The AI Behind Bouygues Telecom’s Santa Claus Chatbot

Written By Mia Chae

Make Me Pulse helped Bouygues Telecom, in collaboration with BETC, redefine holiday customer experiences by offering real-time conversations with Santa Claus via WhatsApp, powered by advanced GenAI technology. Naming it, Allô Papa Noël, this innovative Christmas project blends personalized interactions, voice exchanges, and AI-generated videos to create a truly magical experience for users.

Key Features and Technical Innovations:

  • Handling High Traffic: With the goal of serving 2 million users in one month, they built a robust system to process up to 250,000 messages per hour. Vonage was used for message reception, AWS Lambda for processing, and SQS FIFO queues to ensure high-throughput, orderly message handling, and minimal latency.

  • Moderation: A two-step validation system was implemented to ensure wholesome content. The first step used a prohibited words search to quickly filter inappropriate messages, while the LLM identified subtle contextual issues in user inputs, keeping conversations friendly and in line with the Christmas spirit.

  • Personalized Video Generation: To create personalized Santa videos, they tackled the challenge of syncing lip movements with audio. The Wav2Lip model, though initially difficult to integrate, was optimized by running it on AWS EC2 g4dn instances with GPUs. They also parallelized video processing, ensuring efficient GPU usage and significantly reducing rendering times.

  • Audio Conversations: This feature enabled turn-by-turn audio exchanges with Santa. User audio was converted to text, processed by the LLM, and then converted back into Santa's voice, allowing for seamless and immersive conversations.

  • Custom Christmas Tales: Users could generate personalized Christmas stories by providing three words. The LLM used these to craft unique tales, which were then narrated by Santa using text-to-speech.

To handle text, audio, and video inputs and outputs, a microservices pipeline architecture was implemented from the outset

Performance and Optimization:

They faced several challenges in optimizing video processing. With the help of AWS EC2 instances, they fine-tuned the system to balance speed, GPU usage, and cost, finding the sweet spot with g4dn.4xlarge instances. They also implemented a continuous integration and delivery pipeline using GitHub Actions, ensuring rapid deployment and easy environment management.

Reliability and Monitoring:

To maintain service quality, they closely monitored all components using AWS CloudWatch, tracking latency and ensuring smooth performance even during peak usage. Real-time alerts and load testing allowed them to fine-tune the system during the live phase and respond quickly to issues as they arose.

Conclusion:

This AI-powered holiday experience showcases how cutting-edge technology, from microservices architecture to AI integration, can deliver personalized, engaging, and scalable interactions. By combining innovation with festive magic, Bouygues Telecom and BETC have created a memorable experience that exemplifies how AI can elevate customer engagement in new and exciting ways.

Credits:

Agency BETC

Client Bouygues Telecom

Production Make Me Pulse

Mia Chae
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