CES 2023 Trends: Holograms, AI Bots are the Future of Customer Service

The days of hanging on hold for a customer service agent, or waiting to ask a question of an associate in a cellphone store, will soon be over — if the technology on display at CES 2023 in Las Vegas has anything to do with it. 

Instead, expect AI-powered, ultra-realistic humanoid chatbots both online and in-store to help customers with their every need. And some of these could even come in full-sized holographic form in retail locations. 

Several booths at CES were showcasing their AI bot technology, including Deepbrain AI. This Silicon Valley company has AI technology that creates 2D virtual humans by replicating real people, as well as hyper-realistic 3D avatars, and equipping them with the ability to answer a massive range of customer questions and deal with complaints. These virtual humans can be interacted with on your retail website or displayed on a monitor or potentially via a full-human-sized touchscreen at your retail locations. 

Michael Jung, Global Business Development Lead at Deepbrain AI, told iQmetrix, ​“You can replicate your virtual human on your company’s CEO, a celebrity, your company’s brand ambassador, or simply an have anonymous agent if you prefer.”

The potential applications are almost limitless, with some other possible use cases being news anchors, virtual influencers, and much more. The company even offers a way to memorialize lost loved ones, recreating family members in every aspect — from their face to their physique to their voice — so that you can continue to talk to a version of that person. 

These technologies would be even more effective when combined with hologram displays, of which there were also several examples on the CES show floor.

AHRT Media, for example, has a full-sized holographic displays of live (or recorded) real people to interact with. These people need to be live on camera or pre-recorded at an ARHT studio, so it doesn’t work for daily one-on-one customer-agent interactions. Instead, the primary use cases in retail are to make promotional announcements, have celebrities showcasing new products, offer product demonstrations, or simply cut out the people element and display the latest products in pre-recorded holographic form. 

For example, if Mint Mobile were to open a brick-and-mortar retail store, they could have a life-sized hologram of Ryan Reynolds welcoming customers at the door of every retail location. Or at a wireless retail location or OEM store, the latest smartphone release could be displayed in color-changing, rotating form. 

Conor O’Reilly, West Coast Sales Representative at ARHT Media, told iQmetrix, ​“The great thing is that you can beam these live broadcasts to multiple locations at once, and continue to broadcast it over and again as it will have been recorded.”

O’Reilly agreed that the convergence of holographic tech such as ARHT’s with deep machine-learning ​“brains” that other companies are creating could result in the ultimate hologram customer service agent. 

Given what was on display at CES this year, it doesn’t look like that day is too far away.