A pulse check on conversational AI in 2026

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Kane Simms

About this episode

We hit the floor at the European Chatbot and Conversational AI Summit in Edinburgh with a mic and a simple rule: answer a question, then leave one for the next person.

Over the course of the conversation, a chain of questions and answers emerges from practitioners at Lebara, Lloyds Banking Group, Uber, ElevenLabs, Carrefour, Virgin Money, Tesco, Jaja Finance and more. The result is an organic, unscripted snapshot of what the conversational AI community is thinking about right now.

Topics spiral from enterprise AI adoption and the talent crunch, through agentic banking and agent metrics, to some surprisingly personal territory, including AI for mental health support, cardiac research and simplifying the mundane parts of everyday life.

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Kane Simms

A strategic AI advisor who, for the past decade, has helped business leaders and product owners transform customer experience using conversational and generative AI.

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