TL;DW -- today we're beta-launching our take on AI! Take any text input — like an email body, Slack message, or Tweet — and extract data, answer simple questions...almost anything! Later steps can use the intelligent output to do filtering, routing, or even simple responses. Add it to your Zaps today!
TL;DR -- check out the 10 minute YouTube demo video and then add the beta app to your Zapier account to get started.
Hey folks, Bryan here, I'm one of the co-founders and CTO of Zapier. I'd like to introduce to the Community a new app we've been working on called AI by Zapier. The first version offers three actions that are built to handle freeform blobs of text:
- Parse Lead -- we'll extract first name, last name, email, address, state, etc. Use this when you have a very standardized lead or contact to parse.
- Route Message -- we'll match an input to the best available route you've defined. Use this when you want to route some inquiry to some team.
- Parse Any Data -- like Parse Lead, but you define your own fields (this is extremely powerful!). Use this for pretty much anything. It's like a Swiss Army Knife!
These actions are best paired with any trigger app that produces blobs of text that are traditionally hard to analyze or work with. Triggers like New Email, New Tweet, New Post, New Message, and so forth. They often contain valuable information, but are stuck inside a freeform blob of text instead of laid out in a structured way you might see in a spreadsheet.
For example, maybe you want to categorize social media posts (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, forums, blog comments, etc.) according to their sentiment or topic. You can even ask a specific question like "is feature request", "mentions jobs/careers" -- and amazingly, subjective things like "is spam" or "is constructive" also work pretty well!
Another example, maybe you have an incoming email from vacation rental booking sites (Airbnb, VRBO, etc.) and want to parse out the dates for the booking, the property they are staying at, as well as their contact information. Pretty much any data a "human" could extract, can be accomplished with AI by Zapier!
And one final example, when triggering on messages from customers or colleagues you could take a single stream and split it out to go to whatever person or team is best suited to handle it. You might send all questions about "laptops, phones, or other devices" to Rose in IT, or maybe all inquiries about "payroll, benefits, or employment" to Johnny in HR.
If you want to see it in action, I've recorded a 10 minute YouTube demo video that showcases the off-the-shelf "Parse Lead" action as well as a customized "Parse Any Data" using my own examples. If you'd like to try it, then add the beta app to your Zapier account to get started!
I hope you enjoy it! And please post in this thread with how you are using it, or, whatever trouble you run into!
Frequently Asked Questions
Can AI by Zapier operate on photos or video?
No, not today. We can only do text.
AI by Zapier isn't working perfectly for me...
Try tweaking your examples!
For example, in the Parse Any Data action, try a more descriptive label (IE: "sentiment positive or negative" instead of "sentiment"), try adding another example (IE: you can provide up to 5), or try replacing an existing example (IE: substitute a complex one for a simpler one, or vice versa). Not all use cases will be perfect, but you can usually achieve 90% or greater accuracy with careful tuning. If you are using Parse Lead or Route Message, try contacting us or switching to Parse Any Data to tweak to fit your use case.
I'm getting errors about length. What gives?
This is expected and is a model limitation. First try shortening your inputs and if possible, try removing or shortening some examples. The AI can only handle about 1200 words per run, which is about 220 or so words per example if you use all 5. It isn't unusual for emails with lots of cruft in them to blow that out!
Why will AI by Zapier be a premium app?
The models that run this are insanely complex and expensive to operate. We're not even sure we can do it economically today at our current pricing, but we expect the cost to come down over time as this sort of compute becomes more commoditized or the models are made more efficient.
Does AI by Zapier have any sort of memory?
No, every time we execute an AI by Zapier step, the AI is reset to a "blank slate". So past steps won't directly influence future steps. For example, if it sees information from a message in the past, it won't "remember" that information to answer future questions.
