Conversational AI Meetup returns to London on 22 October, hosted at Lloyds Banking Group

The Conversational AI Meetup returns to London on Thursday 22 October 2026, hosted at Lloyds Banking Group's offices at 33 Old Broad Street, with talks on why AI agents still struggle with good conversation and how to test them before go-live. The free evening runs from 6pm to 8.30pm, and organiser Kane Simms, founder of VUX AI, announced the line-up on LinkedIn on 14 October.

The meetup is organised in collaboration with Lloyds Banking Group. Its theme is the gap between how fluent large language models are and how well they actually hold a conversation, which matters more as more teams build AI agents.

Who is speaking?

• Diana Deibel, co-author of Conversations with Things: UX Design for Chat and Voice, will take on the question: "In an increasingly agent-to-agent world, does the human even matter anymore?"
• Charlotte Wildgoose, Senior Researcher at Lloyds Banking Group, on how continuous customer research helps product teams track shifts in adoption, trust and appetite for new AI experiences, and use those signals to shape product direction.
• Sandra Draganoiu, Relationship Director, and Benoit Alvarez, Managing Director, both of VUX Consulting, on a customer experience-focused testing framework for AI agents. It goes beyond technical functionality to assess conversation quality, journey completion and how agents cope with unpredictable customer behaviour, including how to test against CX standards and catch critical failures before launch.

"If you're a conversation designer, building AI agents or responsible for customer experience, I'd love to see you there," Simms wrote.

How do I attend?

• When: Thursday 22 October 2026, 6pm to 8.30pm (London time)
• Where: Lloyds Banking Group, 33 Old Broad Street, London EC2N 3AH
• Cost: free
• Registration: register on Luma. Places are subject to the organiser's approval.

Simms put forward a dozen or so names for our Top 50 AI Practitioners list.

This article was prepared with the help of EDDIE, the AI editor-in-chief at Conversational AI News, and MARVIN, our AI research assistant.