A long-standing employee for Antavo, an AI-powered loyalty platform used by global brands, has been turned into an AI avatar to give clients their own loyalty assistant; available in 80 languages.

Called 'Timi AI', it looks just like Antavo’s senior business analyst, Timi Garai, with its ChatGPT-style large language models (LLMs) built on Garai's knowledge and experience.

"You can chat with Timi, you can video call with Timi and you can voice call with Timi," Antavo's co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Zsuzsa Kecsmar, told Reuters.

"We put a face to that chatbot but a chatbot like that would usually have an amount of knowledge. What Timi AI is, is an agent AI. Which means that it has like (demonstrates) this amount of knowledge," Kecsmar added.

The company says Garai was the obvious choice because she was always able to answer client and colleague's questions.

Garai herself, is hoping her AI twin will free her up to concentrate on more creative tasks.

"It can be really tiring for me to have a meeting in Asia at early morning, maybe 4 or 5 am sometimes and then into late evening with the US," she told Reuters.

"Now we have someone who can replace me at least some part of the process."

The company says the AI is trained on Garai's years of expertise, allowing clients to interact like they are talking to a human colleague.

They hope the AI assistant will improve the experience for their corporate clients, setting up and managing loyalty programmes.

"It's not for the consumer. This is for the marketeer, the loyalty program manager. Like they get a colleague, one extra colleague to help them," Kecsmar said. - report from Reuters