American pop star and entrepreneur will.i.am’s tech startup i.am+ is getting into the enterprise computing game with the creation of a new artificial intelligence-based voice assistant designed to power customer service chatbots.

The launch comes as the startup announced it has secured a total of $117 million in venture capital funding, including a recent $89 million investment led by Salesforce Ventures. That round closed in March, but was only announced today, as will.i.am (pictured) introduced the service today at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco.

Reuters reports that i.am+’s new AI-powered tool, called “Omega,” is similar to digital assistants such as Apple Inc.’s Siri and Amazon.com Inc.’s Alexa. Omega represents a big shift for i.am+, which has previously focused on delivering consumer technology products such as wireless headphones. But the former Black Eyed Peas singer told Reuters that he saw a bigger opportunity to develop Omega’s technology in the corporate market.

“I wanted to create something that allows us to do many things,” he told Reuters. “There’s so much you can do with a voice platform.”

According to i.am+’s website, Omega is a “voice-first” AI platform that’s designed to be both conversational and contextual, delivering “natural and engaging” user experiences for organizations of all sizes. The technology is also platform-agnostic, meaning it can be run on most devices and operating systems, and boasts of core components such as natural language understanding, contextual deep learning, automatic speech recognition, a conversational engine and text to speech capabilities, which are critical ingredients for modern AI-based chat platforms.

Omega’s main advantage over rivals such as Siri, however, is its compatibility with a series of pluggable modules that can add new personalities and opinions to the digital assistant. It also offers custom domains that allow Omega to access organization’s data and services.

According to will.ia.m, these capabilities mean Omega should be capable of doing more than just handling customer service. He said the plan is to create additional voice AI products for enterprises powered by Omega. “One of those things is handling hundreds of thousands of customers’ inquiries about their data plans simultaneously,” will.i.am said. “If it can do that, your imagination’s the limit.”

I.am+ also revealed the first enterprise customer to adopt the Omega platform, and it’s a fairly significant one: German telecommunications firm Deutsche Telekom AG. I.am+ said the company has been using Omega to power customer service chatbots since June, and will soon add an AI-based voice phone system. Deutsche Telekom said it chose to use Omega because other voice assistants struggled with conversational engagement.

“We set out with the ambitious goal of building even closer and more personal relationships with our customers in the digital channel by developing an intuitive, truly conversational one-stop digital customer service touch point and a more seamless customer journey,” said Christian von Reventlow, chief product & innovation officer at Deutsche Telekom. “We ultimately want Tinka — our digital assistant at T-Mobile Austria — to listen and learn from our customers to deliver superior service in a highly personalized fashion.”

Image: Moses/Wikipedia