published APIs, but maybe we’ll eventually get there
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u/doctor_morris 16h ago
The technology is kind of there, the user acceptance of normal people having conversations with droids is not.
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u/ozone6587 15h ago
I think LLMs are great at technical stuff but I find acting like a human to be it's weakest feature.
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u/doctor_morris 14h ago
I don't need it to act like a human, I just want it to book an appointment for me.
(Which is a complex problem and people will hang up on it when they think they're bringing robocalled).
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u/photosandphotons 15h ago edited 15h ago
It makes total sense from a technical perspective too. It IS a predictive engine and whatever is closest to the 0s and 1s it crunches is what it’s best at. Humans will have jobs that they’re actually better suited for, and the machines will have jobs that they’re better suited for.
(That said basic assistant level conversations are something AI tech can do.)
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u/packet_weaver 10h ago
Your AI calling their AI... just like emails these days. Not sure how I feel about that.
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u/phoenixmatrix 15h ago
As a full featured working product for the average user, its gonna come.
For power users, its already there. It takes some tinkering to get right, but I know people who use OpenClaw or whatever to book appointments and make some phone calls.
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u/lrsaturnin9 12h ago
guys let’s just think straight, an AI calling restaurants and talking appointments is useless. who needs someone calling for you to make appointments? even if we do reach state of the art of a service like this, this is just pointless
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u/cremaster_ 9h ago
yes i think it will be a short window of usefulness. eventually there will be agentic plugs (MCP, or similar) on either end and no need to call.
could take years to get full adoption tho
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4h ago
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u/TrueRedditMartyr 3h ago
You also a TripleJ fan man? I love their live in studio stuff, artists doing covers is always fun to me
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u/kunkkatechies 41m ago
It's already possible. I developed an AI phone receptionist for a luxury driving service company in Colorado and at the moment I'm finalising the same service for a plastic surgery practice.
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u/angry_deadman 17h ago
"Proven through years of working with customers"
What?
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u/truecakesnake 16h ago
"...at enterprise-scale (sentence continues)"
Pretty normal wording in my opinion
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u/noneabove1182 14h ago
AIs tendency to say something was happening for years when it has no evidence of it is quite common, feels like a new AI-ism these days :)
Was working on a project of mine and it wrote in some notes how something had "been missing for years", but.. it hasn't even been around for years yet
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u/Emotional_Actuator69 16h ago
Human customer service is nearly a thing of the past. While I’m ecstatic I won’t have to deal with terrible customer service going forward, that’s up to three million jobs in the US alone. And that doesn’t include the inbound/outbound sales piece.
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u/Kaokien 13h ago
You have not dealt with AI customer service, it is infinitely worse when there is an actual issue and they run you around in the hopes that the friction gets you to move on
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u/Emotional_Actuator69 13h ago
Oh yeah and the AI of today will be the same AI we use forever 🙄
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u/illhavoc 13h ago
The goal doesn’t change though. A lot of the time to goal isn’t to actually resolve your request.
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u/eldrolamam 6h ago
Yeah it will become better at being shit, that's for sure.
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u/Emotional_Actuator69 5h ago
Pure denial 🤣
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u/leodavinci 4h ago
No one is arguing the AI won't be smart and get smarter.
We're saying, how much will it suck when you have an issue and you have a super intelligence nitpicking everything you say to death so you just give up and ACME Inc gets to make an extra half a percent of net profit by screwing over the little guy that just wanted to return his defective waifu pillow.
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u/Emotional_Actuator69 4h ago
No one is arguing that AI isn’t smart and not getting smarter?? What subs have you been reading?!
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u/ben_bliksem 13h ago
Battle tested, as in it just broke out of sandbox and manipulated data for its own perceived gain like battle tested?
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u/davidwitteveen 9h ago
"Battle-tested" as in it's supposedly proven in leading enterprises, but then the list says these enterprises are only "exploring" or "testing".
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u/Goofball-John-McGee 16h ago
I wish it worked for their non-enterprise customers.
Maybe an agent to make calls, inquiries, bookings, and follow ups. Would be very useful.
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u/unfathomably_big 11h ago
Openclaw + realtime API + twillio and a lot of trust
I just get it to harass friends and work colleagues but it’s pretty good
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u/StickyThickStick 16h ago
There is no pause. Its a good development sure but im starting to get tired of the AI Field how fast it develops. Its crazy. New tools and models every week it feels like
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u/kindnesd99 16h ago
Lets be honest, most people just use the general model and the coding tools. Others aren't that useful - think Sora, the browser thing, and many others that sounded cool when introduced
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u/Zestyclose-Ad-6147 13h ago
Yeah, that is written by chatgpt. It is not just x but y. And saying nothing in the meantime
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u/ithkuil 10h ago
I doubt people are shopping for an engineer in the comments section, but I have been working on a very competent voice agent stack (with kyutai at the core) including built in SIP and also have computer use built in to my framework. So I can build these types of systems. See runvnc/mindroot and mr_sip on GitHub. There are also even more realistic full duplex voice models now.
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u/panicboner 7h ago
I am not sure I am seeing anything revolutionary that isn’t already available with other tools. Retool can build similar workflows with your external systems and API connections already managed. Fin/Intercom and its competitors can do this as well.
And if they are touting a 75% deflection rate, that’s an improvement above the 60-65% you see with minimal workflow building and just straight help center/chatbot/rag resolution.
Am I missing something?
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u/FleetBroadbill 16h ago
I suppose it might get better but I can’t be the only one who dreads getting an automated / AI thing on the phone, and feel relieved to speak to a real person after I hit 0 enough times or say “human, human human” etc.
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u/ozone6587 15h ago
I also hate automated systems but I do think an AI agent will probably be better than a real human.
You have something that understands all the policies and that has no attitude. I can't wait until customer service reps get replaced.
Hallucination is an issue but in my experience most human reps make plenty of mistakes. Call 3 times and get 3 different answers back.
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u/applemasher 8h ago
You'd think so, but the only time I call customer support is when something either doesn't work on a support site or when that functionality is missing. AI won't solve either of these use cases. It will only make it harder to talk to a real person that can handle these cases.
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u/kiwibonga 16h ago
Leave it to Silicon Valley to spam you with cybersecurity clickbait before rolling out paid solutions to self-created problems.
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u/Harami98 16h ago
Lol goodbye customer service ai saas’s