After Agentic AI, machine voice to be next shift in AI evolution: Report

The artificial intelligence landscape is rapidly evolving with Agentic AI as the latest frontier and machine voice will be the next, according to a report released here.

Since 2024, Agentic AI has been a leading force in artificial intelligence. Agentic AI leverages GenAI through which systems respond to environments, including prompts, to then plan and auto-execute tasks.

However, the next stop in the ever-evolving landscape will be machine voice. According to the report brought out by Prosus and BCG, in the current year and the next, audio input/output models -- using audio input and output speech to text and back -- "reduces latency and enhances emotional maturity".

The report was released at the ongoing AI Impact Summit.

Over the past three decades, the tech world has seen a transformation from machine learning in the 1990s to deep learning in 2015, followed by Generative AI in 2022. The year 2024 saw the advent of Agentic AI, the report, released on Tuesday, pointed out.

Taking part in a discussion after unveiling the report, R Chandrasekhar, former secretary, electronics, IT and telecom, said, "In healthcare today we have startups providing a service that captures direct conversation between a health professional and a patient in a local language and is converting into a medical case sheet ready for use by a doctor. This crunches the time a doctor needs with a patient."  Despite the penetration of AI in recent years, key sectors such as agriculture, education, and public health continue to be under-integrated, while financial services and advanced manufacturing have made faster progress in integrating AI into decision-making, risk assessment, quality control, and operations, as per the report.

Calling for precision agriculture and use of AI, Ashok Gulati, former Chairman of CACP, GoI, and professor at ICRIER, said, "With the same amount of water, land and less fertilisers, you can produce much more. China has a smaller arable area of 129 million hectares against 159 million hectares in India, but its agricultural production is double ours."  Highlighting nutritional security as the biggest challenge for the country, he said, "There is 30 per cent lack of zinc in our wheat and rice because of overuse of soil. Here's where AI can help. Genome mapping has been done and gene editing will be the future, and with that you can bring in varieties with higher biofortification of higher zinc in wheat and rice.