AI is a technology with crazy potential. And, a lot of weird things are happening around it, too — you might have noticed that recently vendors can call anything ‘AI’ just to get their target audience interested. This is why, we would like to begin this post with a definition of AI, as stated by Gartner: ‘Artificial intelligence (AI) applies advanced analysis and logic-based techniques, including machine learning, to interpret events, support and automate decisions, and take actions’. With that said, let’s try to uncover the true potential of AI and technical writers merged into one process.

What AI Does Well

We’ve determined several areas where AI can be successfully implemented. And, a lot of the use cases are tied to help authoring. Technical writers create texts of different nature, they are far from being limited to user manuals in a general sense.

So, AI is just another technology that will need well-written laser-targeted technical texts to function. By that we don’t even mean the documentation supporting the AI technology itself, we are more so talking about the actual manifestation of AI in our lives. Technical writers create texts that are fueling human interactions with machines. Now, let’s take a look at what is currently possible to achieve with the help of AI:

1.Chatbots. Chatbots represent a classic human-to-machine dialogue. They are responsible for a big chunk of all human-to-machine interactions, which, by the way, are expected to hit 85% of customer interactions by the end of 2020. Chatbots are not just meant to ‘chat’, they fulfill many functions like to get a customer interested, to guide a customer, to help them. When good conversation design is combined with clear and precise technical instructions in such dialogues, customers will be satisfied for sure.

Let’s have a look at how AI makes chatbots even better. AI is involved in several processes here, the first one being data collection. While a customer can skip a survey, AI can collect all the information it needs during the very interaction with a chatbot. All the questions will be seamlessly embedded into the dialogue.

Chatbots with AI can use databases to get the right information about customers. And by ‘right’ we mean something that could prove useful during the human-chatbot dialogue. Like purchase history that can give an idea of customer interests/preferences. Chatbots can be taught to recognize a language immediately and that means customers from around the globe can simply use their own language to start a conversation.

2.AI-Augmented Interaction. Chatbots are really popular now, but they are not something universal. This technology has its niche, while it is way too specific to do more. Humans can get just as many benefits from using the AI-driven data analysis. Using AI analytics, techcomm specialists can create a better strategy for technical documentation. For example, AI can help analyze support databases to give the doc team an idea of which features require more attention in help topics.

Conclusion

AI can be applied in hundreds of ways, no doubt. Understanding what will bring you more value is the key. Try leveraging your goals as a technical writer with what can be achieved using AI. It can do a whole lot of the legwork, the question is — will you be able to apply it correctly?

Good luck with your technical writing!
ClickHelp Team
Author, host and deliver documentation across platforms and devices