IBM Launches watsonx AI Labs in NYC, Acquires Seek AI

IBM has launched watsonx AI Labs, a new innovation hub in New York City, designed to accelerate AI adoption and support developers, startups, and enterprises. Located at One Madison, the lab aims to foster collaboration between IBM engineers and external innovators, helping businesses unlock real-world AI value.

Ritika Gunnar, General Manager, Data & AI, IBM, said, "This isn't your typical corporate lab. watsonx AI Labs is where the best AI developers gain access to world-class engineers and resources and build new businesses and applications that will reshape AI for the enterprise. By anchoring this mission in New York City, we are investing in a diverse, world‑class talent pool and a vibrant community whose innovations have long shaped the tech landscape."

IBM is also acquiring Seek AI, a New York-based startup specializing in AI agents for enterprise data, which will serve as a foundational part of the lab. The initiative taps into NYC’s thriving AI ecosystem, which has seen over $27 billion in funding since 2019.

This move strengthens IBM’s position in enterprise AI, focusing on domain-specific AI solutions for industries like finance, healthcare, and cybersecurity.

IBM's acquisition of Seek Al is a strategic move to strengthen its enterprise Al capabilities, particularly in natural language data analysis. Seek Al specializes in converting natural language queries into database searches, making complex data more accessible for businesses in regulated industries like finance, healthcare, and government.

By integrating Seek Al into watsonx Al Labs, IBM is doubling down on its mission to scale Al adoption and provide businesses with explainable, compliant Al solutions 1. The acquisition also aligns with IBM's broader push to expand its Al ecosystem, fostering collaboration between startups, researchers, and enterprise clients.

Additionally, IBM is leveraging New York City’s AI talent pool to drive innovation, positioning itself as a key player in enterprise AI development. This move could accelerate AI adoption across industries while reinforcing IBM’s leadership in AI-driven business intelligence.

IBM Now Offers Meta’s Llama 3 Open Models on Watsonx

IBM has expanded its portfolio by offering Meta's Llama 3 open models on its Watsonx platform. This move is aimed at fostering next-generation enterprise-ready models.

To recall, in December of last year IBM and Meta launched the AI Alliance — a group of leading organizations across industry, startup, academia, research and government and it has since grown to more than 80 members and collaborators.

The Llama 3 models, which include pretrained and instruction fine-tuned language models with 8B and 70B parameter counts, are designed to support a wide range of use cases such as summarization, classification, information extraction, and content-grounded question and answering.

The Llama 3 8B model is optimized for faster training and deployment on edge devices, while the Llama 3 70B model is tailored for more demanding tasks like content creation, conversational AI, and language understanding¹. IBM's collaboration with Meta and the AI Alliance reflects a commitment to open innovation in AI, with the alliance now comprising over 80 members and collaborators.

IBM also hosts Code Llama 34B, a task-specific model for code generation and translation, on the Watsonx platform. These models are available for both SaaS and on-premises deployment, providing flexibility for clients to scale AI with their own data across a broader set of enterprise use cases.

For those interested in exploring these models, IBM offers a free trial on the Watsonx platform. It's an exciting development for AI builders and researchers who are looking to leverage these advanced models for various applications.

Wipro Launches Enterprise AI-Ready Platform, Leveraging IBM Watsonx, to Advance Enterprise Adoption of GenAI

Wipro and IBM Expand Partnership to Offer New AI Services and Support to Clients

As part of the expanded partnership, IBM and Wipro will establish a centralized tech hub to support joint clients in their AI pursuits.

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO), a leading technology services and consulting company, today announced the launch of Wipro Enterprise Artificial Intelligence (AI)-Ready Platform, a new service that will allow clients to create their enterprise-level, fully integrated and customized AI environments.

The Wipro Enterprise AI-Ready Platform leverages the IBM watsonx AI and data platform, including watsonx.ai, watsonx.data, and watsonx.governance and AI assistants, to deliver to clients an interoperable service that helps accelerate AI adoption. This new service enhances operations with a suite of capabilities spanning across tools, large language models (LLMs), streamlined processes, and robust governance, and lays the foundation for future industry analytic solutions to be built on watsonx.data and AI.

