Venture capital investment in the UK's artificial intelligence sector leapt almost six-fold from 2014 to 2018, according to figures released on Thursday. Research by market intelligence firm Dealroom found investment in UK AI startups reached a record £997m (£1.3bn) in 2018, continuing upward trends since 2014, when investment was just £153m. The research was carried out on behalf of startup accelerator Tech Nation and the UK's Digital Economy Council. READ MORE: The "Oracle of AI" – these four kinds of jobs will not be replaced by robots According to Dealroom's figures, the biggest surge in interest in AI came between 2016 and 2017, when venture capital funding for UK companies almost doubled from £500m to over £900m. Dealroom recorded 82 venture capital fundraisings across UK companies last year, compared with 70 the previous year.

London-based startup Digital Genius is targeting the contact centre with its deep learning technology. The Digital Genius neural network helps agents respond to common customer service queries quicker by first automatically sorting and labelling the metadata and then generating three potential responses, each with a level of certainty attached. Organisations can then set a threshold for automation, so responses the system views as 90 percent accurate could be automatically sent out - like a chatbot - and anything below is sent to the agent to review, for example. The startup claims it can reduce the average handling time for cases by 20 percent. This is especially important as organisations receive queries from more and more digital channels, including social media.

Scott graduated from Cardiff University with a degree in English Literature and a diploma in Magazine Journalism. He has a keen interest in disruptive tech, sport and the media. It's official, 2016 has been the year of the AI startup acquisition. Tech giants Apple, Intel, Twitter and Microsoft have all spent large sums to bring artificial intelligence startups, and their expertise, inhouse. Four of the biggest AI startup acquisitions of the last five years have come from the UK, starting with Google's purchase of Deep Mind in 2014 for a reported 400 million.