AI can easily identify background and mask it out thanks to image segmentation. AI driven recommendations is another classic problem where otherwise people had to put together excel sheets of similar products / complementary products. Some ecommerce brands on shopify and magento platform create and upload these product bundles manually to this day! They can surely get benefitted by such tech. There are extremely complex tasks like autonomous driving which can also be defined as cognitive automation. A driver is taking bunch of known decisions like controlling the speed and direction of the vehicle based on visual input from roads. In case of autonomous driving, the variables are quite large and hence the AI models are going to be lot more complex. But, smaller companies in other industries can greatly benefit from the same technology to provide immediate value to their customers.

There's a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence being a game-changer for the telecom industry, but machine learning is paving the way in the short term. BT's Neil McRae, chief architect, said there are elements of artificial intelligence in today's machine learning, and that machine learning could enable more, and deeper automation in networks. "BT Labs have been doing some work with Cambridge University leveraging both machine learning and artificial intelligence to improve our ability to react to events on the network," McRae said. "The initial findings are very promising. Networks are more complex, customers demand more and more from the network and I want to ensure that the network is the strongest part of our customers supply change. Today though, more often than not, humans are the reason for problems in the network. Using machine learning to let the network learn rather than scripting that automation will accelerate automation and I believe will bring benefits quicker. "When you actually look at what artificial intelligence is and what you need to do to deploy and use it in a network function, that's not a trivial thing, but using approaches such as machine learning are going to be crucial to enable the end-to-end automation that we need and we need those ASAP." As cloud, 5G and IoT began to converge, ML adds value to operating models by helping to create "smart" software networks. Pushed by IoT platforms, automation and cloud-based technologies, the global machine learning as a service (MLaaS) market is projected to grow from $ 679.32 million in 2016 to $7620.18 million by 2023 with a CAGR of 41.2%, according to Stratistics MRC. McRae said that web-scale Internet companies, such as Google and Amazon Web Services, were among the current leaders for using machine learning (ML) and automation. "They're still at the very start of this journey, but I believe in the future, for sure, those things will play a huge part in network operations and network optimization," McRae said. As for current machine learning use cases, BT is trialing ML for deploying segment routing on its network. "We're using machine learning and artificial intelligence as part of our path computation engine to show what's the best path and what has the least risks in that path," McRae said. "What is the most bandwidth on that path?

Software services major Infosys has launched an artificial intelligence platform'Mana' that will help clients drive automation and innovation. The company said in its statement that Infosys Mana, brings machine learning together with the deep knowledge of an organization, to drive automation and innovation – enabling businesses to continuously reinvent their system landscapes. Mana, with the Infosys Aikido service offerings, dramatically lowers the cost of maintenance for both physical and digital assets; captures the knowledge and know-how of people, and fragmented and complex systems; simplifies the continuous renovation of core business processes; and enables businesses to bring new and delightful user experiences leveraging state of the art technology. "Purposeful AI is about leveraging technology to amplify people. We can automate the repetitive, mechanizable tasks; we can capture the knowledge and know-how across people and long-lived systems and bring this knowledge back inside the systems to drive more value; and in doing these things we can free people to put all of our creativity, passion, and imagination into thinking about the bigger opportunities ahead of us. The word mana, from the Polynesian word for a pervasive spiritual force, and similarly used in many languages and cultures around the world, is an excellent inspiration for our endeavor to bring this purposeful AI to the enterprise," said Vishal Sikka, CEO & Managing Director, Infosys.

Software major Infosys has developed a knowledge-based artificial intelligence (AI) platform to drive automation and innovation for its global clients. "The platform Mana brings machine learning with knowledge of an organisation to drive automation and innovation for enabling businesses reinvent their (computing) systems," the company said in a statement on Friday from San Francisco. Using the platform, the Indian bellwether improved productivity of a unspecified company with a fleet of field engineers by 50 percent by utilising its self-learning capabilities. "The platform enabled a global telecom firm to reduce 80 percent of its agents' entry effort by automating order validation and removing need for corrective processes," the statement asserted. Elaborating on multiple benefits of Mana, Infosys chief executive Vishal Sikka said, "We can automate the repetitive, mechanisable tasks; we can capture the knowledge and know-how across people and long-lived systems and bring this knowledge back inside the systems to drive more value; and in doing these things we can free people to put all of our creativity, passion, and imagination into thinking about the bigger opportunities ahead of us."