Dr Ayesha Khanna (Co-Founder and CEO, ADDO AI) has highlighted the critical role AI will play in events going forward, whilst speaking at IBTM Wired.  

While customers still want the same things as pre-pandemic – personalisation, value, efficiency and connection, these will be delivered through enhanced AI and technology made possible in part by the huge acceleration of digitisation as a result of the pandemic. 

Organisers will focus on customers and their business needs and how technology can help us better understand them. 

With businesses such as Apple and Facebook investing heavily in AI technology, personalisation is becoming ever more sophisticated. For example, emotion AI uses tiny cameras to understand and interpret viewers’ emotions through their voice and pre-conscious emotional responses to ads. This builds a deeper profile of customers in order to personalise their online experience. This kind of technology has huge potential for the personalisation of events, allowing organisers to make them more bespoke, immersive and engaging than ever.  

During her session, Khanna raised a number of points, including that AR technology is being tapped by brands including Apple as the ‘next big thing’ – this technology is going to be key in enabling planners to create more interactive, experiential and continuous events. Microevents could become a norm, using non-human influencers and/or chatbots to help maintain year-round engagement. 

While AI is still quite piecemeal, there is a real opportunity to make virtual events totally immersive.  

It can be daunting and hard to know where to start, but Khanna added: “You don’t need to be a technologist, but be open to new technology, be excited by it and be very responsible with it. Learn and embrace it!”  

The future of MICE events is undoubtedly human, but with the integration of exciting new technology.