7 Interesting and Unusual Uses of AI You May Not Know About

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is not just the buzzword used by scientists, science fiction authors, and filmmakers. The future has already arrived. AI has a large number application fields. Many of them are robotics-related (e.g. Google Home and Amazon Echo). But let's make a journey into the most interesting AI use cases.

If you are accustomed to robot-like chatbots ineffectively simulating human behavior, you will have to forget about them very soon. AI is believed to be the future of customer service. Many companies work on AI projects, and platforms, such as Init.ai, motion.ai and Octane AI already assist businesses in creating feature-rich chatbots using AI. Technology solutions empowered by AI can do much more than just conducting a conversation. They can be personal assistants like Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, and Google Now.

What about a new crop? Developers offer AI apps like Mezi and Claire that can help people to manage their trips. Virtual humans, such as 3D intelligent virtual assistants developed by iDAvatars are emotionally expressive and can speak customers' language, thus delivering superior customer experience.

You may have heard about some "boring" probable uses of AI like "intelligent machines" for food sorting. What about this one? The London-based company released the world's first beer created with the help of AI. It offers four bottled conditioned beers: golden, amber, pale, and black.

Customers can leave their feedback using the online feedback system. Information obtained from such reviews is used to improve the recipes before brewing the next batch.

The today's level of technological development encourages auto manufacturers to invent new types of vehicles. At present, they put a lot of effort into autonomous vehicles, and AI forms the brain of such autos. E.g., the vehicles use NLP techniques to ensure reliable speech recognition for human-machine interfaces.

In fact, this solution by IBM enjoys high recognition among auto makers. Currently, BMW and IBM work together on the best-ever driver-assist functions.

Besides, manufacturers can make use of intelligence linguistic applications by employing natural language processing techniques to analyze customer reviews posted on different online sources to identify vehicle safety problems and address them.

Oil prices have declined dramatically over the recent years, and their fall forced oil and gas players to review their business activities. The new measures include wage cuts, termination of contracts, cutting investments in projects that seem to be risky, and more.

The companies attempt to optimize their performance to stay afloat. They consider technological solutions (such as AI tools) to be the very first step on the path to success. These tools can be used for planning and forecasting, predictive maintenance, logistics (using drones powered by AI), etc.

The media and entertainment industry turned into a multibillion-dollar business long ago. Local and international players compete with each other to gain the lead. AI-powered services offer immense opportunities to companies willing to become a frontrunner.

Over-the-top content is gaining traction globally, and the fight between its providers is especially tough. Such giants as Netflix and Amazon do their utmost to overcome the competitive threat they present to each other. They pay much attention to recommendation engines, as these engines assist them in attracting a larger number of eyeballs by carving out a niche that the traditional cable players will never occupy. AI algorithms used by Netflix in its recommendation engine help the company to save huge sums of money.

You may not know, but video game developers were among the first ones to start using AI in their products. Dota 2 and F.E.A.R. are some of the video games with advanced AI.

Toy manufacturers also utilize AI, and the Hot Wheels AI Race System by Mattel is the most recent example.

There are many other AI uses in this industry. Virtual friends like Mitsuku are not ordinary chatbots, they become real friends for people thanks to capabilities provided by AI. Do you remember the episode "Be Right Back" from the "Black Mirror" series? The lead character gives a service access to all online communications and social media profiles of her deceased husband to create him virtually and to have an opportunity to talk to him and see him again. If you see little connection between this episode and the real life, you are mistaken. The similar situation took place some time ago when a woman brought her best friend back to life as an AI chatbot.

When it comes to education, NLP tools can offer advanced capabilities to educators. Firstly, they can be used to automate scoring of texts written by students by detecting grammar errors and examining their organizational structure. 

The tools can help educators in assessing users' vocabulary knowledge by automatically generating vocabulary questions to measure language learners' vocabulary skills. The automated generation of test items is one more application field.

AI algorithms can assist providers of translation services. Google, for instance, recently announced the launch of AI-powered translation.

HR managers can benefit from using NLP tools to process CVs automatically in order to pay more attention to promising candidates. These tools can also help them to extract all the required information about candidates.

Companies start using AI even in retail shelves. The shelves provide marketers with insights about who is standing in front of their store displays.

Here is one more ambitious project: researchers from FAU are now working on an AI solution that can predict which molecule structures will produce or suppress specific odors.

AI is becoming an indispensable part of our lives. It can be used in a large variety of industries, which are not limited to the ones mentioned above.

With technological advances moving ahead, AI is set to continue playing one of the leading parts in this move. Many companies start using AI-powered custom business intelligence software solutions taking into account today's competitive environment where players grab any opportunity that can give them a competitive advantage in the fierce fight against rivals.