IBM Releases Pretrained Watson AI Tools

In a significant expansion of the IBM Watson cognitive computing platform, IBM has launched “pretrained” artificial intelligence (AI) tools for a slew of industries, including advertising, agriculture, automotive, building management, customer service, human resources (HR), manufacturing, marketing, and supply chain.

- Brian T. Horowitz

“The focus is on how AI can make each professional—across industries—more effective and more efficient,” Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D, General Manager of IBM Watson IoT, told PCMag.

Watson is IBM’s series of AI services and applications. By releasing this series of pretrained tools, Yusuf said, IBM aims to help companies change the way they work.

“A key business advantage lies in tapping into organizational insights, historical customer data, internal reporting, past transactions, and client interactions,” he said. “These elements are too often underutilized.”

Offering pretrained solutions for various industries is a big deal, explained Rob Enderle, Principal Analyst at tech analyst firm The Enderle Group. “It represents a significant maturing of the Watson platform,” Enderle told PCMag.

Sometimes companies that deploy AI hit a snag during the training period. Since Watson completes its training before companies deploy the technology, they can execute a more efficient deployment.

“Training is where AI deployments get hung up,” Enderle said. “Much of the initial work with developed AI is to create this training, which then, through machine learning, can be passed on to new systems, significantly lowering the deployment cost and time to value. This is a critical phase to maturing the platform and getting it closer to its operational and sales potential.”

With the heavy lifting completed during the training period, Watson is ready to start producing targeted, industry-specific insights right away.

“Getting the system to this phase is anything but trivial. Once there, machine learning can allow the replication of an unlimited number of systems,” Enderle said.

Here are six industries in which IBM Watson is now pretrained: