Salesforce has unveiled its UK synthetic intelligence (AI) centre, positioned in London’s Blue Fin constructing, which formally opens on June 18. Final yr, the corporate pledged to take a position $4bn in AI innovation and progress within the UK over 5 years.
Salesforce is the second main US tech supplier to determine a London AI centre this yr. In April, Microsoft opened an AI hub in London to drive what it describes as “pioneering work to advance state-of-the-art language fashions”. The corporate mentioned its London workforce would work carefully with different components of Microsoft and OpenAI to construct the supporting infrastructure for AI and develop instruments to assist basis fashions.
Zahra Bahrololoumi, CEO, Salesforce UK and Eire, mentioned: “By finding Salesforce’s first AI centre in London, we’re sending a transparent message to prospects and companions on AI: we’re deeply dedicated to working carefully collectively so to reap the rewards of this transformative expertise, whereas making certain it’s a drive for good.”
Susan Emerson, senior vice-president of product, AI, analytics and information at Salesforce, mentioned the corporate runs many occasions that deliver collectively thought leaders, practitioners and Salesforce product leaders to tell and encourage folks “to assume greater in regards to the potential of AI expertise”.
The AI centre in London is one other a part of this technique. She mentioned that the audience could be somebody who’s utilizing Salesforce both as a Salesforce administrator or a gross sales stakeholder who desires to grasp extra about AI.
“For some folks, AI looks as if an enormous [learning] curve,” she mentioned, including that the centre would assist folks to demystify AI expertise and allow them to experiment in workshops utilizing the AI throughout the Salesforce product suite. “We now have all of the low-hanging fruit use instances as buttons.”
As an illustration, throughout the Salesforce service desk module, there’s AI performance that gives service desk operators solutions to buyer inquiries based mostly on summaries earlier assist instances.
As a part of its UK focus, Salesforce Ventures has invested greater than $200m in UK firms together with ElevenLabs, the text-to-speech and AI voice generator; and AutoGenAI, the world’s main AI bid-writing engine.
In the course of the firm’s London World Tour, Salesforce introduced the final availability of Knowledge Cloud Vector Database. That is being positioned throughout the firm’s Knowledge Cloud, as a approach to assist companies to analyse unstructured information sources like name transcripts, on-line buyer evaluations and assist tickets.
In accordance with Salesforce, the brand new performance signifies that Knowledge Cloud can now ingest disparate unstructured content material from buyer interactions throughout a number of touchpoints, together with web sites, social media platforms and commerce channels, at scale. The Knowledge Cloud then makes use of generative AI to create embeddings on unstructured information which can be listed within the vector database.
In associated information, Salesforce mentioned the Knowledge Cloud could be out there on Hyperforce, its regional public cloud, within the UK beginning July 31, 2024.
