Box, Cognizant CFOs: Early Days or Not, AI Presents Many Opportunities - Media & Entertainment Services Alliance

Box and Cognizant see abundant opportunities in artificial intelligence (AI), but it's still early days for the technology, according to comments made by both companies' CFOs at the Deutsche Bank Technology Conference in Las Vegas Sept. 12. AI and machine learning (ML) are "certainly a couple of categories that we're pretty excited about" on both a medium- and long-term basis, Box CFO Dylan Smith said. Box has teamed with Google, IBM and Microsoft on various initiatives. The "next wave" of that is "really going to be around all things" AI and ML, Smith told the conference. He added: "We're always looking for ways -- to the extent that it makes sense for our customers and for our economics -- to leverage these public cloud providers for more and more capabilities over time." Asked which company that Box partners with has the most advanced AI and ML story, he said: "It's hard to say. I think, in different categories, it's probably different. I think it's still pretty early and although all of these partners are making some pretty major investments, certainly from an image recognition standpoint" Google is "leading the pack there," while "Microsoft is doing some pretty impressive things from a video recognition standpoint."