Machine Learning Street Talk · Thursday, October 1, 2026
Enterprises have a dual demand for voice agents: they want a branded identity for the agent and for it to be as powerful as a human, yet also highly controllable like a robot. Shawn Wen describes this as a contradiction that poses a significant challenge for deploying AI agents in enterprise settings, often leading to high expectations that are difficult to meet.
“Enterprises want a branded voice. They wanted to be able to pick their identity. They wanted to the agent to exactly say their branded name exactly the way they want it to. So that's number one.”
“Number two, they want the agent to be super powerful, like a human being, but they want the agent to be super controllable, like a robot. So it's actually a very contradiction.”
“And I think that's the difficulty of deploying AI agents into enterprises, because the expectation of people actually as good as my best human in the team.”