Wipro Enterprise AI-Ready Platform is born out of an expanded multi-year partnership between Wipro and IBM. The expanded partnership brings together the technology and industry expertise of Wipro with leading hybrid cloud and AI innovation from IBM and aims to build joint solutions that help advance the implementation of robust, reliable, integrated, and enterprise-ready AI solutions.

“This expanded partnership with IBM ccombines our deep contextual cloud, AI, and industry expertise with IBM’s leading AI innovation capabilities,” said Jo Debecker, Managing Partner & Global Head, Wipro FullStride Cloud. “The solutions we are creating as part of this partnership will help enterprises achieve new levels of flexibility when building their own enterprise-specific AI ecosystems. Our goal is to make AI consumption as efficient, agile, reliable, and sustainable as possible—ultimately, helping advance the adoption of enterprise-level AI.”

As part of the partnership, Wipro and IBM are jointly funding the IBM TechHub@Wiprosolution, which is designed to drive and support joint client pursuits through a centralized group of subject matter experts, engineers, assets, and processes. The IBM TechHub@Wipro will include a watsonx Center of Excellence, which will focus on infusing IBM’s watsonx capabilities across Wipro’s offerings.

Kate Woolley, General Manager, IBM Ecosystem, added, “We’re pleased to reach this new milestone in our 20-year partnership to support clients through the combination of Wipro’s and IBM’s joint expertise and technology, including watsonx. We’re also looking forward to supporting our joint clients with IBM TechHub@Wipro, which will comprise a network of Wipro and IBM subject matter experts operating in global centers of excellence, focused on AI, automation, IT modernization and sustainability.”

Wipro Enterprise AI-Ready Platform will provide clients with infrastructure and core software for the consumption of AI and generative AI workloads, including using code-based configurations to enhance automation; dynamic resource management to dynamically adjust to varying workloads using predictive analytics; and helping drive improvements in incident reduction and operational efficiency in the enterprise. The Platform will also support specialized industry use cases for banking, retail, health, energy, and manufacturing, providing conversational AI for customer support, customized marketing, customer feedback analysis, content generation and design optimization, thereby enhancing value for clients.

“Wipro’s Enterprise AI-Ready Platform will allow clients to easily integrate and standardize multiple data sources augmenting AI- and GenAI-enabled transformation across business functions,” said Nagendra Bandaru, Managing Partner and President, Wipro Enterprise Futuring. “The service will provide clients with the flexibility and freedom to choose how they want to develop and deploy their large language models, giving them the option to use IBM’s existing models, co-develop their custom applications, or create their own models based on the foundational models and tools available on the platform. Further, clients will have the flexibility to run these models in their preferred cloud environment—whether that’s public, private, or hybrid.”

Wipro Enterprise AI-Ready Platform will leverage watsonx.governance to automate AI governance through the AI life cycle. This will help the business to control and monitor risks and adhere to the key tenets of responsible AI: transparency, data protection and compliance with relevant laws and regulations.

As part of this expanded partnership, Wipro associates will be trained in IBM hybrid cloud, AI, and data analytics technologies to help accelerate the development of joint solutions.

For more information on Wipro’s partnership with IBM, please visit: https://www.wipro.com/cloud/cloud-operations/wipro-enterprise-ai-ready-platform/

Wipro Limited (NYSE: WIT, BSE: 507685, NSE: WIPRO) is a leading technology services and consulting company focused on building innovative solutions that address clients’ most complex digital transformation needs. Leveraging our holistic portfolio of capabilities in consulting, design, engineering, and operations, we help clients realize their boldest ambitions and build future-ready, sustainable businesses. With over 240,000 employees and business partners across 65 countries, we deliver on the promise of helping our customers, colleagues, and communities thrive in an ever-changing world. For additional information, visit us at www.wipro.com.

 

IBM's Consulting Arm Introduces AI Services Platform and Library of Proprietary Assistants

• IBM Introduces IBM Consulting Advantage, an AI Services Platform and Library of Assistants to Empower Consultants
• Enables IBM consultants to build and interact with role-based Assistants powered by IBM watsonx
• Early adopter teams using IBM Consulting Advantage saw productivity improvements of up to 50% in an application design, development and testing pilot.

