Over the past couple of years, there’s been a significant shift in how developers create digital and voice assistants. While traditional, intent-based systems have been the standard for a long time, newer, prompt-based systems are opening possibilities for more flexible, natural, and powerful assistants. This transition reflects advancements in large language model (LLM) technology and tools like Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). These innovations enable AI systems to detect user intents automatically, access relevant knowledge sources for accurate responses, and generate dynamic replies without relying on pre-scripted content.

The benefits of this approach are clear: prompt-based systems are faster to set up, offer greater flexibility, and deliver quicker time to value for businesses. With the launch of their new Agentic AI platform, Cognigy has joined the ranks of solution providers offering businesses the power and flexibility of prompt-based conversational AI to create dynamic, task-oriented agents that can quickly adapt to evolving customer needs and operational demands.

Intent-Based Assistants Still Have Their Place
For industries like healthcare or highly regulated sectors, where accuracy is non-negotiable, the intent-based model with pre-scripted responses is still preferred over prompt-based approaches. Combining the two systems in a hybrid model allows businesses to leverage prompt-based flexibility in areas where it’s safe to do so, while maintaining the precision of intent-based design for mission-critical workflows. This dual capability is a standout feature of Cognigy’s latest offering, as it allows companies to optimize AI performance while meeting the unique demands of their verticals.

For companies still rightly concerned about the risks of using prompt-based AI agents at all, Cognigy has added a safety layer to their Agentic AI capability, which businesses can even extend by adding on 3rd party generative AI trust and safety solutions like those from Lakera.

A User-Friendly AI Agent Creation Experience
One of the most exciting aspects of Cognigy’s Agentic AI system is its intuitive user interface. The process of creating an AI agent is simple, allowing users to select an image, choose a voice, define personality traits, connect the agent to knowledge sources, and specify tasks it needs to perform. This design mirrors the agent-creation platforms seen in gaming, such as Inworld AI, where game designers can quickly generate intelligent interactive characters to add to their gaming environments.

Cognigy’s Agentic AI platform offers more advanced features beyond those just mentioned. For example, the platform enables designers to easily instruct their agents about what data needs to be collected. The agent will then collect this information from the customer with no pre-scripting or complex entity-extraction required. Designers can also set up agents to remember key data points about the customer interaction, either for the length of the conversation or even across interactions.

By streamlining the overall design process, Cognigy empowers businesses to create sophisticated AI agents without requiring extensive technical expertise. It should be noted that businesses even have the option to “hire” pre-built Agentic agents from the Cognigy platform. These agents are configured for specific use cases, such as a retail agent “trained” to assist customer with product inquiries, order tracking, and returns.

Beyond Q&A: Task-Oriented AI with Tool Access
Cognigy’s Agentic AI agents can go beyond simply answering questions. These agents are equipped with a reasoning layer that allows them to think through the steps required to achieve a goal, plan actions, and execute tasks.

A demo showcased how Cognigy agents use this reasoning capability to plan steps and interact with enterprise back-end systems seamlessly. By integrating with commonly used enterprise tools, Agentic AI can carry out complex workflows, such as authenticating the customer, retrieving and processing customer data, calling a human to get information about a customer order, and creating new orders. This evolution transforms AI agents from static conversational bots into dynamic assistants capable of driving real-world outcomes.

Flexibility Meets Power
Cognigy’s Agentic AI system reflects how the conversational AI landscape is evolving. By embracing the flexibility of prompt-based models, retaining the rigor of intent-based systems for critical use cases, and enabling hybrid workflows, Cognigy ensures that their solution can adapt to a wide range of business requirements.

The new Agentic AI platform works seamlessly with existing Cognigy implementations and has been integrated into major CCaaS and messaging platforms. Combined with an intuitive interface and the ability to perform complex tasks, Agentic AI represents a significant evolution in what conversational AI can achieve.

Cognigy is not alone in adopting this approach. The shift toward prompt-based AI is consistent with Opus Research’s long-standing observation that enterprises should look to their solution providers to handle the heavy lifting of integrating LLMs, GenAI, and now, Agentic AI into their workflows. By taking on this complexity, providers like Cognigy enable businesses to focus on leveraging these advancements to drive efficiency, automation, and innovation. The future of intelligent agents is here, and it’s more versatile than ever.

Categories: Conversational Intelligence, Intelligent Assistants, Articles

Tags: AI