IBM CEO: Watson will reach a billion consumers next year

IBM Chief Executive Ginni Rometty told CNBC on Wednesday that the company's artificial intelligence platform, Watson, will reach more than 1 billion consumers by the end of 2017. "This is a celebration of Watson really scaling," she said. "Through others, Watson is touching hundreds of millions of consumers, and by the end of next year it'll be a billion." Rometty was on site at IBM's World of Watson 2016 event in Las Vegas where the legacy technology company demonstrated how Watson can influence businesses in several different industries. General Motors CEO Mary Barra was at the event for the announcement of Watson joining On-Star in millions of cars in 2017.