Ten Questions With: Tuukka Josefsson, Sales Director at Utopia Analytics

Last week we asked 10 questions of the guys behind Loopaautomate, and we continue our look at interesting tech companies serving online marketplace sites this week with an interview with Tuukka Josefsson from AI moderation company Utopia Analytics. Tuukka spoke to us about how Utopia is making life easier for marketplace sites by taking care of moderation.

What is the problem that Utopia Analytics solves?

Utopia AI enables marketplaces to moderate classified ads and chat messages automatically. As a result, the vast majority of the ads get published in real time. The quality of ads increases as wrong category information, missing details, duplicates or unacceptable content in the ads is flagged for the seller to correct automatically. Utopia AI also safeguards buyers and sellers from fraud and other unacceptable behavior by analyzing all chat messages and weeds out inappropriate messages in real time.

High-quality, automated moderation leads to better user-experience for both buyers and sellers. The site is visited more frequently and more deals are closed faster with significantly less problems. This enables the marketplaces to increase their revenue and leads to significantly reduced moderation costs.

What is Utopia Analytics’s USP?

Utopia AI Moderator is a SaaS-based moderation tool that can analyse any type of user-generated content in any language. It is more accurate than traditional moderation automation tools. It increases moderation quality and allows very high automation rate. It is faster and requires only little work to take it into use, and the all-inclusive service includes quality assurance, maintenance and updates. 

You can read a customer review and watch a reference video from Adevinta here.

As Utopia AI learns the individual site’s publishing/moderation policies from previous human-moderation decisions, there is no need for manual rule setting or lengthy configuration. The service is production-ready in two weeks. The marketplace doesn’t need to maintain complex word filters or rules either. Utopia takes care of the quality of AI, the maintenance and the updates. They are all included in the service. 

Utopia AI analyses both text and images and detects unacceptable content and behavior like a human would. It does this for 100% of the ads and chats in real-time, with higher accuracy and consistency than a group of humans.  

Utopia AI Moderator is used by several classified marketplaces, for example Jofogas.hu, Tori.fi, Tutti.ch. 

What is Utopia Analytics’s biggest challenge?

Utopia’s USPs may sound too good to be true! This is understandable as this kind of technology is new, and in many ways very different to traditional AI-based services. 

Changing the moderation approach might feel daunting, and there may be concerns over the suitability of Utopia AI for the marketplace’s unique needs and technical set-up. This is why Utopia offers a straightforward pilot, which requires very little investment and resources from IT. In the POC, the marketplace is able to trial Utopia AI in their real environment, verify the performance and quantify the business value.

Also, securing IT resources for the project can be tough. In reality, changing to AI-based moderation requires minimal effort from the IT department, and in the long run, it saves a lot of work because the maintenance and the updates of the AI models is included in the Utopia AI Moderator service.

How many employees does Utopia Analytics have?

Just under 30, and we are growing.

How has Covid-19 changed the landscape for Utopia Analytics?&nutbsp;

If anything, it has increased the need for our services because people spend more time online, also on marketplaces. We can see that many marketplaces are investing in future-proofing their businesses. Of course, we have had to adjust the way we do business as most companies have.

What is one thing our readers might not know about but would probably find interesting about your field? 

Combined, the Utopia team has more than 100 years of AI and computational linguistics experience, and Utopia’s data scientists have strong ties to leading academic research in the field. 

Utopia AI technology has been commercially available since 2016, and it is also used in many other industries, e.g. by media companies, chat service providers, game companies, e-commerce sites and insurance companies, to name a few.

How long has Utopia Analytics been involved with Property Portal Watch and why did you decide to get involved?

We participated GOMS in Miami in the summer 2018 and soon realized how big an impact PPW has in the industry and how the visibility at their events and their insight could help us. As soon as we could, we started sponsoring the events. It has been great to learn from the best in the industry through the PPW events.

What is Utopia Analytics currently working on? 

We have several large online marketplace and e-commerce moderation projects ongoing that will be announced soon. We also developing new features for the Utopia AI Moderator.

What is your most common request from clients?

Sharing references and key learnings from other marketplaces who have taken Utopia AI into use. 

How do you see the market evolving and what will you be doing to be ahead of the curve?

Online marketplaces have shown their ability to adapt to the ever-changing business environment. Automation of labor-intensive routine tasks is key for increased efficiency, and with advanced AI, to higher quality and better user-experience. Utopia’s advanced AI can help marketplaces future-proof their businesses, and enable the early adopters to stay ahead of the competition.