Need AI? Easily add intelligence to applications using AWS AI services

2-minute read

Original version published February 2019.

Thanks to AI, we’ve seen accelerated growth in productivity and efficiency across many industries over the past five years. Machines can now effortlessly solve problems and perform actions that were previously only possible with lots of humans chipping away at tedious tasks for long periods of time.

Adding AI to your application or workflow might seem like a daunting task. Before jumping into the world of building customized machine learning algorithms, check out the ready-made AI services offered by Amazon’s AWS.

There is no question that Amazon is one of the leaders in advancing the field of artificial intelligence. The AI services offered by AWS are the same types of machine intelligence that power popular features on Amazon.com, and these machine learning algorithms have been crafted, tested and trained to perform specific functions precisely.

The best part? AWS promises “no machine learning experience required” and easy integration.

Here’s how AI services can be applied to solve common business problems:

Improve customer experience

• Customers crave personalized digital experiences. AWS makes it easy to add recommendation technology to an application with Amazon Personalize.

• AI Chatbots have become a popular way to streamline customer service interactions leading to faster, more focused problem-solving and happier customers. Amazon Lex makes building conversational agents simple.

• Ensure accessibility of your product for all users by converting text into voice using Amazon Polly.

Automate tasks for improved productivity and efficiency

• Analyzing and then categorizing image and video files into searchable libraries is an arduous yet essential task. Amazon Rekognition uses AI to automate this process and relieve valuable humans of this tedious work.

• Ever tried converting paper documents to digital files using OCR scanning only to be left with a jumble of unidentified data and text? Amazon Textract is smarter OCR powered by machine learning that has been trained to read virtually any type of document, no custom coding needed.

• Voice interactions save time for customers, but also requires robust technology to assure precision. Amazon Transcribe automates transcription allowing for smooth, real-time communications or quick voice to text conversion of stored files.

• Reach customers on a global scale using Amazon Translate. This is more than a translation service. It also allows for real-time translated communication with customers and quick and accurate localization of web content.

Get better business insights

• Businesses need to be able to predict future conditions to give them a competitive edge and ensure investments are properly allocated. Amazon Forecast harnesses AI predictive capabilities allowing businesses of all types to input data on any use case and receive highly accurate forecasting of future states.

• Customer interactions and digital behaviors produces a lot of data, but much of that data remains unstructured collecting digital “dust” in data warehouses. Amazon Comprehend uses the power of natural language processing (NLP) to analyze and extract key data from any kind of text document (emails, transcripts, social media posts, etc.). This is not basic keyword search, though. NLP technology allows for searching text with a focus on intent, emotions and context making this a powerful tool for gathering insights about customer preferences and satisfaction levels.

The AI services offered by AWS provide various options for applying machine intelligence to existing web services, applications, or workflows in order to improve business outcomes. These tried-and-true solutions might just be the key to boosting your business to the next level.