All of the major players involved in AI and NLP are racing towards a state where an AI powered application equipped with NLP abilities will take over the verbal and written communication needs of modern society.
Google's presentation of their new "virtual assistant" makes clear that we are about to hit that milestone. I guess that we are less than 2 years away from a widespread adoption of customer service functions being taken over by the robots.
The actual demonstration of Google's assistant can be found here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2U1ImKsecB8
I think that most people would not suspect that the caller in the video making the appointment was a robot. Outside of a few syntax issues I was hard pressed to identify that the one making the calls was in fact a robot.
Clearly, what we have seen in this video is just a start. It won't be long before syntax irregularities will become non observable. Perception and ability to respond to questions will only improve from here on out.
The intriguing part about all of it is the impact it will have on businesses. At least in theory Customer Satisfaction will go up and costs will go down.
Consumers too should come out as winners. 24/7 support even for smaller companies will become standard and there will be no more heavily accented operator to deal with.
AI will have a huge impact on our life - we are just getting started.