Enterprise conversational AI provider LivePerson has partnered with natural language processing developer Cohere to enhance its services with custom Large Language Models (LLMs). The two companies are running a pilot program to deploy generative AI for customer service and other business needs by adapting Cohere’s LLMs for LivePerson’s Conversational Cloud platform.

LivePerson provides conversational AI for a range of enterprises and has been building up its generative AI portfolio as the technology exploded onto the scene this year. The new partnership will add Cohere’s LLMs to LivePerson’s chatbot platform with extensive training so that customers can synthesize generative AI chatbots for their needs. The companies envision a tool that creates a generative AI chatbot with fewer incorrect, hallucinated responses, less bias, and a better at explaining its own process while still handling tasks like answering questions and carrying out payments.

“With Generative AI and LLMs, the best outcomes are driven by expansive data models and precision data sets,” LivePerson CEO Rob LoCascio said. “Combining Cohere’s cutting-edge language models with our unparalleled expertise and data for customer engagement will set the new standard for using AI to communicate at the enterprise level.”

LivePerson introduced custom chatbots back in 2018 after buying BotCentral and Conversable, followed by speech recognition customer service tech startups VoiceBase and Tenfold in 2021.  The company began exploring using generative AI with its Conversational Cloud platform in February when it integrated the LLM behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT into its chatbot database and Conversation Assist feature. LivePerson also began embedding generative AI in its analytics tools for summarizing conversations and filling out customer information on forms.

Cohere formed from leading researchers at Google Brain and only recently emerged from stealth. Cohere has maintained its Google connections to design its AI, suggesting no hard feelings. Cohere signed a deal with Google Cloud to set up and train its LLMs on Google’s dedicated supercomputers in 2021. Google Cloud’s AI and machine learning hardware and infrastructure powered Cohere’s development of the LLMs it is now providing to LivePerson.

“Our mission is to make it simple for any developer and business to build powerful language AI into their products,” Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez said. “LivePerson’s leadership in conversational AI helps to further that mission, and we can help them increase access to this transformational technology, even to enterprises without extensive compute resources or machine learning expertise.”

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Eric Hal Schwartz is Head Writer and Podcast Producer for Voicebot.AI. Eric has been a professional writer and editor for more than a dozen years, specializing in the stories of how science and technology intersect with business and society. Eric is based in New York City.