From Watson to Einstein: The AI tech automating the future of marketing

As tech giants make bigger leaps into artificial intelligence, they see marketers as key customers for a variety of services and are promising more nuance and layers than the technology's early days might suggest. Companies such as IBM, Salesforce and others believe AI has the potential to transform marketing as much as the digital revolution has over the past several years. IBM, which first made an AI media splash in 1997 when its Deep Blue supercomputer beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, has emerged as an early market leader with newer, smarter Watson software. Google is also ramping up R&D spend on AI; Microsoft is integrating AI across its enterprise; Facebook is building out facial recognition AI for basic user experiences and Salesforce is championing a new platform called Einstein to help optimize for individual customer data. In late September, all of these companies and others banded together to create the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to Benefit People and Society, a group with the objective of addressing opportunities and challenges, along with standards and best practices, for AI developers.