With AI, Fluid takes office automation to the next level

At Fluid AI’s Mumbai office, it’s a 55-inch TV screen that greats a visitor, with avatars (video images) of real humans answering their queries or guiding them to their meeting rooms. The front office does not have a receptionist, and the TV also doubles up as the security guard, manning the door.

The Artificial Intelligence-backed TV uses face recognition technology to identify employees, before unlocking the doors without asking questions. For the visitor, the touch-screen TV has many options — like ‘interview’, ‘meeting’ and ‘visitor’, among others — and on selecting the desired one, floor lights showing way to the conference room or the official’s cabin light up.

The visitor just needs to follow the lights to the conference room. No human intervention here. The AI also calls the official on his mobile phone and alerts him of the visitor.

This futuristic office is on the seventh floor of Naman Midtown, outside Prabhadevi railway station (earlier Elphinstone Road railway station), in Mumbai.

“AI is a self-learning algorithm. About 5-6 years ago, it had the intelligence and knowledge of a three year old, but now it has the intelligence of a 10- or 11-year-old. It can recognise faces and voices, and that’s what we have demonstrated here,” Abhinav Aggarwal, Fluid AI's Co-founder and CEO, told BusinessLine. “In the next 10-20 years, it will attain the intelligence of a 20-25 year-old,” he added.

The front office AI also conducts the preliminary job interviews and asks candidates to fill out forms, submit biodata and even conducts written tests. The conference rooms of the firm are strengthened with AI bots, doubling up as assistants, accepting orders for coffee or tea, taking down notes or setting up presentations, among others.

Fluid AI, formerly Trutech, has been working on AI since 2012, and has been providing the technology to companies such as Bank of America, Royal Bank of Canada, MasterCard and HDFC. It is also working with companies like Reliance Jio Infocomm, ICICI Bank and Vodafone-Idea among others.

At Fluid AI, technology also finds a place in leisure and innovation. For instance, a wooden-chess board that plays against a human player is a major attraction among employees. The AI moves the physical coins across the chess board as if an invisible human being is the player on the other side of the board.

Deep-learning algorithm is used in the board game, while the AI playing the game would look spooky to the uninitiated.

The office also boasts of a hexagonal AI-embedded chessboard, where two players can contest against the software.

However, the synosure of all eyes is a mini-Android robot that is programmed to follow Aggarwal, whenever he goes around in the office. The robot has an Android phone as its face, and is fitted on a Segway, giving it a faster motion as that of a Star Wars droid.