AMA – Agência para a Modernização Administrativa Launches Chatbot with Realistic Avatar based on Generative Artificial Intelligence
.30.05.2023
• Partnership between Microsoft, DareData Engineering, and Defined.ai allowed the development of a solution for AMA, with a pilot project applied to the Mobile Digital Key
• The objective is to humanize citizen support, which will now be available 24/7
Lisbon, May 26, 2023 – AMA – Agência para a Modernização Administrativa – presents this Friday a chatbot with a realistic avatar that recognizes and reproduces text and voice to answer questions from Portuguese citizens about the Mobile Digital Key (MDK). The project is based on Azure OpenAI technology, developed through a partnership between Microsoft, DareData Engineering, and Defined.ai, in an event attended by the Secretary of State for Digitization and Administrative Modernization, Mário Campolargo.
From now on it is possible to guarantee citizens, through the homepage of the ePortugal portal, a service 24 hours a day, seven days a week, connecting them to MDK through mobile and desktop devices.
João Dias, President of AMA – Agência para a Modernização Administrativa, stated that “this project aims to mark a turning point in the digital transformation of public services in Portugal and is one of the elements of the new future service strategy that AMA is developing. The goal is to promote closer interaction between the State and citizens through the most transformative technology of our time, Generative Artificial Intelligence.”
Andrés Ortolá, General Director of Microsoft Portugal, admits that “Portugal has been at the forefront of developing solutions and use cases based on large language models. It is extraordinary to see the dynamism of our ecosystem. Microsoft aims to democratize AI advances through our cloud to help people and organizations become more productive and solve society’s most pressing problems. Because we are committed to making the promise of AI a reality and doing so responsibly, it is a pride to see our technology applied to offer better services to Portuguese citizens.”
Nuno Brás, CTO of DareData Engineering, believes that “scientific advances in the field of artificial intelligence will bring a new paradigm to all organizations, both private and public. In addition to significant productivity gains, new technologies based on generative artificial intelligence (including large language models) can enhance the ability and quality of serving customers and citizens in the case of the public sector. At DareData Engineering, we are committed to bringing these technologies to organizations responsibly and transparently, ensuring that the benefits of any implementation outweigh, on a large scale, any risks brought by AI.”
For Daniela Braga, CEO & Founder of Defined.ai, “At Defined.ai, we aim for a world where technology catalyzes positive change in society. Today, we celebrate the launch of another milestone in AI technology, a language model with the potential to redefine the relationship between citizens and public services, as well as position Portugal in the sphere of speech technology, taking the first steps towards our Conversational AI model under development with the RRP funds granted by the Portuguese government. It is exciting to be part of this paradigm shift.”
The solution, hosted on the Microsoft Azure cloud, is based on the GPT 3.5 turbo model – the same model that serves as the basis for ChatGPT by OpenAI – and is capable of understanding spoken and written text in Portuguese, responding through both voice and text, thanks to the use of speech-to-text and text-to-speech conversion technology. It also uses Azure Cognitive Search and Azure Cosmos DB, which enable the search service over the MDK knowledge base and the archive of contextual interactions with citizens, respectively.
DareData Engineering is an AI integration specialized company and was the partner responsible for the integration and implementation of the pilot.
Defined.ai trained the custom voice model for Portuguese (PT-PT) and collaborated with a partner company – startup D-ID – to develop a realistic avatar with facial motion synchronization and audio.
Starting May 26, this solution will be available on the Mobile Digital Key service page. Although it is still in beta, this new virtual assistant will have its pilot service on this platform, being transversal to all public services in the future. The solution was developed with the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP) funding.
