Uber explores leveraging AI chatbot tools into its platform

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Amid the viral popularity of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Uber India is exploring various use cases of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its platform as it continues testing out its feature of booking rides through WhatsApp with experiments in select cities, including Delhi and Lucknow.Amid the viral popularity of conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI), Uber India is exploring various use cases of conversational AI chatbot tools including OpenAI’s ChatGPT in its platform as it continues testing out its feature of booking rides through Whatsapp with experiments in select cities including Delhi and Lucknow.

“We are exploring possibilities of leveraging ChatGPT at Uber.  At the end of the day if using it gives an enriched experience to users, and it makes business sense we will see how we can tap into that… today it is just in an exploration stage,” said Manikandan Thangarathnam, Senior Director, Mobility and Platforms at Uber India.

Uber rolled out the ‘WhatsApp chatbot’ in August 2022 to ease the cab-booking experience for customers. The company already has a ‘call-to-ride’ feature for users, who cannot use the app.

“We are actively experimenting with bookings through WhatsApp and several other features, including bookings through Alexa and more. We have experimented with the WhatsApp feature in a few cities in India. We also are doing an experiment outside India and figuring out the product market fit (PMF),” said Thangarathnam in an interaction with Moneycontrol.

In order to cut costs and modernise cloud infrastructure, the ride-hailing giant has moved towards hybrid cloud arrangements in partnership with Google and Oracle. However, the company will continue to invest and develop its data centres and talent, Thangarathnam said.

“We have our own data centres, we have our own machines for compute storage and other things. Now, we also have the option to see whether you can leverage cloud providers like Oracle and Google,” he said.

Thangarathnam also said that moving towards a hybrid model will help fast-track the process of achieving $5 billion of operating earnings by 2025.

“Uber is in a phase where our business is doing very well. We want to grow as fast as possible. Two years back, there was a lot of focus on profitability. Now, we are on our path to hit $5 billion EBITDA profitability by 2025. We want to grow as fast as possible and partnerships like these will take us there,” he added.

Uber is planning to hire around 200 employees in India.

“We are actively looking for talent, In fact, we may hire around 200 people in India for various roles like engineering, backend, frontend mobile development for both Android and iOS, data science experts, product managers, and UX designers,” said Thangarathnam.

The move comes at a time when Uber is reportedly cutting some employees in a “more rigorous” set of ongoing performance reviews even as it plans to hire new employees to backfill impacted roles.

Uber India reported a 7 percent increase in revenue from operations to Rs 397 crore for the year ended March 2022. Its total losses fell substantially to Rs 216 crore, from Rs 333 crore during FY22.