IBM Consulting, the professional services and consulting arm of IBM, has just rolled out IBM Consulting Advantage, an AI services platform designed to support IBM consultants in delivering consistency, repeatability and speed for our clients.

It includes a portfolio of proprietary methods, assets and Assistants that leverage technology from IBM and strategic partners. When using aspects of IBM Consulting Advantage in an application design, development and testing client pilot, early adopter teams saw productivity improvements of up to 50%.

Core to the platform is a library of role-based IBM Consulting Assistants to support our teams in their day-to-day tasks. This includes assistants trained on IBM proprietary data and composed of tailored prompts, models and output formats to put the collective knowledge of IBM and the wider industry at the fingertips of 160,000 IBM consultants. Employees can use strategy assistants to support use case prioritization and business case development, business analyst assistants to support creating personas for user-centric design, or developer assistants to support code generation and conversion.

IBM Consulting Assistants are accessed through an intuitive conversational interface powered by IBM watsonx, IBM's AI and data platform. Consultants can toggle across multiple IBM and third-party generative AI models to compare outputs and select the right model for their task, and use the platform to rapidly build and share prompts and pre-trained assistants across teams or more widely across the consulting organization. The interface also enables easy uploading of project-specific documents for rapid insights that can then be shared into common business tools.

"Generative AI is driving the most fundamental shift in the consulting model in decades, motivating us to rapidly innovate how we serve clients," said Mohamad Ali, COO, IBM Consulting. "The IBM Consulting Advantage platform lets us harness more of our intellectual property, including an array of AI assistants, in our client engagements. This allows our consultants to be even more creative and productive as they use the platform to deliver greater value faster to thousands of our clients."

IBM Consulting Advantage has embedded capabilities for data security and privacy, including the ability to create spaces configured for and limited to a project team. IBM Consulting Assistants can be set up with private instances of generative AI models that do not store data or use it for training the models. They can also alert users if personal identifiable information (PII) appears in prompts. In addition, the Assistants have integrated AI guardrails to help mitigate bias and enable auditable use, such as the ability for a consultant to ask one of the Assistants a question and select an option to check for bias in the answer.

Delivering value for clients with IBM Consulting Advantage

Clients are already seeing the value in IBM Consulting Advantage combined with the deep expertise of IBM consultants.

For example, Dun & Bradstreet, a leading global provider of business decisioning data and analytics, will be working with IBM consultants using these capabilities as they build and scale new AI use cases leveraging Dun & Bradstreet Data Cloud and IBM watsonx to help improve employee productivity and customer experiences.

IBM Consulting has taken a use-case led approach to helping clients scale AI. It has developed preconfigured solutions powered by watsonx and partner technology, starting with the use cases of customer service, human resources and application modernization. These solutions are already driving outcomes for clients. In 2023 alone, IBM Consulting helped hundreds of clients apply AI from IBM and strategic partners in their digital transformation journey, from Parle Products to Wintershall Dea.

Combining a new platform with proven methods, deeper expertise and expanded partnerships

The IBM Consulting Advantage platform will be applied across the breadth of IBM Consulting's services, spanning strategy, experience, technology and operations. It is designed to work in combination with IBM Garage, a proven, collaborative engagement model to help clients fast-track innovation, realize value three times faster than traditional approaches, and transparently track business outcomes.

This announcement builds on IBM Consulting's concrete steps in 2023 to further expand its expertise, tools and methods to help accelerate clients' business transformations with enterprise-grade AI. For example, IBM Consulting formed a Center of Excellence for Generative AI, and also deepened its relationships with strategic partners in 2023, announcing expanded AI collaborations with Adobe, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Palo Alto Networks, Microsoft, Salesforce and SAP.

IBM Consulting helps accelerate business transformation for our clients through hybrid cloud and AI technologies, leveraging our open ecosystem of partners. With deep industry expertise spanning strategy, experience design, technology, and operations, we have become the trusted partner to many of the world's most innovative and valuable companies, helping modernize and secure their most complex systems. Our 160,000 consultants embrace an open way of working and apply our proven, collaborative engagement model, IBM Garage, to scale ideas into outcomes.

