Becoming Fin: The story behind the name of our AI chatbot

There’s a lot to a name. Whether it’s that of a product, an event, or even a pet, names are very powerful. They help us make a good first impression, tell a story, and reflect an identity.

That’s why the process of naming things can be so long. And while there may be no correct choice, there are certainly some very bad ones – from Backrub (Google’s former name, if you can believe it) to Isis chocolate (self-explanatory) or Nova, the 1960s Chevrolet that was introduced to the Latin America market under a name that means “it doesn’t go.” A seemingly innocent name can become a hilarious blunder or a PR nightmare due to cultural nuances, linguistic interpretations, or unintended associations.

All of these things were in the back of our minds as our team worked tirelessly to develop our state-of-the-art AI chatbot. We knew we wanted to give it a proper name – as we were playing with early versions of it, it felt too much like part of the team not to. But as we pored over hundreds of options – names starting with AI, names sourced from online lists for babies, names associated with knowledge or bots or even assistants – the question was, what sort of name would work best? What were we trying to convey? What associations did we want people to make?

By now, you already know we eventually landed on Fin. This week on Inside Intercom, our VP of Product Design, Emmet Connolly, and our VP of Corporate Marketing, Alyssa Smrekar, will tell you the story of how we got there.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Naming a brand or product is a process that can take months. However, due to the fast-paced nature of AI, time was a luxury we didn’t have.
• There isn’t an objectively correct decision when it comes to names. It’s a process akin to tasting wine, where initial reactions are followed by a thoughtful analysis to narrow down options.
• We aimed for a short, easy-to-pronounce, gender-neutral name that was friendly and approachable. After trying out various options, “Fin” emerged as the best choice.
• We believe in infusing bots with a brand’s personality. That’s why we offer customers the ability to rename their bots, customize their appearance, and, soon, adjust their tone of voice.
• While naming can be fun, the focus should, first and foremost, lie on the quality and utility of the product.

If you enjoy our discussion, check out more episodes of our podcast. You can follow on iTunes, Spotify or grab the RSS feed in your player of choice. What follows is a lightly edited transcript of the episode.

What’s in a name?

Alyssa Smrekar: When I was in sixth grade, we got a Border Collie.

Liam Geraghty: That’s Alyssa Smrekar, VP of Corporate Marketing at Intercom.

Alyssa: Her face was like the perfect Border Collie face, black on each side and white in the middle. And so, as the smart six-year-old I was, I thought, “Oh hey, her face looks like an Oreo cookie.” So we named her Oreo. It was a funny one because it’s weird when you are yelling at your dog, they’re running across the park, and you’re like, “Oreo!”

Liam: Naming pets is pretty straightforward. Naming products? Well, that’s a different story. The story we’re telling today on Inside Intercom is the story of how Intercom’s chatbot Fin got its name.

“As engineers and machine learning boffins worked around the clock to perfect this chatbot, there was another matter: what do we call it?”

Alyssa: Fin is Intercom’s new AI bot. It’s powered by GPT-4 technology and our own ML (machine learning) technology.

Emmet Connolly: So, for customer service teams to add to their team, almost.

Liam: That’s Emmet Connolly, VP of Product Design at Intercom.

Emmet: And start answering questions based on the team’s existing support content. Fin reads your existing help center or other sources of support content you might have and can immediately start answering customer questions about it automatically.

Liam: As engineers and machine learning boffins worked around the clock to perfect this chatbot, there was another matter: what do we call it? And should we even give it a name?

Alyssa: Well, when we were first thinking about launching Fin, we came up with a whole bunch of names. Things related to Intercom AI or an updated version of Resolution Bot. So many companies are adding AI to the end of their name. We thought about doing that or just giving it another bot name.

“The fact that it’s so much more personal and conversational when you’re talking with a generative AI bot like Fin is what led us towards giving it a name”

Emmet: But it was when we were starting to prototype and play with the early versions of the product ourselves that we realized how much it kind of fit into and almost felt like a member of the team. And so, to really lean into that and also to give you a handle to refer to that piece of functionality by, even in the product – I can assign a conversation to Liam, Liam can assign it to Emmet, or we can assign one to Fin. It kind of works to have a name for the thing in the first place.

Liam: This is not our first rodeo. Intercom has been working on versions of AI-powered bots for years. When we brought out our automation technology, we named it Operator.

