Modern events are not only defined by their visual presentation, but they are also heavily dependent on the technologies used to moderate interaction & facilitate participation.
From live presentations to audience engagement activities, such as Q&A sessions, polls, and networking, each of the elements plays an important role in shaping the overall event experience.
And when it comes to live digital events, it quickly becomes challenging for organizers to manage thousands of questions alongside comments from attendees, all at once.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) acts as a smart assistant that not only organizes these conversations but also keeps them relevant. AI quickly scans the text, understands the nature of the question, and alerts the speaker to answer that question first.
Studies show that 45% of North American event organizers have integrated AI into their workflows to handle real-time attendee insights and interaction.
If you, too, are considering implementing AI in your virtual events, this article will show you how you can effectively use this technology for your Q&A activities and maximize its impact.
Why Use AI to Moderate Event Q&As and Audience Interactions?
Incorporating AI into your event planning and execution can make the journey more efficient for organizers, while also creating a more innovative & engaging experience for your audiences.
The same applies to moderating event Q&As and audience interactions. AI helps to streamline these sessions by
- Organizing & refining questions.
- Saving time for moderators.
- Making discussions easier to manage.
How Does AI Help Moderate Q&A and Audience Interactions?
- AI can scan thousands of comments in a second
- It automatically detects and removes spam, irrelevant, duplicate, and low-value questions
- It analyzes the sentiment and relevance of each query and highlights those that best suit the topic
- AI can also instantly translate audience questions from dozens of different languages
- During an event, if an audience member asks a vague question, the AI
will automatically respond and ask them for more clarification. This ensures that the speaker only receives a meaningful question
How does AI differentiate between a “Good” and a “Bad” Question?
AI looks at patterns to determine which queries are asked with positive intent and which are posed with disruptive intentions. It examines whether the question is polite, professional, helpful, or positive, while also assessing if the words are rude, impolite, or offensive.
AI tries to understand context based on the words used. Sometimes the question may not be bad by itself, but the way it is framed may not be constructive.
For example, if an attendee asks, “Why did this strategy fail?” that’s a normal, professional question. But if they say, “Who came up with this stupid strategy?” that tone becomes offensive. Therefore, AI filters and rejects such questions.
Top Platforms with Built-In AI Q&A Support for Audience Interaction
1) OpenFloor
OpenFloor is an AI-powered live Q&A tool. It is designed to streamline audience engagement during live events. It automatically groups similar questions to reduce redundancy as well as to save time during the live sessions. It means fewer duplicate questions, less manual moderation work, and a cleaner, more organized Q&A experience for everyone involved.
The platform filters and blocks the inappropriate, off-topic, and spammy questions in real time. Plus, it allows your audience to upvote the most important questions, ensuring the top concerns rise to the top. Whether it is a conference, webinar, town hall or education event, OpenFloor handles hundreds of audience questions with ease during large events, ensuring that speakers cover the most relevant issues and provide attendees with the information they need.
2) Pigeonhole
Pigeonhole Live is an audience engagement platform designed to enhance your webinars, conferences, and more. It features a variety of interactive options, including AI-powered Q&A translation.
This feature enables more inclusive, two-way communication between audiences by automatically translating questions during the session. A participant can submit their questions in their own language, which are then translated into each viewer’s preferred language.
3) MeetingPulse
MeetingPulse is a platform that delivers live polling, audience Q&A, voting, and real-time engagement for in-person meetings, hybrid events, company town halls, and more.
During a session, MeetingPulse allows participants to digitally submit questions and “upvote” the ones they like the most, so the most important topics of discussion naturally come to the forefront.
Unlike conventional Q&A tools, MeetingPulse offers more than just moderation and upvoting. With features like SmartPoll AI and the AI Summary Tool, the platform helps users to easily generate engaging polls and summarize insights from discussions across Q&A, polls, and brainstorming sessions.
The platform also provides automatic translations of attendees’ responses across Q&A, polling, and ideation modules.
4) Slido
Slido is an easy-to-use Q&A and polling platform, increasing engagement at your meetings, events, and conferences. During the event, participants can submit questions via the device they are using.
Other people can upvote the questions they want to hear answered, which automatically brings the most relevant questions to the top of the list. Plus, it keeps the live Q&A from having irrelevant, duplicate, or poorly formulated questions.
The platform also offers AI-integrated tools to create and tailor questions, quizzes, and polls. Features like Question AI allow your attendees to edit, refine, shorten, and adjust the tone of their questions.
These tools help to make your Q&A sessions more structured and engaging, contributing to a smoother as well as a more interactive attendee experience.
5) RingCentral Events
Ringcentral Events is a virtual and hybrid event platform that uses AI to elevate Q&A sessions during an event. It groups similar audience questions from a large number of participants and also categorizes the most important questions for the speaker, which eliminates the need for the speaker to manually search for relevant questions.
The platform also offers AI-powered translation that quickly translates live session content—including questions asked, thoughts discussed, and polls, into different languages—offering an inclusive experience.
6) Airmeet
Airmeet is a virtual and hybrid event platform with several in-built AI-powered tools—such as analytics, automated transcriptions, and AirGenie.
To make your Q&A activities and live sessions more engaging, inclusive, and accessible, you can
- Leverage automated captions to ensure that no one is missing out on anything.
- Optimize AirGenie to generate innovative titles and engaging descriptions for your Q&As.
Furthermore, the platform equips event organizers and hosts or co-hosts with dedicated controls, enabling them to moderate Q&A sessions and the questions asked during interactive panel discussions. They can either “Approve” or “Reject” the question asked based on their discretion.
Airmeet’s AirIntel, an AI-integrated feature, helps track the audience engagement in real-time, helping event organizers identify where the audience loses their interest so the speaker can quickly initiate a poll or incorporate quizzes or gamification to regain the audience’s attention.
Final Thoughts
AI acts like a smart digital assistant that helps the speaker or the host keep the conversation during an event, audience-friendly, relevant, and organized. AI is capable of scanning and analyzing thousands of queries at once.
It instantly blocks the rude, irrelevant, and off-topic questions or comments and displays polite and meaningful ones in front of the speaker’s screen in real-time, helping them to make the interaction with an audience meaningful and engaging.
When the audience has a similar question intent, the AI-powered tool groups similar questions together so that the speaker doesn’t repeat themselves, helping to make a Q&A session professional for everyone involved.
FAQ
AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) and understands the meaning, intent, and relevance of the question. It also closely examines how closely the question matches the topic of the session and determines whether the question is of high value.
Yes. AI can translate the audience’s questions in real-time across several languages. Suppose the audience asks a question in Spanish, and the speaker is an English-speaker, the AI
AI scans emojis in text format and recognizes their meaning. Suppose an attendee uses “😍” as an emoji; the AI can interpret its emotional context meaning, such as “love” or “smiling face.”
Absolutely not, AI is best when it comes to filtering thousands of questions. The human moderator makes the final decision on which high-quality, nuanced questions to present to the speaker.
Yes, if AI detects that the audience’s question is too vague or irrelevant, then AI asks follow-up questions to understand the user’s true intent behind the question.
