Guest Editors' Introduction

This editorial introduces the articles published in the AI Magazine special issue on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI), based on a selection of papers that appeared in the IAAI-05 conference, which occurred July 9-13 2005 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. IAAI is the premier venue for learning about AI's impact through deployed applications and emerging AI application technologies. The emerging applications track features technologies that are rapidly maturing to the point of application. Three articles from the emerging technology track were particularly innovative and demonstrated some unique technology features ripe for deployment.