Artificial Intelligence Offered in Applications, Services, Tools

Existing and upcoming applications, services, and tools from Microsoft offer what the company is calling artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities that could expedite processes and enable new solutions for organizations. The capabilities are being delivered in turnkey software, such as Office 365 and Windows, and through developer offerings that can bring so-called AI into custom projects. Solutions in areas such as marketing, sales, and customer support could benefit from the technologies, which Microsoft is poised to offer with its investments in Bing, Azure, and advanced algorithms. However, adoption of the technologies may be slow while their usefulness and quality matures.

“AI” Used to Describe Certain Emerging Technologies

Microsoft positions AI as a means to deal with the extreme amounts of data regularly being created in a productive and timely manner while simplifying the ways humans interact with computers.

The company emphasized its AI vision and strategy in 2016 at its Build and Ignite conferences by discussing new software and hardware capabilities and showcasing offerings that leverage them. The capabilities are enabled by powerful cloud data centers, massive storage support, knowledge of the world collected by Bing, and research advancements in areas such as machine learning and speech recognition.