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

 

IBM Unveils watsonx.governance To Manage, Govern AI Models and Mitigate Risk of GenAI

IBM (NYSE:IBM), on Tuesday, announced that watsonx.governance to help organizations Manage AI to meet upcoming safety and transparency regulations and policies worldwide – a "nutrition label" for AI. It will proactively detect and mitigate risk, monitoring for fairness, bias, drift, and new LLM metrics.

Generally available in early December watsonx.governance will help businesses shine a light on AI models by managing, monitoring, and governing AI models from IBM, open source communities, and other model providers

While generative AI, powered by Large Language Models (LLM) or Foundation Models, offers many use cases for businesses, it also poses new risks and complexities, including training data scraped from corners of the internet that cannot be validated as fair and accurate, all the way to a lack of explainable outputs. Watsonx.governance provides organizations with the toolkit they need to manage risk, embrace transparency, and anticipate compliance with future AI-focused regulation.

As businesses today are looking to innovate with AI, deploying a mix of LLMs from tech providers and open sources communities, watsonx enables them to manage, monitor and govern models from wherever they choose.

"Company boards and CEOs are looking to reap the rewards from today's more powerful AI models, but the risks due to a lack of transparency and inability to govern these models have been holding them back," said Kareem Yusuf, Ph.D, Senior Vice President, Product Management and Growth, IBM Software.

"Watsonx.governance is a one-stop-shop for businesses that are struggling to deploy and manage both LLM and ML models, giving businesses the tools, they need to automate AI governance processes, monitor their models, and take corrective action, all with increased visibility. Its ability to translate regulations into enforceable policies will only become more essential for enterprises as new AI regulation takes hold worldwide."

IBM Consulting has also expanded their strategic expertise to help clients scale responsible AI with both automated model governance and organizational governance encompassing people, process and technology from IBM and strategic partners. IBM consultants have deep skills in establishing AI ethics boards, organizational culture and accountability, training, regulatory and risk management, and mitigating cybersecurity threats, all using human-centric design.

Watsonx.governance is one of three software products in the IBM watsonx AI and data platform, along with a set of AI assistants, designed to help enterprises scale and accelerate the impact of AI. The platform includes the watsonx.ai next-generation enterprise studio for AI builders and the watsonx.data open, hybrid, and governed data store. The company also recently announced intellectual property protection for its for IBM-developed watsonx models.

IBM is a leading provider of global hybrid cloud and AI, and consulting expertise. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. More than 4,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM's hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM's breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and consulting deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM's long-standing commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) to Leverage IBM Watson Assistant for Testing Facilities on COVID-19

Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Department of Health Research, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India, has collaborated with IBM to implement a Watson virtual agent (called Watson Assistant) on its portal to respond to specific queries of front line staff and data entry operators from various testing and diagnostic facilities across the country on COVID-19.

The virtual agent has been deployed on protected pages of the ICMR website that can be accessed only by authorized personnel who are involved with sample collection and testing in hospitals and diagnostic labs. The queries could be related to nature and process of data to be captured by test labs, how to record inventory of test kits & reagents, process of reporting to various Government agencies and references to the latest guidance, in addition to responding to queries on COVID-19 in general. 

Professor Balram Bhargava, Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) said, “While India has been able to manage COVID-19 to a certain extent, the challenge still continues to minimize further. It is critical to remain focused on testing, diagnosis and treatment in order to lower the growth curve. With the number of on-field testing teams expanding across the nation as part of India’s COVID-19 measures, this collaboration with IBM will help automate responses from the field & facilitate access to accurate & updated data on COVID-19 diagnostics & reporting. This will help augment our teams' response time and allow them to concentrate on priorities like developing & updating testing & treatment protocols and guidance for COVID-19.”



Shri. Gopalakrishnan S., Additional Secretary, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Government of India commented, “Technology continues to play a significant role in India’s fight against COVID-19, and it is crucial to evaluate and leverage the most effective solutions to support these initiatives. The deployment of IBM’s chatbot AI platform is aimed to help ICMR effectively manage the process of capturing data relating to COVID-19.”

