Air India’s Maharaja, the World’s First AI-powered Virtual Agent, Reshapes Customer Service Landscape

Air India, a global airline giant, takes the lead as the world’s first airline to deploy ‘Maharaja,’ a Generative AI virtual agent powered by Azure OpenAI service. Since its pilot launch in March 2023, Maharaja has successfully handled over half a million customer queries, managing a daily load of 6,000 in four languages.

The Maharaja AI Agent covers a wide spectrum of customer queries, spanning 1,300 areas such as flight status, baggage allowances, check-in, and more. Speaking Hindi, English, French, and German, Maharaja boasts an impressive 80% success rate in answering queries within seconds. Recognizing the 15% of queries needing additional assistance, Maharaja seamlessly hands them off to Air India’s contact center agents.

Dr. Satya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer at Air India, states, “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.”

Microsoft’s Marco Casalaina applauds Air India’s achievement, stating, “We believe that this is the beginning of a new era of customer service.”

Air India leverages ChatGPT to analyze complex questions, enhancing its customer service by learning and improving over time. The airline employs a blend of traditional machine learning techniques with Generative AI to provide a compelling consumer-grade experience while implementing safeguards against biased or harmful language.

Unlike rule-based chatbots, Generative AI solutions understand user intent and context, generating natural and coherent replies. This not only improves user satisfaction but also automates repetitive tasks, freeing up human agents for more complex interactions.

Looking ahead, Air India plans to introduce sophisticated features driven by patent-pending technologies. This includes a user experience revolution with textual and graphical interactions to expedite customer interactions. Additionally, the airline aims to enhance AI agent capabilities with data-driven deep-personalization, transforming it into a reliable personal assistant for all air travel needs. The roadmap also includes support for more Indian languages.