Genee,你的人工智能个人助手人工智能日程安排应用Genee发行了公测版本,这意味着所有人都可以拥有一个属于自己的个人助手。
在虚拟助手初创公司Zirtual停运之后,Genee想要完全去除方程中的人力因素以及现存所有日历App以及邮件供应商中的端对端调度助手。
联合创始人Charles Lee和Ben Cheung均是前VMWare的员工,两人为了创建一个不一样的初创公司需要根据各自日程表来安排时间见面来讨论,然而两人在时间安排上很难达成一致,在这之后他们决定创建Genee。
“总裁需要助手的原因在于一旦总裁告诉助手去安排一个会议,助手就要完全接管这件事。” Cheung在采访中这样说道。“现有的工具都在致力于将这个过程自动化,但是他们并没有解决端对端的问题:他们没有消除这份责任。”
在允许访问已有的日历和邮件App后,所有人都可以使用Genee。你只需要将Genee复制到邮件上,就像你有了一个私人助理然后让Genee全权负责。如果你需要将会议时间延迟15分钟或者重新设置时间,这款应用上也有一个一键式选项可以让Genee通知其他参与会议的人。
最近,Genee团队刚刚整合到推特公司,用户可以在不用回复邮件的时候就看到会议的通知。当然如果需要整个过程运行的更加顺利,这就要求双方都允许Gennee访问他们的日程表,但这并不是强制要求。
尽管许多自然语言处理应用还有很多不足之处,Cheung表示Genee发展的关键是集中在自然语言的一小部分,从而确保这个系统操作上去感觉是一个人类助理。
“我们注重单一语境下的自然语言来安排会议,这样会把整个过程变得更简单。” Cheung在采访中这样说道。“我们拥有一个高级算法来优先安排时间,此外我们还经常在一些常识事情上训练计算机。”
比如说如果你告诉Genee你想要在这周某一天的工作后去喝酒,Genee需要知道你指的时间大约是下午五点后。如果这周你的日程安排都满了,那么安排下周某一天去喝酒也并非意味着世界末日。
Lee在采访中表示:“我们并没有想要取代人类助理,这不过是一个可以满足99%没有助手的人需求的产品。我们的目标用户并不是那些已经有助手的最高层管理人员。”
在过去的1年里,10000个内测用户帮助团队调整了运行系统,教会Genee关于调度语言中常见的俚语和细微的差别。
该公司已经获得145万美元的首轮融资,参投方有Uj Ventures、Streamline Ventures以及Garnett Ventures。这笔资金将会用来扩大Genee的理解能力、整合其他的信息平台(比如说Facebook和Slack)并且推出其他附加的功能,例如用户可以进行预订服务。
Meet Genee, Your Artificially Intelligent Personal Assistant
Genee, an artificially intelligent scheduling app, is launching today into public beta so that anyone can have a personal assistant.
On the heels of Zirtual’s collapse, Genee hopes to take humans out of the equation entirely with its end-to-end scheduling helper that plugs into any existing calendar app and email provider.
Former colleagues at VMWare, co-founders Charles Lee and Ben Cheung decided to build Genee after struggling to coordinate meetings around their own schedules to chat about a different startup idea.
“The reason why executives have assistants is that once they tell them to schedule a meeting, the assistant takes over completely,” says Cheung. “The tools available now are pulling to automate that, but they don’t solve the problem end to end: they’re not taking away the responsibility.”
Anyone can use Genee after allowing access to existing calendar and email apps. You simply copy Genee on your emails, just as you would a personal assistant, and Genee takes over. If you need to move a meeting back by 15 minutes or reschedule, there’s a one-click option that prompts Genee to notify the other parties.
Recently, the team integrated Genee into Twitter so that users can get a meeting on the books without having to revert back to email at all. Of course, the whole process works more smoothly if both parties have allowed Genee to access their schedules, but it’s not necessary.
While many applications of natural language processing leave a lot to be desired, Cheung says the key with Genee is focusing on a very small segment of natural language to make sure the system actually feels like a human assistant.
“We focus the natural language on a single context, scheduling meetings, which makes it easier,” says Cheung. “We have a sophisticated algorithm for scheduling the preferred time, and we’ve trained the computer a lot about the common sense part too.”
If you tell Genee you want to schedule “drinks after work at some point this week,” for instance, she has to know that you probably mean after 5 p.m., and that if you’re completely booked this week, planning drinks for next week wouldn’t be the end of the world.
“We’re not setting out to build a human assistant replacement, it’s a product to address the 99 percent of the population that doesn’t have it,” says Lee. “Our target user is not going to be the C-level executive who already has an assistant.”
Over the past year, 10,000 private beta users have helped the team tweak the system and teach Genee common slang and nuances in scheduling language.
The company has raised $1.45 million in seed funding from Uj Ventures, Streamline Ventures, and Garnett Ventures, which it will use to expand the Genee’s understanding, integrate with additional messaging platforms (such as Facebook and Slack), and roll out additional features, such as booking reservations for users.
source:TC