Commenting on the announcement, Sandip Patel, General Manager, IBM India/South Asia said, “As India rises to meet the challenge of COVID-19, it is crucial to enable government bodies such as ICMR to utilize data and capabilities effectively for rapid detection and treatment. This collaboration is GoodTech in action and a testament to IBM’s commitment of enabling governments, businesses and citizens across the globe to have access to our technology and expertise in tackling the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic.”

The Watson virtual agent is AI enabled and will be able to understand and respond to common queries in English and Hindi, from approved testing facilities for COVID-19 across India at scale, around the clock in a uniform & timely manner, as per the latest guidelines. Queries will be categorized under various headings such as Governance, Logistics, Data entry and sharing, Staff Training & Testing and for complex questions, pre-defined contact information of ICMR is made available. The virtual agent is also expected to help in on-boarding new data entry operators and staff of diagnostic centres, as the COVID-19 test network expands across the country.

IBM offers Watson Assistant for Citizens on Virus Queries

IBM said on Thursday it is offering Watson Assistant for Citizens to speedy reliable responses to COVID-19 questions.

With a flood of information requests from citizens, waiting time in many areas to receive answers can exceed two hours, according to the company.

IBM Watson Assistant for Citizens on the IBM public cloud brings together Watson Assistant, Natural Language Processing capabilities from IBM Research, and enterprise AI search capabilities with Watson Discovery, to understand and respond to common questions about COVID-19, it said.

IBM said it developed the Watson Assistant for Citizens to provide an AI-powered virtual agent that helps governments deliver accurate information to their citizens without overwhelming contact centres where human agents are needed to help those who truly need them.

To introduce this offering in India, IBM Research has trained Watson Assistant to answer queries in English and Hindi to enable various government agencies and Departments to offer this service to its constituents, Gargi Dasgupta, Director - IBM Research India and CTO IBM India /South Asia, was quoted as saying in anIBM statement.

Watson Assistant for Citizens leverages currently available data from external sources which include the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and other government sources for prevention and treatment related guidance, citizen welfare schemes in India, as well as global resources such as World Health Organisation (WHO) and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), it was stated.

IBM said it is already delivering this service across the United States, as well as engaging with
organisations globally in Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Italy, Poland and Spain, among others.

Using information provided by clients, Watson Assistant for Citizens automates responses to frequently
asked questions about COVID-19 that come in via text, such as What are its symptoms?, How do I clean my home properly? and How do I protect myself?, the statement said.

State and local government agencies, hospitals or other healthcare organisations can choose to customise the solution to address citizen questions specific to their area or region, including How many cases till date in Mumbai?, Which essential services are open during lockdown?, and Where can I get tested in Bengaluru?, IBM said.

IBM is offering Watson Assistant for Citizens for no charge for at least 90 days and would assist with initial set up, which can typically be done in a few days, it said, adding, the initial solution is available in English and is being tailored to include Indian languages as well such as Hindi.

IIT-Bombay Joins IBM's AI Horizon Network to Push Cognitive Computing Research in India

Premier technology institute Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IIT-Bombay) and IBM on Wednesday announced that the institute will join the AI Horizons Network, a network of the world’s leading universities committed to working with IBM to accelerate the development of core technologies needed to advance the promise of cognitive computing.

As part of this multi-year collaboration, IIT-Bombay and IBM will advance Artificial Intelligence (AI) research in India in the domain of multi-modal content for industries such as financial services, retail & healthcare, announced IBM.

The Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay is one of the preeminent research institutions in the world, with a long history of leadership in data mining and information retrieval systems.

By joining the AI Horizons Network, IIT Bombay will pair its world-class faculty and top graduate students with leading AI scientists from IBM Research - India to advance and accelerate the application of AI, machine learning, natural language processing and related technologies to business and industry.

