OpenAI tries the consulting path with 'Presence', charging enterprises boots-on-the-ground prices to deploy agents

Summary

AI and ML OpenAI tries the consulting path with 'Presence', charging enterprises boots-on-the-ground prices to deploy agents As AI models become commoditized, maybe there's margin in the plumbing Having popularized AI with the cheapskate masses, OpenAI has turned its attention to enterprise customers who might actually pay for its services.The debt-fueled maker of frontier models on Wednesday announced the debut of Presence, a web service designed to make it easier for enterprises to deploy AI agents for a handful of common business tasks."Today, Presence supports real-time experiences across voice and chat, such as customer support, outbound sales, and high-risk internal workflows," the company said in a blog post provided to The Register. "A customer might use it to resolve a billing issue – from understanding the request and verifying the customer to looking up account information, applying company policy, and taking an approved action." Presence lets companies set policies and governance controls to determine how agents behave, so that orgs can have some degree of reassurance that AI banter will remain polite, professional, and pertinent to the task at hand. OpenAI's Presence, a web-based analytics dashboard. The control interface includes an agent editor, an agent playground, and a tool for simulating how an agent handles tasks like customer refunds, order status queries, account deletion, and other administrative interactions.Rather than releasing another self-service API, OpenAI is making Presence available through its consulting arm, the OpenAI Deployment Company and Forward Deployed Engineers, a tech installation workforce that debuted last year and was bolstered by the acquisition of consultancy Tomoro in May."Deployments are led by OpenAI Forward Deployed Engineers and select global systems integrators," OpenAI said. "Presence is not yet available as a self-serve product."OpenAI insists it has been dogfooding Presence, which now runs its AI English phone ...