Meet ZOE - Artificial Intelligence for Personal Cruise Assistant

MSC Cruises has launched ZOE, claiming a world's first virtual personal cruise assistant using artificial intelligence technology. 

ZOE will launch on MSC Bellissima and will then be available on each following new ship, including the upcoming MSC Grandiosa in 2019 and MSC Virtuosa in 2020.

Developed in partnership with Harman International and Samsung Electronics, ZOE is a voice-enabled artificial intelligence tool and will be located in every stateroom. ZOE can speak seven languages, answer hundreds of questions about the cruise and provide information about on board services and help to book a service. 

An easy to use device – guests simply say, "OK ZOE", and she's ready to help. To ensure ZOE could respond effectively to all guests, she has been programmed and trained to respond to more than 800 of the most commonly asked questions with thousands of different variants of each question. The conversation designs, ZOE's natural speech recognition and ability to transform speech into text and back again has undergone significant testing, in addition to a variety of other behavioral, experiential and performance tests. As an artificial intelligence solution, ZOE is designed to continue learning and developing her responses based on real guest interactions. 

Gianni Onorato, MSC Cruises' CEO commented, "The cruise experience is constantly evolving to become ever-richer, offering an increasingly wide choice of services and facilities. In 2017, we introduced MSC for Me, an industry-leading digital innovation platform that revolutionized the way that guests were able to customize and personalize their experience. The technology was built into the very design of the new ships, incorporated into every step of the development process of each prototype, from conception to construction.

"This was just the starting point in providing a connected cruise experience. There was a core guest need to be met, which was to find answers to common questions in a quick and easy way, enabling guests to make the most of their vacation. We researched the latest connected technologies and identified voice assistants and Artificial Intelligence as the way to meet this need, and the work on ZOE began."