{"id":21761,"date":"2026-06-05T22:44:58","date_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/ai-customer-service-is-not-ready-for-prime-time-semafor\/"},"modified":"2026-06-05T22:44:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-05T22:44:58","slug":"ai-customer-service-is-not-ready-for-prime-time-semafor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/06\/05\/ai-customer-service-is-not-ready-for-prime-time-semafor\/","title":{"rendered":"AI customer service is not ready for prime time &#8211; Semafor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Intelligence for the New World Economy<br \/>Voice capabilities are the future of AI, but customer service is still proving a difficult test case. That\u2019s not because the voices don\u2019t work, but because the broader experience often doesn\u2019t.<br \/>I went to an ElevenLabs pop-up in New York, where a robot powered by the company\u2019s voice models took coffee orders and prepared the drinks with minimal human involvement (only to refill the coffee beans and milk). The voice was eerily human \u2014 when I first heard it, I assumed it was one. <br \/>But it struggled to recognize my voice and lagged significantly \u2014 due to network issues, the ElevenLabs team told me. When talking to a voice model to order merchandise, it had trouble finding my account under \u201cRachyl,\u201d as it recognized me verbalizing my name as the more typical spelling of \u201cRachel.\u201d<br \/>For several years, customer service chatbots have been touted as a key use case for AI. While the technology behind them will get better, they haven\u2019t gained the trust of the average user who hears an AI voice and immediately <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/t\/ZP8s6yejJ\/\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">requests<\/a> a human agent, even if it means waiting longer for assistance. To be sure, ElevenLabs, worth $11 billion, is placing bets across many industries, from <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/blog\/introducing-elevenlabs-for-government\" class=\"_linkEmbed_10lxo_29\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">becoming<\/a> the voice of the Czech government to generating the voiceovers for creators\u2019 sponsored posts.<br \/>Intelligence for the New World Economy<br \/><span><span>Sign up for Semafor <\/p>\n<style data-emotion=\"css w8sqnb\">.css-w8sqnb{text-transform:capitalize;}<\/style>\n<p><span class=\"css-w8sqnb\">Technology<\/span><\/span><\/span><img loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"high\" src=\"https:\/\/img.semafor.com\/e42232e7570bc3ccf476d8131c6dd6dbbd528727-866x852.png?h=49&amp;w=50\" srcset=\"https:\/\/img.semafor.com\/e42232e7570bc3ccf476d8131c6dd6dbbd528727-866x852.png?h=49&amp;w=50&amp;auto=format&amp;q=75 1x, https:\/\/img.semafor.com\/e42232e7570bc3ccf476d8131c6dd6dbbd528727-866x852.png?h=98&amp;w=100&amp;auto=format&amp;q=75 2x\" alt=\"\" width=\"50\" height=\"49\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" fetchpriority=\"high\" style=\"max-width:100%;color:transparent;width:25px;height:auto;margin:5px 10px\"\/><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMilAFBVV95cUxPSVlHUXgyaU13aTlRUWZrMXhzVUlaaVJIRC1GVWpNZ0kxT2FORC1tcFZBVjFUQS1Ldk5iNWdGZnVxZ3hwbWxvdEhveENReF9iclk4MUIyNEpvV3htOUhYck1Da3Qzck9XeEtsUGFJT1VVSmduUW1RZjF2dmswcjBiN1RYTTg5cWhKY0V1VS05NEMtYVpr?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Intelligence for the New World EconomyVoice capabilities are the future of AI, but customer service is still proving a difficult test case. That\u2019s not because the voices don\u2019t work, but because the broader experience often doesn\u2019t.I went to an ElevenLabs pop-up in New York, where a robot powered by the company\u2019s voice models took coffee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21762,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21762"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}