Travel agencies may be mostly a relic of the past, but Priceline has used AI to create a new one. Penny Voice is designed to help you book trips by talking to you like a human being. Priceline turned to OpenAI and its new real-time API introduced this week to create Penny, leveraging GPT-4o and the underlying advanced voice mode technology for ChatGPT.
Penny Voice extends Priceline's existing AI travel assistant with new tools from OpenAI. Natural, conversational speech with a user processed by AI models allows Penny to understand complex requests and even anticipate what they want before exposing it. It also has memory for previous interactions and stated preferences to personalize how you respond in future conversations. Penny Voice is starting with hotel reservations only and you can talk to her on the Priceline iOS app or on her website.
For travelers, Penny Voice can simplify organizing a trip. Instead of searching websites and writing long, detailed requests, you can talk to Penny as if the AI were a human being. The AI will help find hotels and offer suggestions for places to eat and things to do. Priceline plans to soon add flights, rental cars and vacation packages to Penny's capabilities.
“At Priceline, we've always pushed technological boundaries to make travel easier. With Penny Voice, we're further redefining the way people plan and book travel,” said Priceline CEO Brett Keller. “Our collaboration with OpenAI includes a continuous feedback loop, allowing us to innovate, improve, and now literally bring Penny to life quickly. We are extremely proud of our work together and the results.”
AI speech for everyone
Priceline says Penny stands out from rival voice AI tools due to internal contributions from the company and OpenAI. Priceline provides a wealth of information about its customers and its proprietary bidding engine. And thanks to OpenAI's real-time API, Penny can mirror your emotions, adjusting tone and phrasing to match emotional cues and better mimic human conversation.
Priceline held auditions with over a hundred voice actors to find the perfect voice for AI cloning and create a friendly and approachable AI voice. And not only in English. Penny Voice can identify and respond to queries in over 120 languages. Ultimately, Penny will serve as a test for both Priceline's AI investment and whether putting AI voices in everything will count as a win for OpenAI.
“The Realtime API integration with Penny is a great example of how businesses can use our tools to create natural conversational experiences in their applications,” said Olivier Godement, API Product Manager at OpenAI. “We are “thrilled to work with Priceline to help them build an AI-powered booking experience for their customers.”
