A real-life conductor helps explain the art of AI orchestration
This past April, Roger Kalia had the opportunity to conduct Gustav Mahler’s fifth symphony with the Evansville Philharmonic, which he described as “a journey from darkness to light” and brought back memories of playing the opening trumpet solo as a younger man. More recently he conducted John William’s score to Star Wars as the film was playing, which was an experience all its own.
“What made it so special was seeing the children, the parents, the grandparents, all different generations in the concert hall, dressed up as their favorite character, waving the lightsabers,” Kalia said during the Xperience 2026 event in Las Vegas hosted by Genesys on Wednesday. “Live music can never be replicated. It’s that one moment where everything happens in real time. There is nothing like it.”
Well, there may be something like it, according to Genesys chairman and CEO Tom Bates. While an orchestra might be an obvious, even clichéd metaphor to explain AI orchestration, he suggested it was worth closer examination to properly educate enterprise stakeholders about what it takes to use AI to enhance customer experiences (CX).
“(To create an incredible musical performance), there’s extraordinary talent. There’s different instruments. There’s different roles, and they all start to come together,” Bates said in the keynote, which was livestreamed. “But here’s the thing: talent on its own is noise. It’s the orchestration that turns that capability into an incredible performance.”
Bates played classical music to demonstrate the point, pointing out that conductors work in real-time to turn individual capability into one coordinated delivery. This is akin to the way humans can orchestrate AI agents to perform tasks across large enterprises from managing online orders to processing returns.
“But here’s the thing: unlike an orchestra, and this is very important, and I hope everyone understands this: there’s no single score for every one of your customers,” Bates said. “Imagine a future where a conductor understands everything about every person in this room, they know your choices. They know your preferences. In other words, what we’re actually trying to do here is orchestration. We are trying to create a score that’s written for an audience of one, and we’re going to do it in real time.”
In an onstage discussion, Kalia articulated what he saw as the key qualities that make a conductor successful that could inspire those working with AI agents. These include:
- Deep knowledge and understanding: Those in the orchestra may have mastered an instrument, but they also recognize the power other instruments contribute to a performance. Musicians can also read multiple musical styles, have studied theory and harmony. In the same way, AI orchestration will require technical expertise of tools as well as the customer data that infuses an AI-powered experience.
- Communication: “Conducting is a very physical language,” Kalia said. “The best conductors exude confidence, but they also are the visual embodiment of the music. You need to develop an expressive vocabulary through your hands, your face, your eyes.” Using AI increasingly means knowing how to structure content and data to be easily understood by large language models (LLMs) that AI agents draw upon.
- Vision: CX leaders need to secure buy-in at all levels of the organization, and active participation from employees in transitioning to agentic workflows. For Kalia, that translates into a key question: “How do you reach into the souls of 100 musicians in front of you and have them give 100 per cent of their emotional and physical expressiveness to the music at all times? That’s hard to do.”
- Trust: Kalia said this was the most important trait of all. “You have to be a collaborator. You have to trust your musicians to get the job done. I’m the only one on stage that doesn’t make a sound. You have to be able to zone in and fix a problem on the spot,” he says. That’s key to running human-in-the-loop processes for AI as well.
AI is often seen as technology being offered to customers as a benefit, but Kalia said the best orchestration is the result of aiming for absolute alignment between a conductor, musicians and the people for whom they’re performing.
“Sometimes the audience is considered a customer, but in live music, they are actually part of the experience,” he said. “So we feel when an audience is engaged, there’s a certain energy running through the concert hall. I strive to create an experience that will leave the audience feeling something and moved.”
Genesys will be offering on-demand replays of Xperience 2026 keynotes, including full details of its latest product and service announcement, to registered attendees.
