The supply of Giant Language Fashions (LLMs) has made it simpler for builders to make chatbots. Giant corporations comparable to OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft, have made ChatGPT, Bard, and Bing Chat extensively accessible. Nonetheless, non-tech prosperous audiences won’t pay attention to a few of these bots. Spain-based Luzia is making an attempt to introduce AI chatbot tech to customers via a WhatsApp-based bot.
The corporate, based in 2023 by Álvaro Martínez Higes, Javier Andrés, and Carlos Pérez, is making an attempt to handle the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking marketplace for chatbots. Utilizing Luzia is fairly straightforward. It can save you the chatbot as a contact in your telephone and begin speaking to it on WhatsApp or Telegram.
Luzia co-founders from left: Javier Andrés, Carlos Pérez, and Álvaro Martínez Higes Picture Credit: Luzia
The starttup stated greater than 17 million customers have interacted with Luzia up to now with 8 million of them lively on a month-to-month foundation. Whereas it didn’t point out its every day lively customers, the startup stated it receives 13 million every day requests.
Martínez Higes instructed TechCrunch that most individuals ahead Luzia as a contact to have their pals chat with the bot.
The corporate makes use of your telephone quantity to detect the nation that you just’re in and begins speaking in Spanish or Portuguese. As the corporate is increasing within the U.S., Luzia will begin talking in English however should you speak to it in Spanish, it should default to Spanish. However on condition that it depends on GPT tech, it could possibly converse in different languages as effectively.
Luzia at present is appropriate with customers in Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Spain, Mexico, and now the U.S.
The thought is to introduce Luzia to customers who won’t find out about AI fashions. The corporate stated that plenty of first-time customers evaluate the bot with a voice assistant, comparable to Siri or Alexa. Whereas the app reveals a primary onboarding message with a number of the use instances, the startup is just not actively sending instructional messages to customers to allow them to find out about totally different units of options.
The corporate makes use of a mixture of fashions comparable to GPT 3.5/4, Llama, and Kandinsky to energy the interplay. Identical to another chatbot, customers can ask Luzia to generate textual content for e-mail or reply questions. They’ll additionally ahead a voice notice or an audio file for the bot to transcribe it. Plus, Luzia can generate photographs primarily based on the given immediate.
Asking Luzia in regards to the climate Picture Credit: Luzia
Luzia not too long ago raised $10 million in Collection A funding led by Khosla Ventures. Different traders comparable to Basketball Corridor of Famer Pao Gasol, A* Capital, Summary Ventures, FJ Labs, Globo Enterprise, Mike Santos of Technisys, Sean Ryan of Sean Investments LTD, and Grupo Product. Earlier than this spherical, the corporate had raised $3 million.
The corporate is conserving the bot free for the second and specializing in development and creating person worth.
“We have now seen monetization instruments like unlocking limitless messages, long-length transcriptions, and giving entry to raised fashions via paid plans. However these are rapidly turning into commoditized within the trade. If we’d have gone with that route, we’d have been lifeless,” Martínez Higes stated.
Adina Tecklu, a companion at Khosla Ventures stated that Luzia is positioned effectively to handle the private assistant market. Tecklu added that simply addressing the LatAm and the Iberian Peninsula market is a large alternative.
“I’ve been taking a look at this area for a while — how can AI actually energy shopper interactions In Luzia, we noticed a robust staff with a really deep understanding of their shopper base leading to thrilling early traction. Their product is really resonating with Spanish and Portuguese shoppers and having such early person traction is spectacular,” Tecklu instructed TechCrunch over e-mail.
This 12 months, Khosla has invested in a number of startups engaged on AI and LLM tech together with studying coach app Ello and conversational studying app Quazel.
