The Week in AI: New Tools from Salesforce, Zendesk, Datorios, WhyLabs, Hailo, More -- Pure AI

The Week in AI: New Tools from Salesforce, Zendesk, Datorios, WhyLabs, Hailo, More

By Pure AI Editors
04/29/2024

This edition of our weekly roundup of AI products and services includes the GA of Salesforce Einstein Copilot, a new service tool suite from Zendesk, the release AllegroGraph 8.1 and Hailo-10, Datorios' Apache Flink big-data processing framework, WhyLabs' new its AI Control Center, and a new AI training course from Google.

Google launched a new self-paced AI training course called Google AI Essentials. The course was designed "to help people across roles and industries learn AI skills to boost their productivity," the company said. No programming skills are required to take the course, which features training from Google's own AI experts and provides hands-on experience using AI. Students will learn how to use AI tools to help develop ideas and content, make more informed decisions, and speed up daily work tasks. Students will learn to use AI tools to brainstorm new ideas, generate concepts for a product, and develop a presentation to pitch the product. They'll learn how to use AI tools to research the best location to host an event it based on their criteria, and come up with a tagline or slogan. And they'll learn how to clear out their inboxes faster by using AI to summarize emails and draft responses.

Zendesk, a leading customer service software company, unveiled a suite of AI-powered tools designed to "revolutionize the customer service industry in the AI rea." The new tools suite includes autonomous AI agents, workflow automation, an agent copilot, Workforce Management (WFM), and Quality Assurance (QA) capabilities, all integrated through Zendesk AI. The new tool was designed to handle up to 80% of support requests, tripling the rate of immediate, automated resolutions. The new AI agents from Zendesk can autonomously interact with customers, providing end-to-end resolutions for both simple and complex queries, the company said. These agents are highly sophisticated, capable of integrating with any knowledge base, and are fully customizable.

Franz Inc., a leading provider of AI ad graph database technology, introduced AllegroGraph 8.1. This release marks a significant advancement as the first Neuro-Symbolic AI Platform, blending machine learning with knowledge and reasoning capabilities. The platform includes ChatStream, a natural language query interface that enhances how knowledge graphs are accessed and used. AllegroGraph 8.1 is the most secure graph database available, the company said, representing "a new era in AI" by combining statistical AI (machine learning) with symbolic AI (knowledge and reasoning). This integration enables the platform to tackle complex issues requiring reasoning, and allows it to learn more effectively with less data. The approach not only broadens the range of tasks AllegroGraph can handle, but also ensures the AI's decisions are both understandable and explainable to humans.

Edge AI processor maker Hailo announced the introduction of Hailo-10, its line of high-performance generative AI accelerators. The new accelerators were designed to allow users to own and run GenAI applications locally without registering to cloud-based GenAI services. The Hailo-10 GenAI accelerator leverages the same comprehensive software suite used across the Hailo-8 AI accelerators and the Hailo-15 AI vision processors, enabling seamless integration of AI capabilities across multiple edge devices and platforms. Enabling generative AI at the edge ensures continuous access to GenAI services, the company said, regardless of network connectivity; obviates network latency concerns, which can otherwise impact GenAI performance; promotes privacy by keeping personal information anonymized; and enhances sustainability by reducing reliance on the substantial processing power of cloud data centers, the company said.

AI observability startup WhyLabs debuted its AI Control Center, a new kind of AI operations platform designed to provide companies with real-time control over their AI-powered applications. AI Control Center was designed to address rising concerns over the security and reliability of the underlying large language models (LLMs) that power generative AI workloads. WhyLabs says its AI Control Center can give companies unprecedented, real-time control over their AI applications, helping engineering, security and business teams eliminate a number of risks. For instance, it can detect and prevent unsafe user experiences caused by false, misleading, inappropriate, or toxic outputs, and it can identify bad actors and misuse of externally-facing chatbot and question and answer applications.

Datorios, a startup specializing in streaming data observability, launched a new real-time observability platform tailored for Apache's Flink big-data processing framework. This platform promises to provide companies with unprecedented insights into streaming data processing, according to the company. These insights are meant to support the development of new, real-time AI systems, the company said, ensuring they operate correctly and can be fully audited for compliance. The platform acts as a "flight recorder for real-time AI," offering enhanced visibility into the data flowing through Apache Flink-based pipelines. This increased transparency is intended to facilitate easier troubleshooting and auditing of real-time AI applications, ultimately simplifying these processes for developers. The founders of Datorios, who have extensive experience in developing real-time military intelligence systems, believe their new product will empower developers to build more sophisticated AI applications that function in real time.

Salesforce announced the general availability of its Einstein Copilot, a customizable conversational assistant. It's now available across all Salesforce applications. The release includes new features designed to enhance the assistant's ability to automate actions. Einstein Copilot is designed to integrate with Salesforce, extracting data and metadata from corporate clouds to provide contextually aware assistance and "chat" with users. This functionality allows users to ask questions and receive reliable answers based on their company's data from within their cloud environment. A key feature of Einstein Copilot is its ability to perform tasks or create workflows on behalf of users. These Copilot Actions, which consist of pre-programmed capabilities and customizable workflows, enable the AI to carry out various tasks upon request, such as sending messages, modifying data, updating contacts, and performing other related activities.