Two world giants joined hands, artificial intelligence dismantled Turkish

Microsoft and Vodafone have taken an important step in the field of artificial intelligence and developed a Turkish-based chatbot. TOBi, which eliminates the need for translation into Turkish thanks to Microsoft's globally successful natural language understanding (NLP) technology LUIS and can understand the demands of users and make accurate inferences, will be the new digital assistant of Vodafone subscribers. Microsoft Turkey and Vodafone Turkey have developed a chatbot based on Turkish natural language processing (NLP) technology. TOBi, which Vodafone will position as an artificial intelligence-based digital assistant for customer service, aims to answer the questions of subscribers about issues such as invoices, tariffs, device prices in an uninterrupted, fast, clear and consistent way and without human intervention. In contrast to the systems that offer English-based solutions in general and automatically translate into Turkish, the development of TOBi, whose native language is Turkish, is of great importance in terms of prioritizing Turkish in the field of artificial intelligence. Developed with LUIS, Microsoft's natural language understanding technology, the system can be easily integrated into other cognitive services with voice, search and video support. The Turkish language support feature brought to LUIS allows Turkish to be used as a natural language in other artificial intelligence projects to be carried out in the future; It allows the addition of features such as reading and understanding Turkish text, correcting spelling errors, and understanding a sentence spoken aloud in Turkish. Microsoft Turkey General Manager Murat Kansu, in his speech at the introduction meeting of the new system, said, "Our investments in Turkey's digital future continue without slowing down. We have touched the lives of millions of people in Turkey for 26 years, we have experienced many technological firsts and transformations together. We have taken steps to improve the competitiveness of our country with informatics and innovation. The chatbot project we have implemented with Vodafone today is not an ordinary cooperation. We, as two global powers, have joined hands and carried our Turkish language to the top in artificial intelligence studies and signed a project that makes us proud. Together with the most spoken languages in the world, such as English and Spanish, we have achieved a great success by implementing this application in Turkish and ensuring that Turkish is among the prioritized languages. This step is an indication that Microsoft Turkey and Vodafone Turkey successfully represent our country abroad. At the same time, it is the work of the trust and belief that the global companies we are affiliated with have in the future of our country." Reminding that technology democratizes access to information, Kansu continued: "The developments in the field of natural language processing are incredible. We are on the verge of an important transformation. Technology is now beginning to understand our language. Compared to other similar systems, we have developed a solution that has a very high rate of understanding the Turkish language, is much more consistent, flexible and learns quickly. The share of our global experience and knowledge is huge here. We all have important duties for Turkey to assume a leading role in technological developments such as artificial intelligence and machine learning. With this awareness, we worked with the participation of Vodafone and Microsoft Turkey teams and Turkish engineers in this project and developed a hundred percent domestic project. Our ultimate goal is to create added value in different sectors with our Turkish natural language processing technology. Since these are learning systems, the more they are used with different scenarios in different sectors, the more our Turkish artificial intelligence applications will develop." Vodafone Turkey CEO Colman Deegan, who stated that they want to offer a worldwide digital experience to Vodafone Turkey customers, said: "TOBi, the new digital assistant of Vodafone customers, will be a brand new customer communication channel that can be accessed from within our 'Vodafone is with Me' application. Basically, its purpose is to help our customers with the services they receive or want to receive from Vodafone and to make their lives easier. By correspondence with TOBi, our customers will be able to get information about many issues from their invoices to their data usage. If they have questions about other topics, TOBi will send them a link to the topic or refer them to a customer representative for live chat. In the next stage, we aim for TOBi to help our customers in issues such as tariffs and device prices. In this way, TOBi will save our call center representatives time to deal with more complex questions and transactions of our customers. Our goal is to be a more digital, agile, fast and simple company for our customers. TOBi will help us achieve this goal and carry our customers to a better future." In her speech, Microsoft Turkey Corporate Services Deputy General Manager Berna Yıldız said, "We are successfully using LUIS, our service that applies machine learning intelligence to natural language flow, worldwide. With LUIS, we can understand the most scenarios, offer the most accurate solutions and fulfill the users' requests. We can also add Cognitive Services to the system, which is supported by other artificial intelligence capabilities such as text reading, sensing voice commands, researching, image processing, etc.With such services, we increase the quality of service provided to customers, facilitate and accelerate the work of the users who receive services. Companies that increase customer satisfaction with personalized services are ahead of the competition, growing and making a difference with their digital transformation approaches."