Asia-Pacific spending on AI to surge this year: IDC - Taipei Times

Spending on artificial intelligence (AI) in the Asia-Pacific region is expected to surge by more than 50 percent on an annual basis to US$6.2 billion this year, market advisory firm International Data Corp (IDC) said. "Artificial intelligence is having an impact across many industries with widespread utilization, but is still at a nascent stage in the Asia-Pacific," IDC associate market analyst for Asia-Pacific Ritika Srivastava said in a report on Friday last week. "From providing chatbots for better customer service to improving the efficiency of operations and tasks for their business models, industries like banking, retail and professional services are spending in this technology at scale," Srivastava said. The banking industry would lead the way in spending on AI and contribute about 10.7 percent of overall spending in the Asia-Pacific region, the report said. Banks would mostly focus on AI/cognitive systems for fraud analysis and investigation, while also investing in automated customer service agents, it said.