Royal Navy dives into AI recruitment with Wavemaker

The Royal Navy is piloting a real-time animated conversational digital avatar named “Atlas”, powered by a large language model “brain” designed to answer questions about the recruitment journey, with specialist knowledge about the Submariners.

The new tool has been developed in collaboration with WPP Media’s Wavemaker, which led on strategic direction, overarching conversational and design, research and knowledge-base training as well as delivering the full project management.

Voxly Digital developed the front and back end of the solution, supported by the Royal Navy’s digital agency, Great State.

Wavemaker UK has worked on the Royal Navy’s innovation roadmaps since before the pandemic and supported the development of its first citizen-facing Government recruitment AI assistant, which was upgraded last year to a full LLM and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) solution.

It has since answered over 460,000 questions from more than 165,000 users, with an average user satisfaction rate of 93%. Moreover, it has helped generate over 89,000 expressions of interest for the Royal Navy and reduced the load on the live-agent teams by 76%.

This success led to the development of Atlas, which has been built as a pilot for the Royal Navy Recruitment team, with the aim to test the effectiveness of digital humans to support younger candidates in their recruitment journey. Its focus is on supporting recruitment to the Navy, especially to drive considerations of the Submariners.

Royal Navy head of marketing Paul Colley said: “When it comes to AI, our focus is on how we can use it responsibly and strategically to better arm the teams we have. It’s not about replacing human support. It’s about giving the best support we can wherever and whenever candidates need it.

“We’re excited to launch Atlas and see if it can provide a new, different kind of support for those who would be considering the Submarine service but need some more time to explore and discuss.”

It is claimed that Atlas’ conversational interface is highly accessible and multimedia-enabled. Users can interact with Atlas across multiple digital and offline channels, using either voice or text, and receive responses as spoken answers or on-screen captions.

When asked a question, Atlas can share relevant videos or quotes from the team to enhance its responses. Users can explore suitable roles, learn about life as a submariner, or get guidance on the joining process. Atlas will be trialled at events as well as be linked to the conversational experience from the NavyReadyapp and its enterprise customer relationship anmagement (eCRM) programme.

Royal Navy head of e-CRM and innovation Caroline Scott commented: “AI is moving faster than ever, and our role is to stay at the forefront of that change. The development of Atlas is a true Government first and by trialling new interfaces and adopting a test-and-learn mindset, the Royal Navy can be better equipped to understand how these technologies can transform the way people connect, apply for roles, and engage with us, while also creating more meaningful digital experiences.”

Wavemaker head of applied innovation Rozzi Merrington added: “This project is an exciting step in exploring how AI can transform recruitment experiences. We’re proud to have led the strategy and innovation behind this project and to have partners in the Royal Navy who trust and share our vision for the future highly-personalised and accessible recruitment experience.”

Royal Navy dives into AI recruitment with Wavemaker

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