Qatar Airways Offers AI 'Flight Attendant'
Sama is about to begin work. She adjusts her hat, then her sleeve. Her nails are painted red. She smiles at the camera.
Sama's just like you and me.
Except she's not. She's a digital human, the "world's first" artificial intelligence digital flight attendant.
She's actually called Sama 2.0, and she was in Berlin at the start of March for a travel and tourism event, where the holographic Qatar Airways employee spoke to visitors.
But no, Sama, which means "sky" in Arabic, won't actually be walking up and down the plane giving drinks and nuts to passengers.
For now, she'll be answering questions on the Qatar Airways app and the airline's "immersive digital platform," called QVerse.
In fact, she's been in QVerse since it opened in 2022. But now Qatar Airways says she'll be doing more for passengers, including helping them with their bookings and with things like where to find their bags.
Sama will be able to have real-time conversations with passengers using generative AI, and she'll be learning more and more as she speaks to more people, says the airline.
One of the things she still needs to learn a bit more about is Arabic, the main language spoken in Qatar.
According to Gulf Business, she can already speak fluent English, but she won't be able to speak Arabic and other languages until later in 2024.
Sama was created by a company from New Zealand called Uneeq. The company has made "digital humans" for a number of businesses around the world.
