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With $2.8M in funding, AI startup Julie Desk sets out to automate scheduling
Virtual assistants have become so closely associated with messaging services such as Slack Technologies Inc. that they’re now referred to as chatbots more often than not. But the technology is finding its way to other channels as well, including traditional email.
One of the startups driving the trend is Julie Desk, which secured €2.5 million (or about $2.8 million) in funding today to fuel its efforts. The Paris-based outfit has developed an artificial intelligence that aims to free up time for busy professionals by automating the task of scheduling meetings. A user only needs to loop the assistant into an email thread when it’s time to book an appointment, and the machine learning algorithms under the hood take care of the rest.
Julie Desk starts by checking the user’s calendar for availability information. The AI references the openings against a database that contains personal preferences such as the amount of time that a user typically spends in meetings. From there, its algorithms send an email to the other participants in the thread with a selection of the available appointment times.
Users can interact with Julie Desk using natural-language commands. The AI can postpone or cancel bookings if something unexpected happens, as well as request a confirmation for an appointment before syncing it to the calendar.
Scheduling meetings is only one of the tasks that Julie Desk’s capabilities can automate. Chief Executive Julien Hobeik said in an interview with TechCrunch that his team has also equipped the assistant to handle restaurant bookings and plans to add several other functions further down the road.
Another area that Julie Desk will need to prioritize is privacy. Hobeik divulged that his team manually double-checks appointments made by the assistant to prevent errors, which raises a number of obvious concerns. The startup must actively invest in security features if it wants court large organizations that can’t afford their users’ email correspondents ending up in the wrong hands.
Today’s funding should help speed up the development effort. The investment was provided by French funds SIDE Capital, Entrepreneur Venture and SAAS Lab.
Image: Julie Desk
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