London Debut for STRAT7's AI Moderator Maya

UK-headquartered firm STRAT7 has launched an AI moderator called Maya, built by the group's Whycatcher developers and designed to have natural, adaptive conversations with real people through the company's existing WhatsApp integration.

The group, first established in 2019, is headquartered in London and employs more than 400 people in eleven other locations in Europe, the US and APAC. Its seven divisions, all prefixed by STRAT7, are Advisory, Audiences, Bonamy Finch, Researchbods, Jigsaw, Incite and Crowd DNA. Whycatcher was originally a proprietary online research platform developed by Jigsaw.

STRAT7 says Maya can be deployed in just minutes, with no need to download further apps, making her 'ideal for exploratory or quick-turnaround projects.' The firm claims Maya 'questions with the level of depth and agility needed for qual, but at a scale that's previously been impossible.' During the conversation, the solution instantly analyses text, video, images and audio, and asks relevant follow-up questions; and there are built-in guidelines to protect participants, including guardrails around sensitive topics, 'non-judgmental language', and transparency about AI involvement.

'Maya tears up the qual research playbook,' states CTO Andrew Dare (pictured above). 'AI moderation that participants feel comfortable with? Check. Enjoyable, engaging conversations? Check. Rich insights but at scale? Check. The industry's been constrained by 50-year-old assumptions about what qual can be. With Maya, we're proving those rules are obsolete.'

Although a recent pilot test by the company found that 95% of respondents 'enjoyed speaking with Maya, and 88% felt understood,' STRAT7 emphasises that she doesn't replace human researchers. According to Maria Colarusso (pictured below), Head of Digital at Whycatcher, 'Maya gives us qual richness at quant scale. She doesn't remove the need for human interpretation, quite the opposite in fact. She processes reams and reams of data, then points out where to look for a deep dive. This is human-in-the-loop stuff, and that's what I love most about Maya.'

Online at www.strat7.com .