Car analytics and AI

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Today's cars are all about mobility -- not just the kind that transports people and things, but also data mobility. Today's cars are more connected, and they are generating a lot more data that car manufacturers are working to collect, process, and apply to AI developments.

When the average person thinks about the connected car -- whether it is fully automated or packed with sensors that alert the driver to possible dangers -- what comes to mind is the experience for the person in that driver's seat. In fact, the information the driver sees represents only a tiny fraction of all the data collected through the sensor system. The amount of data collected is indeed vast, and car makers are now working on ways to ingest and process it effectively.

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Car Makers Drive Hard Towards AI Advances

A virtual assistant you can bank on

In early 2016, SEB, one of Sweden's largest banks with a presence in 20 countries around the globe, started integrating Amelia, an artificial intelligence (AI) platform from IPsoft, into its help desk. Amelia is represented by a blond female avatar and is always referred to as "she" rather than "it."

The artificial intelligence platform is built on semantic understanding, which enables Amelia to interact with users through natural language to determine what actions to take in order to answer a question, fulfill a request or solve a problem. She is also designed to learn through observation.

At SEB, Amelia serves as a customer interface with automated interactions that can scale up to meet expanded support needs. "The driver is to find a way to improve the experience for our customers," explains Mikael Andersson, the bank's IT strategy transformation lead.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/innovation/banking-on-ai-to-offer-better-customer-service.html#sthash.Mk05GLW5.dpuf

The perks of personalized marketing: Starbucks' use of AI

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“Would you like fries with that?” That one-size-fits-all recommendation was about as far as upselling at the point of sale used to go.  Starbucks has come a long way from that with marketing powered by data — and AI.  It's marketing that is uniquely tailored to the behaviors, preferences, and context of each customer.

Matt Ryan, Starbucks EVP and global CSO, and Gerri Martin-Flickinger, EVP and global CTO discussed the strategy at the company's Investor Day.  He explained the impact of digital on Starbucks sales, while she explained what their algorithms do, in The Digital Flywheel: Strategy and impact.

Ryan began by saying that for Starbucks digital represents the “core customer experience.”  He sees it as what distinguishes their business approach from “the rest of the retail world,” and what “gives us the advantage we have.” As proof he showed how the "digital flywheel" contributed to Starbucks' growth in the past three years, and the increase in its rewards program from five million to 12 million customers.

The incentives in the rewards program is one of the ways Starbucks personalizes its marketing.   Martin-Flickinger demonstrated the evolution of the personalization by showing how it has progressed in just a single year. Its baseline is the form of marketing that many businesses still use today, rooted in historical data that they view in spreadsheets, which in turn powers algorithms to fit their general customer base.

In January 2016, Starbucks' marketing messages were limited to 30 variants of weekly email messages that were based on data that was already two weeks old. In June last year, Starbucks moved to a to a real-time personalization engine capable of producing of 400,000 variants of hyper-personalized emails each week. The company continued to tweak its AI engine so that in October, it was able to launch real-time 1:1  personalized offers that are uniquely generated based on each individual customer's behaviors and marked preferences.

Read more in A.I. Informs Personalization for Starbucks

AI revs up Harley-Davidson sales

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After doing some research, Jacobi discovered artificial intelligence technologies working in the sales and marketing space. Among them was Adgorithms with its AI platform, "Albert."

"Then I had a synchronistic moment," Jacobi recalls. On a walk, he met "this guy, Or, and started chatting with him." That was Or Shani, the CEO of Adgorithms. When Shani explained what he did, Jacobi "told him I had been planning to be in touch with him."

So it was the combination of planning and serendipity that formed the basis of the business relationship between Harley-Davidson and Adgorithms.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/innovation/harley-davidson-boosts-digital-marketing-with-ai.html#sthash.PkNzrCBL.dpuf

Cost effective social media marketing

Reaching one's target market efficiently is one of the most appealing aspects about placing ads on social media. But to keep those ads effective takes a combination of accurate measurements and human creativity working together at a pace that keeps up with the demand for effective reach through new content. That's what ReFuel4, a Facebook 2016 Innovation Spotlight winner in the Creativity Category award, offers marketers.

Vernon Vasu, ReFUEL4's CMO says that two principle underlie the way the platform operates:

1. The vast amount of data associated with marketing campaigns are best dealt with by machine learning and AI, but
2. Creativity is still the province of humans.

Setting up a way for the two to work together with maximum impact and efficiency is what their Automated Creative Refresh platform is all about.

Read more in A Pay-for-Performance Platform for Marketers

Got rhythm? This algorithm does.

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Most of us have heard of DeepBlue, the computer that harnessed artificial intelligence to beat a chess champion back in 1997. Now there’s DeepBeat, a machine learning algorithm that raps.

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An Algorithm Gets Rhythm