AI, AI, AI… it’s all we hear in the technology industry, including events. Is it a fad? is it hyperbole? or can it actually be the catalyst that transforms event management forever?
For the last 3 months our engineers here at Just Attend have been experimenting with artificial intelligence trying to find practical use cases where it can really benefit our customers. Some of our experiments, although cool, we felt had limited to no impact on the day to day challenges faced by event managers. But they didn’t give up.
One of our first implementations of AI in our event platform was to, ironically detect AI generated content.
Our founders who run their own tech event saw a huge increase in session submissions to their event containing content generated by AI. Some were easy to spot with the trained naked eye, some far more subtle.
As an event organizer who allows public call for content, their event success depends on selecting high quality sessions. With many prospective speakers choosing to use AI to create their session proposals without checking its accuracy or deliverability within their skillset, choosing the wrong sessions because at the surface they looked good is a huge risk to the integrity of their conference.
To help them make more educated decisions and to be more aware of the content authenticity, we looked to see if AI could detect itself.
We tested many different AI LLMs (trained algorithms) from ChatGPT4, 4o, Perplexity, Sapling, Originator, Content Detector, and GPTZero. The results were surprisingly inconsistent.
We found that all of the ones we tested performed well detecting content that was generated by AI. However, we struggled to find agreement between the models on test content we knew was 100% human generated.
We eliminated ChatGPT4, 4o, Content Detector, and Originator from our testing as supplying these models with over 100 samples of human generated test content produced over 40% false assertions where these models believed they were created by AI.
We moved forward with Sapling (25%) and GPTZero (3%) models as they produced less false assertions with the same test data.
Further testing on new sample data proved that GPTZero was by far the most accurate AI model capable of differentiating human generated content from AI.
We have now implemented GPTZero AI content detection into our call for content module as standard. Every content submission a prospective speaker submits is evaluated with AI to determine if the content was AI generated or human.
In the conference management portal you can review the submitted content and see instantly which sessions have AI generated content and how much of it by percentage.
We’re not saying that you as an event organizer should use this as a decision maker to approve or reject a session. We’re giving you this information so you can make more informed and speedier decisions when evaluating your session content.
Using AI As Your Event Assistant
Using AI to help organizers make more educated decisions in their content evaluation is a nice value add, but overall its impact to event managers as a whole is limited to a specific point in time in the event planning process. After that, its done its job and no longer benefits you.
Looking further into how we can implement AI into our platform, we decided that we should train AI on our user documentation. Providing a chat bot experience in our admin portal for event admins to use should they need to.
Unlike traditional chat bots that rely on prescribed questions to produce pre-defined answers, AI enabled chat bots are able to contextualize and understand your question in your own natural manner, then search its data sources for the most likely answer to that question, then offer it as its answer.
This benefits you as the user because you don’t need to ask your question in a very specific way to generate a usable response, and we as the platform owners, don’t have to write the same answer multiple times to suit the specific question being asked. We can simply ‘train’ it on our knowledge base instead.
Training AI is a term used in the industry that describes the process to fine tuning the AI program to give the right answers. This process involves giving the AI program access to structured and unstructured data and then prompting it questions that will produce correct and incorrect answers. Then ‘informing’ the AI program if it answered correctly or not. It’ll ‘remember’ its training when it graduates.
Of course, AI is not fool-proof, and its not always correct. There are times where you have to use your human gift of common sense. If it sounds wrong, it probably is.
That said, once we had trained AI on our knowledge base we are getting 98% accuracy in its responses to questions on “how do I do [insert question]” about our platform.
This we believe will save our customers on average 8-minutes of their time per query verses searching our knowledge base for articles using traditional web search algorithms that rely on word matching. In addition reduce your reliance on our support services for intervention which enables us to streamline our costs and pass them back on to you. It also means you get to do what you need to do quicker which could lead to more ticket sales faster. It’s a no-brainer and a win-win for us both.
But this journey got us thinking. What if it wasn’t just capable of answering questions on how to use our platform. What if it is capable of answering questions about your event? What if it was event aware?
Jeronimo, The World’s First Event Aware AI
We realized that we could produce a data model using your event information and train the AI on it so that it can answer your attendees, speakers, and exhibitor questions about your event.
Imagine how powerful this can be for you as an event organizer?
Think beyond the simple uses case questions like “when is your event?” and “where is your event?”.
When you organize an event you spend a lot of time creating documentation like exhibitor manuals, information blog posts targeted towards attendees that contain information like parking, access, how to check-in etc., communicating these out to different attendee cohorts, and answering by email the same questions over and over again.
Don’t you get tired of replying “yes, this information can be found here”?
As an attendee do you feel frustrated not being able to find simple information lost in an event website or email? Attending and exhibiting at an event should be painless, not painful.
What if AI could give you the answer you need right now?
How good would life be for organizers if they could answer a question once and for that answer to be reused by AI when others ask similar?
Jeronimo, Just Attend’s Event Aware AI Chat bot can legitimately save countless hours of time for all types of users, attendees, exhibitors, and you as event managers by acting as your first line support agent on your event site.
When an exhibitor asks you a question, the question and answer is inserted into the AI’s virtual brain to be reused as a possible answer to any other questions from anyone in your event who has a similar question.
When you create your event manual, publish your attendee information, these are inserted into Just Attend’s Event AI agent’s brain ready to answer your customer’s questions.
Imagine exhibitors that need to find information quickly to complete tasks without having to read a 40 page event manual.
Imagine the freedom and self-service this type of technology can bring to your event management that will delight your users and also save you countless hours repeating yourself.
It’s quite amazing.
What information can our AI answer question on?
- Your event dates, opening times, venue
- Your tickets and current availability
- Your speakers including their biography
- Your sessions
- Your exhibitors
- Your event information blog posts like exhibitor manuals, venue facilities, check-in, and other attendee attendance information
- Your responses to inquiries from your attendees, exhibitors, and speakers custom questions
We have now implemented Jeronimo into all our paid event plans for event managers to use with their event planning. Jeronimo is trained nightly on any new or changed data so your attendees, exhibitors, and speakers will always have access to the right information when they need it.
Feedback in our trial events has been amazing with event organizers saying “Jeronimo is like having an extra member of staff” and “Since using Jeronimo the number of emails asking questions that have already been answered is practically zero”.
If you’d like to see a demo of Jeronimo and to understand more about how we can help you with your next event, book a demo with us.
