A new artificial intelligence chatbot is aiming to help shipping companies navigate port agency communication hurdles and make crew changes plain sailing.
SeaGPT was launched on Tuesday during Singapore Maritime Week by local maritime start-up Greywing.
“SeaGPT is the answer to the number one challenge crew managers have been asking us to solve: email overwhelm,” said Greywing chief executive Nick Clarke.
“Since maritime companies already depend on Greywing’s platform to plan their crew changes, this was the natural next tool we wanted to create.”
Clarke claims that with a simple query sent to SeaGPT via email and Greywing’s platform, fleet managers can now “access all the port, immigration and travel details they need to decide on a crew change”.
“To summon the AI-powered bot, users need to address questions to ‘SeaGPT’ in a message or via the push-to-talk voice feature. Future possible integrations include Slack, Microsoft Teams, Whatsapp and SMS,” he said.
Greywing said that historically much of the crew change process has been analogue, often planned through spreadsheets, while flight bookings are done through email or telephone.
“Putting a crew change into action is an elaborate process simply because the data set itself is complex,” Greywing said.
“Crew managers have to stay on top of changing immigration restrictions in hundreds of countries and thousands of ports around the world.
“To complicate things further, many crews include members of different nationalities, who are often subject to different immigration or vaccination restrictions,” the company added.
Greywing claims that emails related to port agency communication can now be “instantly automated” using the SeaGPT technology.
“SeaGPT can handle all the emails, clarify any questions and provide the information crew managers are looking for, saving hours of time and reducing the risk of errors or miscommunications,” the company said.
“The AI chatbot’s natural language capabilities go beyond simple queries too. It can make complex edits, and even book flights or provide specific information related to port restrictions and visa requirements.
Greywing said the technology can also handle conversations in any language, meaning a crew manager can have details translated from business-language English to be shared with seafarers in Hindi, Greek, Russian, Mandarin and other languages.
Greywing chief technology officer Hrishi Olickel said that what makes SeaGPT such a breakthrough for crews is that it is purely text-based.
“On-board vessels, in the real world, solutions cannot be tech-heavy simply because of connectivity constraints,” he said.
“SeaGPT can be used via existing communication channels which requires very low data requirements such as SMS or even Whatsapp, making it very simple to adopt and introduce to existing workflows.”
