Artificial intelligence success stories show how purposeful brands can be in pleasing their customers.
- 72% of business leaders believe artificial intelligence is a “business advantage.”
- 61%, regardless of company size, pointed to machine learning and AI as their company’s most significant data initiative for next year.
- By 2020, 57% of business buyers will depend on companies to know what they need before they ask for anything.
Who’s doing it well? Here are 15 inspiring artificial intelligence brand success stories.
- AMAZON: Has opened an AI-powered convenience store in Seattle. The premise of Amazon Go is simple: to eliminate everyone’s least-favorite part of the shopping experience, checking out. With ceiling-mounted sensors and cameras backed by artificial intelligence, Amazon is able to track every interaction a customer has with a product. It knows exactly when a product is picked up or put back. Go works like a physical manifestation of Amazon’s 1-Click checkout, where you “click” by taking an item off a shelf. When a customer walks out of the store, they are charged for their haul via the Amazon Go app.
- CALLAWAY: Designs the Epic Flash series driver in this one of our artificial intelligence success stories. It uses AI to make drives longer and increase ball speed. According to the golf company, a new driver face can typically take eight to 10 iterations before landing on the best one. However, it stated that through machine learning it was able to analyze 10s of thousands of iterations to find what works best.
- DISNEY: Is using AI to organize product SKUs, is training artificial neural networks, computing systems modeled after animal brains, to mimic human brains and recognize what makes a story appealing. Using data from Q+A site Quora, Disney researchers used the site’s upvotes and downvotes to train the neural networks to determine what makes some stories more popular than others. At some point in the not-too-distant future, look out for a Mickey Mouse doll that can tell your kids a better bedtime story than you can.
- DRIFT: A company that finds quality leads for a product or service, uses chatbots, machine learning and natural language processing to help businesses book more meetings, assist customers with product questions and make the sales cycle more efficient. The technology is particularly good at automating traditionally time-consuming marketing tasks. For example, once a customer is on a website using Drift, a chatbot will pop-up, ask questions and automatically slot them into a campaign if they are a lead. Additionally, the company’s “Drift Assistant” automates email replies, routing leads and updating contact information.
- GENERAL MOTORS: Plans to invest $1 billion over the next five years in Argo AI, a startup formed in December that is focused on developing autonomous vehicle technology. GM, in this one of our artificial intelligence success stories, has an an agreement with New York State, GM will soon become the first company to test self-driving vehicles in New York City. Tests will take place in a geofenced section of lower Manhattan, following existing trials in Arizona, San Francisco, and GM’s home base Michigan.
- HANSON ROBOTICS: Is building humanoid robots with artificial intelligence for both the commercial and consumer markets. Hanson robot, Sophia, can efficiently communicate with natural language and use facial expressions to convey human-like emotions. Hanson plans to introduce an entire line of robots like Sophia, which they believe “have immediate applications as media personalities in movies and TV shows, entertainment animatronics in museums and theme parks, and for university research and medical training applications.”
- IROBOT: The Roomba 980 model vacuum cleaner uses artificial intelligence to scan room size, identify obstacles and remember the most efficient routes for cleaning. The self-deploying Roomba can also determine how much vacuuming there is to do based on a room’s size, and it needs no human assistance to clean floors.The company completed its first year as a purely consumer-focused business in 2017, pulling in $883.9 million in revenue, and has shipped more than 10 million Roombas since 2002.
- KLM: Invests in what is commonly referred to as KLM`s BB. This is a short form of BlueBot. The aim was to help customers book a ticket, send confirmation, deliver flight updates and answer passenger questions. Without BlueBot, KLM would probably not be able to record more than 1.7 million messages sent by 500,000 passengers. Driving customers’ satisfaction starts with being available to answer queries.
- NETFLIX: Taps into massive pools of viewer preference data to build algorithms that recommend new viewing material in this one of our artificial intelligence success stories. These algorithms then leverage AI to learn what viewers enjoy most. And it appears that viewers are addicted to this data-driven offering: Netflix is adding around 12,000 subscribers in the US each day and over 56,000 subscribers per day in the rest of the world.
- NIKE: Launches a system that allows customers to design their own sneakers in store. Not only is this a great gimmick to drive sales, but it also collects a huge amount of useful data that machine learning algorithms can use to design future products and deliver personalized recommendations and marketing messages.
- PATHAI: The company’s machine learning algorithms help pathologists analyze tissue samples and make more accurate diagnoses. The aim is to not only improve diagnostic accuracy, but also treatment. PathAI’s technology can also identify optimal clinical trial participants. PathAI has worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Philips to develop high-volume prognostic test support tools and plans for sustainable access to their advanced diagnostic services.
- STARBUCKS: Is using its loyalty card and mobile app to collect and analyze customer data including purchases, where they are made, and at what time of day.The company uses predictive analytics to process this data in order to deliver personalized marketing messages to customers including recommendations when they’re approaching their local stores, and offers aimed at increasing their average spend. A virtual barista service on the app powered by AI also allows customers to place orders directly from their phone via voice command. As well as delivering a more personalized customer experience, Starbucks uses their data from 90 million transactions every week to inform business decisions such as where to open new stores, and which products they should offer.
- TOMMY HILFIGER: Has begun to add AI to its creative process. The brand recently announced a partnership with IBM and The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT). As part of the “Reimagine Retail” project, FIT students were given access to IBM Research’s AI capabilities including computer vision, natural l anguage understanding, and deep learning techniques specifically trained with fashion data. This information was filtered back to the student designer on the other end, who could then use it to make informed decisions around their design.
- TWIGGLE: An advanced search engine for e-commerce sites, uses natural language processing to boost search relevance and product awareness for businesses. The combination of human-like deep learning and an understanding for the retail industry helps connect customers to exactly what they need. Twiggle claims a site with two million visitors a month might lose as many as 266,600 customers from bad search. For customers that use its search, the company boasts a 9% increase in “add to cart” and a 12% increase in click-through rate.
- TWITTER: Uses AI to identify hate speech and terroristic language in tweets. In the first half of 2017, the company discovered and banned 300,000 terrorist-linked accounts, 95% of which were found by non-human, artificially intelligent machines.
Do these artificial intelligence success stories show you are brands are using AI? Do they inspire your brand?
