Danish Beer Company Royal Unibrew has put 5 "colleagues" of artificial intelligence into operation. These "employees" are designed as real employees with names, faces, even email addresses. The company's goal is to make the most of the potential of the people through AI's support.
According to Michala Svane, Marketing Director of Royal Unibrew, people have the advantage of creativity, empathy and customer understanding, while "AI colleagues" support repetitive jobs or search for information. She said the combination of people and the machine helps to improve the overall performance of the whole team.
5 AI employees are developed by the company with the support of Manifold AI, including Kondikai - brand specialist, Athena - market analyst, Prometheus - a sales data collector, Molller - a consultant combining food and beer, and Ella - a trade specialist.
Initially, these AI had no names, but then were assigned to the identity with images of 3 men and 2 women, attractive appearance, can change their costumes and daily interaction with staff through conversation and email.
Ms. Svane shared that assigning images for those who made the interaction level increased 4 times. She also confirmed that there was no negative reaction from the staff when working with "virtual colleagues".
At Royal Unibrew's data collection and data analysis, Karin Jorgensen said often working with Athena - a virtual companion in the process of researching non -alcoholic beer market. Previously, she had to handle many emails and look up manual reports. Now, Athena provides quick information through the teams platform, helping to speed up working and overall efficiency.
Jorgensen expect Athena to be able to participate in future meetings. She realized that the processing and analysis of internal data helped the company secure information and optimize value.
However, Ms. Lise Knuppert Hordam - another manager in the company - warns that no matter who brings productivity, employees still need to maintain critical thinking. She took the example of Kondikai, emphasized that what one provided only reflects the existing data, and still needs evaluation and creativity from humans.
Professor Jan Damsgaard from Copenhagen Business School said that AI is often designed as a "digital personality" to improve the interaction experience. However, he warned that the relationship between people and everyone asked many new questions, such as the reaction of employees when anyone became a "close colleague", or when there was a conflict between real people and machines - social things were still researching and there was no clear answer.
