Opendoor, the online real estate giant, just introduced another method for consumers to get help. Rather than rely on human agents, a scrappy team built out a voice assistant that chats empathetically. Ernie, as the gadget is named, listens for stress or excitement in your voice. Its mission is to walk users through stressful ordeals – like buying or selling a home – not only by being useful, but by showing that it’s heard their frustration.
How Ernie Changes the Conversation
And most voice assistants err on the side of caution with fact and figures. This one seeks to transcend. When you call Opendoor, Ernie hears your inflections, your pauses, even your vocabulary. If you sound worried about a deal it could say, ‘I know this is a lot—let’s say. That’s not boilerplate crap you get from clunky, robotic-sounding generic bots. Opendoor pulled this trick, having skimmed research — humans trust machines more when they pretend to have sympathy. Early feedback sees users adorning Ernie, especially in jittery conversations.
They built it on tens of thousands of sales calls and training snippets. This gave its AI a huge corpus of real world conversations to learn from. In trials, some users could not tell Ernie from human. Others found they were less stressed by negotiating. For a big buy like a new home, that kind of help matters. We’re in the early days, but it’s already apparent that users desire utilities that listen, not just jabber.
Ernie in Action
And since then, it’s introduced real-life customer calls. Opendoor works at scale — they make tens of thousands of home offers every hour, sometimes. The assistant the agent stays awake, but too. Preliminary research shows Ernie-powered DCs speed closing, and users feel less stress. The very first family to test drive it was going cross country. They then said it wasn’t as scary with Ernie on the line.
So the team was amazed at how quick it was. Within days, Opendoor started using it for more complex questions. Now, it can clarify fees, contrast loans, even bust open an icebreaker joke. And they’re thinking of launching it for luxury sales next, where they charge a whole lot more. Some users call out for Ernie by name now, and a few even share screenshots of their chats online.
But Ernie isn’t perfect. Occasionally, it confuses a customer’s anger for confusion. It can overlook conversational nuance. They use real feedback to improve the system, fixing bugs as they go. It will take, of course, a while before it launches in all of Opendoor’s markets, but first impressions are powerful.
Looking Ahead
Ernie’s just a babe, but it’s already trailblazing. It shows that AI can have empathetic conversations–sometimes. The harder challenge, however, will be sustaining as the company scales and needs change. Right now it most helps those in search of a quick, kind gesture. Future generations might be even more adept at decoding complex emotions or handling difficult conversations. For now, it’s clear — make things that hear, not just say. The real estate world is watching. If Ernie wears the pants, the rest will follow. The race to ‘humanize’ AI is just getting started.
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