Welcome to the first episode of the AI Index Report, featuring practitioner analyst and entrepreneuer Toni Witt. This series is intended to deliver the timely intelligence you need to get up to speed for an upcoming client engagement or board meeting.
Highlights
00:15 — The series is designed to recap important events involving AI and automation by covering three core pillars:
- A key innovation in AI and why it matters
- New funding for startups and mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
- The top AI product of the week
Which companies are the most important vendors in AI and hyperautomation? Check out the Acceleration Economy AI/Hyperautomation Top 10 Shortlist.
Innovation
00:44 — A spin-out came from KPMG called Cranium, a B2B AI security platform. Because new technologies often bring new security risks, platforms such as Cranium are vital as AI continues to advance.
01:14 — Cranium is building a pipeline that “identifies potential security risks along your data to AI pipelines as it exists across tools that enterprises currently use,” Toni explains. Although the startup doesn’t yet have a product, Toni notes that it “plays nice with KPMG AI security framework.”
01:52 — Products and technology “have to be used alongside these frameworks when picked up and used by large organizations,” Toni says. Frameworks can help teams manage security risks, increase efficiency, and maintain ethical standards when using AI.
Startup/M&A
02:35 — Accenture has been “on an acquisition spree” in the AI industry. It recently acquired Flutura, a mid-sized industrial AI company based in Bangalore, India. The aim is to build the digital twin for net zero, essentially offering AI products to industrial companies to help them reach net zero goals and increase efficiency.
03:09 — Flutura has an IoT platform called Cerebra which enables users to connect various industrial assets into a “digital umbilical cord.” Flutura essentially has a whole suite of different products and focuses on what industrial customers need.
03:43 — Toni describes the company’s approach as a “self-service approach,” which he considers to complement Accenture nicely. “It enables engineers to build digital articles, or twins, of these industrial assets, diagnostic tools, and manage most of the workflow themselves.”
04:12 — Because the company is based in India, it opens a lot of doors for Accenture within this market.
Product of the Week
05:15 — Adobe Firefly is a set of generative AI tools that will be embedded directly into the existing Adobe Suite. Users will be able to type prompts into the tools they’re already using.
05:54 — This integration will add value to editors, as prompts can ease video and photo editing processes. It will “drastically reduce the time to value of generative AI for marketing teams because, again, it’s built into the professional tools that marketers are already using,” Toni shares.
06:30 — Adobe has always placed a high value and high emphasis on “human plus technology” synergy. Embedding generative AI tools into existing products is a continuation of that.
06:54 — Because these generative AI tools are embedded into products, people are still able to manually make changes and edits to whatever is generated without re-prompting.
