IBM is pushing forward in the world of smart assistants, giving Watson an upgrade to meet the needs of consumers around the world.

The company has teamed up with brands from around the globe, including HARMAN, Munich Airport and Royal Bank of Scotland to bring new capabilities to IBM Watson.

Together the brands aim to transform Watson into an enterprise AI assistant, building solutions that can bring together data from various places and things customers visit on a daily basis.

Watson’s new capabilities have been incorporated into a single app, which is easily accessible for consumers wherever they are. The aim of bringing together data from various aspects of an individual’s life is to make day-to-day jobs seamless for the consumer.

IBM Watson gets personal with new capabilities
Watson takes the data from different aspects of the users life.

Data that is collected is specifically set to the daily preferences of an individual, securely shared between their vehicle or preferred hotel as well as a coffee shop that they visit daily. IBM Watson sources data from conversations, texts, videos and locations and is then analysed to provide predictive suggestions to consumers.

The benefits of IBM’s update to Watson is that customers will only get recommendations based on the data they allow Watson to access, making it perfectly tailored to their needs. Additionally, it makes journeys much more seamless by adjusting necessary arrangements based on real-time information. For example, if a flight is delayed and transport to a hotel has been booked Watson can use this data to reschedule a booking.

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From a business perspective, it allows organisations to give their customers a much more personalised service than has ever been available before ensuring the best customer service.

The new capabilities of Watson also coincide with the new GDPR regulations, by giving customers control of their data by choosing what, where and how their data is shared based on personal preferences. Any data individual’s do not want Watson to have, they simply will not share. Equally, IBM has said any data stored in the app will remain there, reassuring users their personal information will not be exploited to third party applications.