Under IBM's AI Horizon Network, Researchers at IBM, world-class faculty, and top graduate students work together on a series of advanced research projects and experiments designed to accelerate the application of artificial intelligence, machine learning, natural language processing and related technologies. Projects are designed to apply the technologies to some of the world’s most enduring challenges, ranging from disease and the environment to transportation and education. The Network addresses the entire AI stack from analyzing the unstructured and structured data required to train these systems to building the new computing infrastructures needed to optimize the new data-intensive workloads of a truly digital world.

The IIT-Bombay & IBM collaboration will also work to advance the field of training and building domain-specific AI agents (chatbots), which are designed to aid humans in complex decision-making such as making trading and investment choices in financial services. Additionally, work is planned to explore new, domain-neutral training approaches which could enable faster, more efficient training of AI systems.

[caption id="attachment_126154" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Arvind Krishna (left), Senior VP, Hybrid Cloud and Director, IBM Research and Prof Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay(Image Credit - YourStory.com)[/caption]

“Over its 20-year history, IBM Research – India has been at the forefront of research advances in technologies like AI and blockchain. We have always had strong collaborations with the leading academic institutions in India,” said Arvind Krishna, senior vice president, Hybrid Cloud and director, IBM Research. “Through this collaboration with IIT Bombay, we aim to accelerate the pace of innovation for AI in India, working hand-in-hand with some top scientists and research scholars in the country," he added.

Speaking on the relevance of collaboration Prof. Devang Khakhar, Director, IIT Bombay said “This partnership will enable IIT Bombay faculty to work in collaboration with researchers around the world on the frontiers of Artificial Intelligence focusing on industrially relevant problems and will provide access to large data sets. We look forward to fruitful collaboration, which will make a significant impact on the field.”

Some of members of the network include Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), University of Michigan, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (Illinois), among others.

IBM’s research partnership with MIT is to advance the area of video comprehension, i.e., to develop systems that emulate the human ability to understand and integrate inputs from multiple sources of audio and visual information into a detailed computer representation of the world.

To recall, government of India's policy think, NITI Aayog, has already partnered with IBM to develop a crop yield prediction model using artificial intelligence to provide real time advisory to farmers in backward states of India.

Last August, IBM has opened of its first Machine Learning (ML) Hub in India, its fifth in the world. The hub, located in Bengaluru, is a physical space for organizations to visit for hands-on training on ML. Prior to that, tech giant Google too launched AI Studio, globally to foster & nurture machine learning startups worldwide.

Rise of AI - 1,000 Indian Firms Including Startups Sign Up For IBM's Watson Platform

American multinational technology company IBM has revealed that more than 1,000 Indian firms are currently making use of its popular Watson Internet of Things platform, according to a report in the Economic Times. IBM considers some of India's most popular companies like Tata Steel, Reliance Group, Tech Mahindra, Maruti-Suzuki, Mahindra & Mahindra, KPIT, Arrow Electronics, Kone, Acculi Labs, Avanijal Agri Automation and Schneider Electric India among its customers and partners.

IBM's new Watson Internet of Things (IoT) is a cognitive system that learns from, and infuses intelligence into the physical world. It is a data analytics and cognitive artificial-intelligence (AI) platform that draws insights from enormous amount of data collected through sensors placed on machines and devices.

In addition to the Indian companies and startups, IBM is also working with several Indian states and government bodies on asset optimisation, water management and precision agriculture projects.

Commenting on the impressive numbers that IBM has garnered in India, Harriet Green, general manager, Watson Internet of Things, customer engagement and education at IBM said, "India has exceeded our expectations in numbers. The speed to market in Indian environment is fantastic. We are working with big brands, medium-sized companies and a phenomenal number of startups, particularly in agriculture and healthcare."

The American giant combines its cognitive AI platform called Watson to analyse data collected through various IoT sensors placed by customers. The insights gathered are then used to predict, improve and track the performance of machines and devices, and enhance the experience being offered to customers.

When it comes to IoT, IBM has gone all out and made a whopping $3-billion investment to bring in AI capabilities to Internet of Things. A crucial part of IBM's strategy in realising this mission is capturing the Indian IoT market, which is still in its nascent stage. Over the past one year, IBM has achieved tremendous success in the Indian subcontinent as it has doubled its growth in India for Watson IoT.

