Apple and IBM are collaborating to make it easier for developments to create AI-powered applications. The effort will employ IBM Watson Services for Core ML. Apps created with this solution grow smarter from user activity.

Core ML provides apps on Apple devices with advance machine learning capabilities. IBM Watson famously competed on, and won Jeopardy! several years ago. Now this AI technology is used in many commercial applications.

The Watson Visual Recognition Service can now be exported to Core ML and run on Apple devices. “Any developer can use pre-trained models or create custom models in IBM Watson and export them to Core ML to use in their apps, connecting professionals to the most critical information when they need it,” the companies explain.

The companies also have unveiled a developer console that Swift developers can use to connect to the IBM Cloud to quickly and easily build apps. “The IBM Cloud Developer Console for Apple comes with enhanced step-by-step guidance for developers of all experience levels, along with integration with AI, data, and mobile services optimized for Swift,” the companies said.

The Coca-Cola Co. is now working on prototypes to explore how IBM Watson Services can help it transform workflows for field workers, including the use of visual recognition problem identification, cognitive diagnosis, and augmented repair. 

Cognitive systems and AI adoption across a broad range of industries are likely to drive worldwide revenues from nearly $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020, according to IDC.

Automated customer service agents is one of the key AI areas that has attracted investment last year. AI and machine learning could also be used in banking to model current real-time transactions as well as predictive models of transactions based on their likelihood of being fraudulent.