Emmet: The Operator name, obviously, is somewhat functional and about connecting you from point A to point B. In retrospect, it possibly reflected some of the limitations of the bot. The fact that it’s so much more personal and conversational when you’re talking with a generative AI bot like Fin is what led us towards giving it a name.

The search for the perfect name

Liam: Getting a name right is so important. Would Google be here today if they were still called Backrub? Really, that’s what they were called in the early days when their program analyzed the web’s backlinks. There are now agencies that exist just to help you name your brand or product. It can take months of work. But what happens if you don’t have that time to play around with? We didn’t.

Emmet: One of the things about the genesis of the Fin project, I suppose, was that it happened extremely fast. There was this explosion of AI creativity and opportunity that was something we were very keen to jump on.

You don’t have, in a situation like that, the luxury of many months of thoughtful branding exercises and thinking out your strategy. At the same time, for naming something, there’s no correct decision you can actually make. In a sense, you’re approaching a qualitative decision or a decision based on taste. And actually, that’s somewhat what it’s like. It’s like tasting. Because the first thing I say about a name is that you don’t pick a name – you arrange a massive set of options, and you choose a name from that set of options.

“I was quite literally looking at baby name things online. Baby names that start with AI, baby names that contain AI, baby names that mean they’re really smart”

Liam: In our case, hundreds of names were floated.

Emmet: Imagine tasting wine. You take a sip, have a reaction, a qualitative, taste-based reaction of, “Oh, I like it,” or, “I don’t like it,” and then, you start to somewhat intellectualize or post-rationalize or break down and analyze why you liked it, what you like about it, and what the characteristics of the taste are.

Liam: The naming project began where all good projects start – a doc.

Alyssa: Then, a couple of us set off to source new ideas. I was quite literally looking at baby name things online. Baby names that start with AI, baby names that contain AI, baby names that mean they’re really smart. We ended up with a whole bunch of ideas in all these different areas. And then, we just started saying, “These are the ones we think stand out. These are the ones we feel are the most interesting.”

Emmet: We got a lot of names up on the boards, and we would just start to taste them. You say them aloud and then start to talk about the things that it triggers for you and the associations.

Liam: As the launch date grew near, and faced with a doc full of possible names, it was time to whittle them down.

Emmet: There was one called Kai that we were quite interested in.

Alyssa: We liked that one because it combines knowledge and AI, so we thought we were pretty clever. Turns out, we weren’t the first ones to think of that, and there are already companies out there named Kai. So, we didn’t want to go down that path of being in a space that was already crowded.

Emmet: Kai, Amy, Mila, Alva, Quinn, Maya, Ashling, Aiden, Alex, Akira? Should we keep Operator, the previous bot name we had? There were lots of knowledge-based ones: Apollo, Rosetta, Odin, Socrates, Turing, Shannon.

“Looking back now, we’ve sat with the name Fin for weeks or a couple of months there, and you couldn’t imagine it being anything else”

Liam: I even heard they were considering my name, Liam, at one stage.

Alyssa: Yes, you are right. I thought it was a particularly fun one because it’s basically AI and ML letters all jumbled up, and that seemed like a really fun idea, but I don’t know if enough people would get it. And we already have many a great Liam at the company, so we didn’t want to get too competitive or confusing with ourselves.

Emmet: What else do we have? Lots were a bit more like bots or assistants, like Jeanie, Houdini, or Brainy. You start to turn all these things around your head, and you’re like, “Oh, it feels a bit cheesy.”

It’s funny revisiting some of these options because, looking back now, we’ve sat with the name Fin for weeks or a couple of months there, and you couldn’t imagine it being anything else. There’s a certain leap into the future that you take with a name, but the sound of the name and the initial associations very quickly start to lose their meaning – they change and adopt their own meaning like language often does. The thing we have and know as Fin and refer to as Fin, without even thinking now, could never be these names. So, yeah, it’s fun and interesting and makes me feel like we picked the right one.

Down to brass tacks

Liam: How did we come to settle on the name Fin? Well, the team had a set of what Emmet calls tactical considerations.

Emmet: In the abstract, we knew we wanted something that was short and easy to work with. We have quite a diverse and international audience, so something that’s easy to pronounce and read aloud was important. We had a preference for something gender-neutral if we could. And so, at the same time, having these qualities that we wanted to align with like being friendly and approachable.

