2024-04-23 23:00:00
The soft drink company is very interested in the Redmond giant’s AI
When talk began about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) after the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, personalities such as Bill Gates predicted that this discipline would have a notable impact on a wide range of industries. Not only purely technological actors would benefit, but also those in sectors such as food, medicine or education.
In the end, everything seemed to indicate that the AI industry would end up becoming a very lucrative business. Possibly for this reason, an amazing “arms race” began between American Big Tech to lead the development of this technology. The industry leader would have a better chance of recovering part of the investment made. Today one of the most prominent actors at Microsoft.
The alliance between Microsoft and Coca-Cola
For decades, companies of all sizes have been experiencing what is known as “digital transformation.” It is a process that involves integrating digital technology at all levels, something that often requires enormous cultural changes. All this in pursuit of reducing costs, improving productivity and even scaling various areas of the business more dynamically.
Digital transformation seems to be entering a new stage where AI is the real protagonist. More and more companies are implementing internal solutions, products or services based on algorithms. This, precisely, is where Coca-Cola comes into play. The American soft drink giant wants to use generative AI on a large scale, and is willing to spend millions of dollars to achieve it.
Both companies have announced it through its press channels. Coca-Cola has made a commitment to 1.1 billion dollars with Microsoft. We are facing a five-year “strategic alliance” that responds to the food company’s plan to align its entire technological strategy under the leadership of Microsoft to “promote innovation and productivity worldwide.”
The link between Microsoft and Coca-Cola is surprising. The latter company has already migrated all its applications to the Microsoft Azure cloud computing platform and is even encouraging its independent partners to follow its example. This million-dollar investment will make both firms take their relationship to the next level, as we say, with generative artificial intelligence as one of the axes.
It’s no secret that generative AI still has a long way to go. The models must improve, mainly in relation to the precision and safety. But the truth is that the current state of this technology has not prevented work between the aforementioned giants. In fact, they have made it clear that they will jointly experiment with innovative use cases.
The idea is for Coca-Cola to test Azure OpenAI Service’s AI in various business functions. Let us remember that one of the star products of the aforementioned service is Copilot. The AI assistant should help employees improve the customer experience, as well as optimize their work and foster innovation and growth. In other words, Coca-Cola seeks to be much more competitive.
The example of Coca-Cola, whose previous investment in Microsoft occurred in 2020 and was $250 million, is an example of how the Redmond company could get juicy contracts. Satya Nadella’s firm has its current position largely thanks to the decision to partner with OpenAI. We must not forget that a large part of its products are based, in turn, on its partner’s technology.
Images | Microsoft | Coca Cola
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