Watson, the artificial intelligence created by IBM more than a decade ago, is ready for its encore as interest in artificial intelligence continues to grow.
IBM has unveiled WatsonX, the next generation of the AI that’s most famous for winning on Jeopardy. The company introduced the enterprise-focused AI and data platform Tuesday.
It’s a reboot of sorts for Watson, designed to pit the technology against ChatGPT and other AI products from Google and more. When Watson was first launched, IBM made many of the same boasts AI companies are making today, specifically about the technology’s ability to “learn” from human language.
The price of operating Watson was prohibitive, however. And in recent years, the company has not discussed the system (and 15 months ago, IBM sold its Watson health unit). But as the technology has matured, the company has found efficiencies—and increased demand.
“With the development of foundation models, AI for business is more powerful than ever,” said Arvind Krishna, IBM Chairman and CEO in a statement. “Foundation models make deploying AI significantly more scalable, affordable, and efficient. We built IBM watsonx for the needs of enterprises, so that clients can be more than just users, they can become AI advantaged. With IBM watsonx, clients can quickly train and deploy custom AI capabilities across their entire business, all while retaining full control of their data.”
IBM is partnering with AI startup Hugging Face for the relaunch of Watson. So far, NASA, Wix and Meta-owned PyTorch have all signed on as clients. WatsonX is currently in a closed beta test, but IBM says it should be more widely available by July of this year.
Among the possible use cases, companies are using WatsonX to train AI platforms, generate code and assist with customer care.