Air India’s virtual agent ‘Maharaja’ starts using AI to answer flyer queries in four languages

NEW DELHI: Air India on Friday said it has become the world’s first airline to have successfully deployed a generative AI virtual agent — called ‘Maharaja’ — powered by Azure OpenAI service. This Maharajahas answered over 5 lakh customer queries since its pilot launch in March 2023, and currently manages over 6,000 queries a day in Hindi, English, French and German.’Maharaja’ manages an extensive spectrum of customer queries across 1,300 areas like flight status, baggage allowances, packing restrictions, check-in, frequent flyer awards, airport lounge access, flight changes and refunds.
AI says using ChatGPT to analyse even some complex questions has allowed this new customer service channel to progressively learn and improve, becoming more attuned to natural language. Air India has employed a strategy that involves blending of multiple traditional machine learning techniques alongside Generative AI to provide a compelling consumer-grade experience. Air India has also established safeguards to prevent biased or harmful language from infiltrating its conversational AI system. About 15% of customer queries today require additional assistance, and Maharaja recognises this automatically and orchestrates a seamless handoff to Air India’s contact centre agents, the airline said in a statement.
Air India chief digital and technology officer Satya Ramaswamy said: “We are dedicated to providing the best possible service and experience to our valued guests across channels. We also want to be very responsive to their changing preferences. After the emergence of Large Language Model driven Generative AI capabilities, we are increasingly seeing a definitive shift in guest preferences to use chat interactions to get the information and support they need quickly and directly as compared to browsing several web pages.”
“We have used several patent-pending innovations in our AI agent Maharaja with a combination of traditional machine learning techniques and the latest in Generative AI to provide a pleasing and effective experience for our customers. Many more innovations are in the pipeline and will be made live in the months to come,” Ramaswamy added.
Marco Casalaina, VP AI platform, Microsoft, said: “We are pleased to see Air India’s successful deployment of their AI-powered agent, Maharaja, and the use of Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service to provide a personalised and relevant customer experience. We believe that this is the beginning of a new era of customer service, and we look forward to seeing more organisations use the power of Generative AI and our AI-optimised Azure cloud to provide a seamless and efficient customer experience.”
“In the coming months, Air India plans to launch a host of sophisticated features, driven by patent-pending technologies. This includes a novel user experience that changes the way customers interact with AI agents with a combination of textual and graphical interactions that can potentially further speed up customer interactions. Some of these innovations have been incubated for more than 2 years. Air India also plans to enhance the current AI agent with data-driven deep-personalisation capabilities that will elevate the technology to that of a reliable personal assistant for all air travel needs. The capabilities of the AI agent will include travel inspiration and effortless booking experiences. Support for more Indian languages is also in the works,” AI statement added.