IBM Debuts Watsonx to Help Companies Add AI Tools

IBM has unveiled watsonx, an artificial intelligence platform to help businesses integrate AI.

“We built IBM watsonx for the needs of enterprises, so that clients can be more than just users, they can become AI advantaged,” CEO Arvind Krishna said in a Tuesday (May 9) news release.

“With IBM watsonx, clients can quickly train and deploy custom AI capabilities across their entire business, all while retaining full control of their data.”

If the name “Watson” sounds familiar within the context of IBM, it’s because the company used software of the same name to win at “Jeopardy!” 10 years ago, beating Ken Jennings, the game show’s star-player-turned-host.

Although IBM said Watston could learn and process human language, its high cost made it difficult for companies to incorporate, Reuters noted in a report on watsonx.

But that was 2013. A decade later, the lower cost of implementing large language AI models has changed the playing field, Krishna told the news service.

“When something becomes 100 times cheaper, it really sets up an attraction that’s very, very different,” he said in an interview with Reuters.

“The first barrier to create the model is high, but once you’ve done that, to adapt that model for a hundred or a thousand different tasks is very easy and can be done by a non-expert.”

The news comes one week after reports that IBM was freezing or slowing hiring for around 26,000 back-office roles, jobs that could be done by AI.

“I could easily see 30% of that getting replaced by AI and automation over a five-year period,” Krishna said in a Bloomberg News interview.

On Tuesday, the chief executive clarified this doesn’t necessarily mean the company’s total employment would decline.

“That gives the ability to plow a lot more investment into value-creating activities,” he said. “We hired more people than were let go because we’re hiring into areas where there is a lot more demand from our clients.”

IBM’s announcement comes as AI is “having an ongoing pop culture moment,” as PYMNTS wrote Tuesday, as the technology and worries about its misuse continue to grab headlines.

Underneath that commotion, our report said, there are “exciting efficiencies to be captured and untapped opportunities to leverage — particularly across the payments landscape.”

For example, Andrew Gleiser, chief revenue officer at payments provider Aeropay, told PYMNTS he views “two areas in the near term” that generative AI technology can affect, and one “right now” that is already underway.

He said he was enthusiastic about the impact generative AI can have on application programming interface (API) documentation, citing work Stripe has already carried out with OpenAI to integrate ChatGPT-4’s capabilities into its workflows.

“There’s a huge opportunity to help customers deploy core features faster, and [for businesses] to repurpose staff to help with more advanced integrations,” he said.