IBM and IFTTT Bring Together AI and Automation for IoT

IBM is bringing its enterprise artificial intelligence assistant to IFTTT, paving the way for intelligent services that can do much more than tell users the weather or answer trivia questions, the companies announced on April 26. Watson Assistant, formerly Watson Conversation, made its official debut on March 20 during IBM's Think 2018 conference in Las Vegas. In addition to new analytics capabilities and features that allow developers to create more fluid and robust conversational interactions, the virtual assistant is now available in versions tailored to the automotive and hospitality industries. IFTTT, short for "If This, Then That," is a San Francisco technology firm whose web service enables users to automate tasks across various other services or cloud applications. Using applets, each with a set of conditional commands, users can trigger a chain of actions like automatically adding new iOS contacts to one's contact list on Google or use Google Assistant to post a note on Slack with one's voice.