According to Green, "We are seeing a double-digit growth around the world. And you can bet your bottom dollar that India is leading in terms of innovation and client engagement. In India, I don't know the exact number but it is around 15 per cent in terms of growth of innovations, ideas and important partnerships."

IIITM-Kerala Develops An IoT Powered Real-Time Water Quality Measurement System

The Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management, Kerala (IIITM-K) and IBM today announced the development of a real-time water quality management system - 'Swatchpaani'. The system, powered by IBM Watson Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, is intended to continuously monitor water quality and measure temperature, pH and the presence of various metal/non-metal substances in the water.

[caption id="attachment_116028" align="aligncenter" width="400"] SWATCH PAANI[/caption]

The proposed solution developed at IoT Lab of IITM- Kerala will compose of Libelium, signal conditioning boards and sensors and Raspberry Pi for connecting these to IBM Bluemix Cloud services and Watson IoT platform for device and sensor data management, analysis and visualization. The system will support data analysis in real-time and trigger alerts if there are anomalies in the water samples. The project will also incorporate a pre-screening mechanism to test the water quality of mobile water distribution systems.

"The conventional method of testing water quality is often inaccessible and time consuming. In this context, Swatchpaani offers a convenient, mobile, quick and cost effective solution for the pre-screening of water samples. The extensive lab tests may be mandated only when the pre-screening signals a potential threat." said Dr. Asharaf, Principal Investigator, Swatchpaani Project, Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management – Kerala (IIITM-K).

"The IBM Watson IoT platform is an easy-to-use, scalable solution which provides seamless integration with various IoT devices to build specialized, integrated solutions to solve industry and business challenges. The Swachpaani project is one such result on Watson IoT that demonstrates the impact technology can bring to the life of an individual. IBM India continues to work with academia to create useful and meaningful innovation based on Watson technologies," said Devkant Aggarwal, Manager, University Relations, IBM India.

Meet 'Chintu' - An IBM Watson-Powered Robot by MIT Pune

A smart bunch of students from Maharashtra Institute of Technology (MIT), Pune have developed 'Chintu' -- A Robot Companion powered by IBM Watson Technology.

Chintu, the cognitive assistant robot is designed to assist the senior citizens in conducting everyday tasks such as reading the newspaper/book, provide mood based entertainment services for song and dance and generate reminders on their daily medication.

Chintu is two feet (58-cm) tall and about five kilos in weight, made of a bunch of sensors and cameras.

While the robot came from French firm, Aldebaran Robotics (now SoftBank Robotics), the students used APIs of IBM Watson, along with the IBM Bluemix Cloud platform to create the 'brains' or the actual intelligence behind the robot.

Notably, MIT Pune had received a grant of Rs 10 lakh last year from IBM to developed the robot under cognitive assistant, IBM Watson.

Chintu can move his hands and read books to an audience. "Drawing from Watson's domain knowledge, Chintu will assist senior citizens in conducting everyday tasks such as reading the newspaper/book and generate reminders on their daily medication," Professor and Head of Computer Engineering Department at MIT Pune, Vrushali Kulkarni, told PTI

[caption id="attachment_114837" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Students of MIT, Pune working on Project Chintu -- (L-R) Krishnamohan Manmohan, Astitva Shah, Sanketh Gupta Chellu, Rishav Dasgupta and Professor Vrushali Kulkarni[/caption]

Students at MIT have been working on Project Chintu for the past few months. While 'Chintu' is still a few years from becoming mainstream, the students will continue to work on him to add functionalities. "This has also opened up a new and exciting research avenue for our students. Robotics, Machine Learning and Cognitive Computing are interesting fields of research today and our students are getting first-hand experience of working in these fields," added Kulkarni.



Mezjan Dallas, University Relations Leader at IBM India said the project is a great example of co-creation. "You put great technology in the hands of bright and enthusiastic students, you give them freedom and a fun element and India's next generation of engineers start to do magical things," he said.

#Chintu #MITTechfest2017 #robotcompanion #IBMIndiaUR #MITroboChintu pic.twitter.com/F0FQJqJy18

— Gayathrie Maediratta (@GGMAEDI) March 16, 2017

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