Adobe to John Deere to Zendesk: How AI is Infiltrating Every Industry

“AI Everywhere” is the promise — improve productivity, solve real-world problems, and make work and life far easier. And it’s everywhere.

Open almost any program, and you will see a shiny AI assistant button, be it Adobe, Microsoft, or banking apps. Farmers tilling the field are prompted to click “Accept” and add AI to their John Deere tractors.

But as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly embedded in professional tools and workflows throughout every organization, will it drive innovation and transform how we complete tasks?

We attempt to look beyond AI’s hype and buzzword status and ask what tangible improvement it will bring to the workplace.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. The Rise in AI in All our Traditional Apps
3. Roads, Docs, Customer Service & Learning Languages
4. The Bottom Line
5. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. The Rise in AI in All our Traditional Apps
3. Roads, Docs, Customer Service & Learning Languages
Show Full Guide
4. The Bottom Line
5. References

The Rise in AI in All our Traditional Apps

AI Acrobat Reader joined the crowd earlier this year as the latest Adobe product to offer new AI capabilities powered by Adobe’s generative AI model, Firefly. The AI upgrade lets users quickly generate and edit images in PDFs using a text prompt.

With no external tools, any sales, marketing, or legal professional can quickly create visuals that make their content engaging and more impactful.

Adobe just launched an AI chatbot in beta for Acrobat to make navigating long documents easier with AI summaries.

In other words, they made a native 'Chat PDF'.

It works with PDFs, Word files, PowerPoints and more. pic.twitter.com/uU4JeXlPCo

— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) February 21, 2024

It’s one example, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg of how AI is seeping into everyday life.

Let’s move to medicine, where, by analyzing extensive medical literature and genomic data, IBM Watson is helping doctors uncover previously hidden insights and connect patterns to improve the diagnosis and treatment of rare pediatric diseases.

Meanwhile, Watson for Oncology supports oncologists by offering evidence-based treatment options and operating as a diagnostic assistant to help patients.

At Amazon, AI improves shopping experiences by offering customers personalized recommendations. By analyzing browsing behavior and recent purchases, Amazon’s machine learning algorithms suggest product offerings based on each customer’s preference.

Amazon's latest innovation, Rufus (the AI shopping assistant), is revolutionizing the way we search and shop on the platform.

Currently in beta, Rufus is poised to transform the search experience, providing fewer but more targeted results tailored to individual customer needs.… pic.twitter.com/7byJDyWihO

— Liran Hirschkorn (@LiranHirschkorn) June 18, 2024

On the legal side, JP Morgan‘s COiN uses AI to analyze legal documents to extract essential data, dramatically reducing the time consumed by manual review processes from thousands of hours to seconds.

Automating routine data extraction and contract analysis tasks reduces human error and gives lawyers additional time to spend on strategic activities.

Are you spotting a pattern yet? Let’s keep going.

John Deere has added AI into its agriculture machines to increase productivity and sustainability for precision farming. AI technology allows farmers to track crop conditions in real time and monitor them best for yields. For example, an AI-driven herbicide application at John Deere reduces chemicals by as much as 95 percent, making the process cost-effective and eco-friendly.

“John Deere is not just a farming company but one of the world’s leading AI and robotics companies.” #CES2023 pic.twitter.com/vguUPKTqyu

— Michael Josh (@michaeljosh) January 5, 2023

John Deere says it helps farmers cope with several challenges, including labor shortages, shifting weather patterns, and rising food production to feed a growing global population.

Roads, Docs, Customer Service & Learning Languages

On the roads, Tesla‘s Autopilot is AI-based driver assistance technology that should rigidify the safety of today’s roads, with the first steps toward eventual goals for which the company desires to provide autonomous vehicles.

The AI in Tesla cars uses extensive data from sensors and cameras to keep the car within a lane, permit adaptive cruise control, offer self-parking, and, as a bonus, removes or reduces fatigue and human error.

Microsoft meanwhile incorporates AI across its entire suite of products, which they suggest increases productivity and efficiency. New AI-powered features include real-time grammar and style suggestions in Word and Excel data analysis that help workers create professionally-looking documents and derive meaningful insights to make data-driven decisions.

Meanwhile, Microsoft Azure added AI services to help developers to build intelligent apps, automate routine tasks, and unlock insights from extensive data.

It extends to how we communicate with businesses too, with companies like Zendesk and LivePerson using AI-driven chatbots and virtual assistants to handle customer inquiries. These bots respond instantly and (on the best days) resolve common issues successfully, leaving more complex problems for human operators.

?? Let's take a closer look at Zendesk's generative AI features for customer service agents.

???? See more from The Next Big #ZendeskAI Drop: https://t.co/PKJixP376n pic.twitter.com/plS8316H97

— Zendesk (@Zendesk) October 4, 2023

That said, 64% of consumers vote against AI in customer services.

Meanwhile, the extremely popular Duolingo app has added AI to modify the difficulty level according to a learner’s pace and proficiency to consistently be helpful and engaging.

On the safety side, Darktrace deploys AI to identify and respond to threats in real time. These AI models self-learn from the network environment, recognizing anomalies and probable future threats more quickly than traditional protection methods.

In doing so, Darktrace automatically detects and correlates suspected activities across the digital environment—from email to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) to network systems. Darktrace’s autonomous response actions, powered by AI, aim to protect sensitive data without disrupting the business.

The rare form of #MachineLearning that can spot #hackers

who have already broken in
via @techreview https://t.co/nZACUBI1N6 #fintech #insurtech #AI #ArtificialIntelligence #DeepLearning #robotics @_KarenHao #CyberSecurity @missdkingsbury @Shirastweet @Darktrace @ahier pic.twitter.com/QdHiCPHjrC

— Spiros Margaris (@SpirosMargaris) November 19, 2018

The Bottom Line

As we examine AI’s integration across every industry, we can see “AI Everywhere” is changing the world, and that is without opening the can of worms of AI washing — where CEOs or marketing teams try to slip AI into their marketing campaigns.

As AI continues to evolve and embed deeper into our tools and systems, business changes everywhere — it’s a great shift similar to the arrival of the Industrial Age and the computer.

The writer William Gibson once proposed, ‘The future is already here—it’s just not evenly distributed. ‘ But in the 2020s, that distribution seems to be measured in months and years.