Microsoft Touts AI applications

Microsoft Thailand, together with artificial intelligence (AI) solution developers Digital Dialogue Co and Frontis Co, are putting a spotlight on the power of AI to transform businesses, enable new consumer experiences and solve fundamental issues in society using identity recognition and automated conversations.

“A study jointly conducted by Microsoft and IDC earlier this year predicted that 40% of all digital transformation initiatives in 2019 will involve support from AI systems in some way,” said Dhanawat Suthumpun, managing director of Microsoft Thailand. “By 2020, over 85% of businesses will have already adopted AI technology.”

These trends reaffirm that the world has entered the era of the Intelligent Cloud and Intelligent Edge, where advanced, intelligent capabilities from the cloud are shared and made accessible through devices used by people of every experience level on a daily basis, Mr Dhanawat said.

Microsoft predicts that 50% of applications available in the market by year-end will employ some form of AI technology, while the use of bots and AI systems to engage with customers will continue to grow in popularity before eventually taking up 95% of all business-to-consumer conversations by 2025.

The proliferation of AI relies on three factors: data — how it is discovered, gathered, filtered and stored; people — how a skilled workforce can adapt and utilise data in an insightful manner; and understanding — how public trust and confidence in AI’s ability to operate effectively and efficiently will drive adoption.

AI and bots can enhance communication between businesses, employees and customers or even make it more simple to do business in ways that are tailor-made to match the needs of each organisation, said Jidapa Vattanapakdee, deputy managing director of Digital Dialogue.

Prin Boondiskulchok, managing partner of Frontis, said the digital age is undergoing yet another key shift from the “mobile first, cloud first” world to an “AI first” world. Cognitive services allow AI to fulfil a wider spectrum of use cases.

Facial recognition technology alone can be used to enhance convenience, security and efficiency in many industry use cases, such as providing access control or presenting special privileges to store members and regular customers.

The process can be carried out without violating the user’s privacy by only recording coordinate data from facial scans instead of full facial photos.

“By configuring the facial scan database to purge itself every 24 hours, we can put into place a series of sturdy defences that prevent any data from being leaked or misused,” Mr Prin said.

Reference: Bangkok Post