“It’s good to have some degree – even for us, internally, when we get to think about it – of character and personality and meaning so you can start to build from there”

Then, you dig into things, and you’re like, “Fin maybe has these connotations of being fast and instant. Or it’s the final answer, or it helps you from start to finish.” And I will admit there’s a certain amount of post-rationalization that does start to creep in. You can figure out where you draw the line. But there are all sorts of fun stuff when you get digging away. I’m Irish, and so are you, Liam, so you’ll know the story from Irish mythology of the Salmon of Knowledge and Finn McCool (or Fionn mac Cumhaill in Gaelic).

Liam: This is a story about the hero, Finn McCool, who eats the Salmon of Knowledge and gains all the wisdom and knowledge of the world.

“The part I really liked about Fin is the sort of Easter egg idea that Fin means the end, like you’re resolving a question”

Emmet: The Salmon of Knowledge is somewhat thematically related to what Fin, the chatbot does – it presents you with this ability to access the entire corpus of knowledge and answer everything. Now, do we expect a customer to go, “Oh look, Intercom has a thing called Fin. That must be about the Salmon of Knowledge,” or whatever? Obviously, that’s not going to happen. But I also think it’s good to have some degree – even for us, internally, when we get to think about it – of character and personality and meaning so you can start to build from there.

Alyssa: The part I really liked about Fin is the sort of Easter egg idea that Fin means the end, like you’re resolving a question. That wasn’t the original reason behind it, but that felt like one of the coolest reasons to keep it there.

Emmet: Obviously, not all of those associations are going to be instantly made, but it does mean something to kickstart the naming of something with some degree of meaning to it, even if it’s just for us.

Alyssa: As you do with names, whether you’re naming a pet or a child or an AI bot, you throw a bunch of names out there, and as the days go on, you kind of whittle it down and keep trying them out. And Fin kept being the one that, across our team, felt like the closest thing.

Fitting in

Liam: The decision was made. Our chatbot would be named Fin. We launched Fin recently, and customers are already loving it. And guess what? After all that, they don’t even need to keep the name Fin.

Emmet: When you’re designing a bot that’s going to talk on behalf of your customers, and you have many different customers, one might be like an investment bank, and the other might be a B2C company aimed at teams. Very different tones. And so, we want to give our customers the ability to rename their bots and give their bots their own little avatar to start to infuse some of their own personality.

“Honestly, the name becomes the servant of the thing it’s serving, which is the product and how good it is”

We’re still early days with Fin, although we’re seeing a huge amount of excitement in the market, and we have tons of ideas. One of the things we want to get to is more of the ability to dial in the tone of voice to suit your brand. And so, yes, while Fin is the technology we’re offering and is the ready-to-go packaging, it’s something that our customers can take and build their own version on top of, including tweaking the name, appearance, and so on.

One day, Billy Corgan showed up and said to his teammates, “Hey guys, I’ve got a great idea. The name of our band should be The Smashing Pumpkins,” which, when you stop and think about it, is an objectively terrible idea. But the product they put together very quickly overrides that, and it adopts its own meaning. Honestly, the name becomes the servant of the thing it’s serving, which is the product and how good it is. And although the naming part is fun, 99% of our attention is also put on the product, which is where the personality and utility come from – how much people actually like it. Part of that comes from the product, but the real part comes from the utility that we give as a result of them having Fin on their team. That’s the vibe we’re going for.

Liam: My thanks to Alyssa Smrekar, VP of Corporate Marketing, and Emmet Connolly, VP of Product Design, both at Intercom. In just a second, Emmet is going to reveal his pets’ names and how they got them. But first, if you want to try Fin for yourself and see how it can transform your customer support teams, go to intercom.com/fin, where you can get a free trial or try out a demo. And in the meantime, get thinking about what you’re going to change Fin’s name to for your company. That’s it for today. Thanks for listening.

Emmet: Our dog’s name is Alfie, which was a straight-up kids’ choice. The kids were like, “He’s Alfie.” I lost on that one. I wanted to call him Chewy because he has a Chewbacca kind of quality to it, but it’s okay. He’s Alfie now. It wouldn’t fit any other way. But our cat is not unlike Fin. Our cat is called Rua. The Irish word Rua means red animal. So, it’s kind of similar to Fin. A three-letter, Irish-infused name.