The 7 Most Unique Ways People are Using AI

Companies are leveraging some strange, but rewarding, artificial intelligence uses.

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence enables companies to get creative with how they use the technology.

Usually, that creativity has limits. That’s because companies use AI to streamline and improve tasks they’d already been doing manually (think an accounting firm using the technology to handle accounts receivables or a fast-food chain digitizing burger orders.)

That’s why it’s understandable for companies to use AI in conventional ways. According to 451 Research’s Voice of the Enterprise (VotE): AI & Machine Learning survey, most companies are using AI for tasks like fraud detection, compliance and payment processing, consumer demand prediction, and supply chain management, among other uses. But what about using AI for more unique or even strange uses? Most companies overlook this area because they are committed to spending their AI budgets frugally. Other companies, however, are finding new and creative ways to use AI in the workplace.

The Weirdest AI Apps and Tools

According to Magora, a London, UK-based mobile and web application development company, these are some of the “weirdest” ways companies are using AI—and they’re getting great outcomes.

1) Henson Robotics’ Sofia the Robot

This android robot has appeared on CNBC, been granted citizenship in the United Arab Emirates, and even been cleared for a new credit card.

The robot was created to improve speech capabilities in automated bots, but Henson has proven that Sofia is an AI robot with a mind of her own.

2) This chatbot may brew your next beer

You wouldn’t think that an AI bot would have a sense of smell and taste, especially when it comes to mixing the needed ingredients for a great beer.

London-based IntelligentX Brewing Co. begs to differ. Its chatbot doesn’t need to collect feedback from beer drinkers or brewmasters. It’s doing a great job of brewing great craft beer on its own.“(The company) is the first brewer ever to introduce beer made with the help of artificial intelligence,” Magora notes. “Their chatbot would ask customers about their preferences and rate them from 1 to 10. It would then interpret the info and pass it to the professional brewers.”

3) A best-selling fan fiction bot

Botnik Studios has developed a reputation as a company that uses machines to write content.

Now, it’s created an algorithm that learned to write based on J.K. Rowling’s “Harry Potter” books as a blueprint. It’s even published three chapters for a book entitled “Harry Potter and the Portrait of What Looked Like a Large Pile of Ash.”

It may not have the panache of Rowling’s mainstays like “The Goblet of Fire” or “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” but it does bring its own brand of logic to the automated written word, which could set the stage for major publishing breakthroughs down the road.

4) The Archie Bunker chatbot

Microsoft received a lot of flak for its chatbot for conversation and speech recognition on Twitter. Created in 2016 and called “Tay,” the AI bot proved all too real as “users began to tweet all sorts of misogynistic and racist comments at it.”

While the outcome was a disaster for Microsoft, Tay proved that AI bot could process natural language – unfortunately, even racist and sexist language.

5) AI dream Creator

An AI-powered Deep Dream Generator developed by computer and graphics design researcher Alexander Mordvintsev is giving humans an intriguing take on what dreams look like.

“The Google developer tried to understand what deep neural systems see when they look at a picture,” Magora says. “In the process of his research, he has collected a bunch of tools that have proven AI can generate fresh visual content.”

6) The propaganda papers

There’s a buzz among media types that AI is coming for their jobs, but you have to wonder after fake news sites like Grover create “deep fake” news stories, even if they appear to be the real deal.

Grovers sets itself apart from the rest of the AI “bot news” creators by writing provocative headlines that readers tend to believe. The bot copy is created using huge swaths of web content.

Grover analysts say the bot copy is written tongue in cheek to show news media sites that AI apps like Grover best uncover fake news.

“We find that the best current discriminators can classify neural fake news from real, human-written news with 73% accuracy, assuming access to a moderate level of training data,” Grover analysts wrote in a recent research note. Counterintuitively, the best defense against Grover turns out to be Grover itself, with 92% accuracy.”

7) Google’s AI laboratory

Digital consumers may not realize it, but Google has a specific “latest AI experiments web page” called “Labs Google.”

There, Google can walk visitors through its latest AI 1.0 apps and tools. Check out its new ImageFX product, which transforms texts into images, or its NotebookLM app, which gives users a personal AI collaborator “designed to help you do your best thinking.”

After all, if you’re going to fall down an online rabbit hole, make it one that offers AI tools to improve your life.