Artificial intelligence, the simulation of human intelligence processes by computer systems, is growing increasingly smarter and more powerful, making it a technology that companies across industries want to get their hands on – including Los Angeles companies.
Different forms of AI can help businesses by improving predictions in customer behavior, allowing companies to make faster business decisions. It can also help companies save time and money by automating processes and tasks and increasing productivity.
In line with today’s economic state, investment in artificial intelligence technology has dropped, but it by no means signifies a decline in popularity. According to the State of AI Report by AI investors Nathan Benaich and Ian Hogarth, big companies have expanded their artificial intelligence teams and partnered with AI startups.
West Hollywood-based dating app Tinder, for example, uses machine learning, a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on the creation of computer algorithms that can improve their performance automatically through usage.
According to the digital media platform Mashable, users have taken this even further by utilizing San Francisco-based OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, to facilitate conversations.
How it works is that a user will prompt the bot to write something, and ChatGPT will formulate a conversation based on that prompt. According to a report by Semafor last week, Microsoft is set to invest $10 billion in OpenAI.
Most recently, MeetKai, a Marina del Rey-based conversational AI company, partnered with the Los Angeles Chargers, a partnership that will help the sports team create digital products for its fanbase.
What AI can do
Weili Dai, co-founder and chairwoman of MeetKai, said artificial intelligence can be for anybody, and added that she is very happy to see companies, both big and small, taking part in the innovation of artificial intelligence.
“Our vision is mapping the real world imagined through a virtual space, the metaverse, and then leveraging that AI technology and capabilities and features and tools in the virtual world,” Dai said.
She continued to say the most practical thing that artificial intelligence tools can help businesses improve is their training practices to not only cut costs but also get better results.
“A partner came up to me and said, ‘I have over 16 (global employees) and I have to constantly train them,’ and travel is so costly and then it depends on who is training them, it might not have a similar quality or result,” Dai explained. “But guess what happens with AI? You can do all these trainings in a virtual space, at the speed of light and everything is going to be copied exactly. It’s consistent.”
Of the partnership, Dai said, “I’m so happy to see MeetKai’s innovation and technology leadership in driving advanced AI solutions, across different industries, to better lives for all. We are extremely excited about our partnership with the Los Angeles Chargers, and I believe this will lead the pack for the sports industry.”
The Chargers will be able to utilize MeetKai’s AI technology, which is capable of processing natural conversation and personalized search results to develop new in-stadium and at-home experiences including an AI-based locker room tour.
Jim Rushton, L.A. Chargers’ senior vice president of stadium affairs and strategy, said adopting artificial intelligence technology is a way to improve relationships with customers, or in their case, fans.
“There’s so much out there relative to personalized experiences. The AI side of MeetKai, which is their conversational AI chatbot, will give the chance for the organization or the companies to better service their customers based upon the personalized questions that they’re asking and that they need answers to,” Rushton said. “Then on the 3D mapping perspective, it is an opportunity to give the customers, or fans in our instance, the opportunity to get some behind-the-scenes insight into the organization and or create different and new experiences for their customers.”
With 20 games making up a football season, Rushton said this partnership opens the opportunity to keep fans engaged the other 345 days of the year.
“In today’s world, in the sports world and certainly in Los Angeles, it’s become extremely competitive for people’s time for them to consume product, and so we need to always be looking for opportunities to create deeper and more meaningful relationships with our fans,” Rushton added.
Adam Struck, founder and managing partner of Santa Monica-based VC firm Struck Capital, said that a lot of the innovation that’s being pushed forward in AI is actually what he considers to be highly commoditized is within the application layer, a component within an app that controls the communication with other devices.He said companies across industries can benefit from utilizing AI because the technology can help them learn from data and improve their products or services.
Real opportunity
“In the same way that we consider ourselves getting ‘more wise’ over time because we experience various forms of adversity, learn from it, and hopefully make a change to the right direction, with a proprietary data set and artificial intelligence and machine learning, you can essentially go through the ‘trials and tribulations’ of life or product development systematically and automatically with machines,” Struck explained. “I think for the first time now, there’s a real opportunity to just ingest data, essentially create a feedback loop and learn from that data and have that inform the accuracy of whatever product you’re building. Technology innovation can literally be used anywhere or on anything as long as there’s some semblance of tech and some semblance of a product.”
Struck said the hottest topic in the AI space right now is generative AI, an artificial intelligence that can generate “fake” content, rather than analyzing existing data. Generative AI models produce text and images from blog posts, poetry, and artwork.
“I think if you spoke to 100 VCs and you ask them, ‘what is the sort of area that you’re most excited to invest in?’ I think any sort of piece of core technology innovation that has an (artificial intelligence or machine learning) sort of automated feedback loop is going to be a big part of investments,” Struck said.
