Studying AI Leaders: Lessons from GitHub, ChatGPT, Levi’s, and More
How can organizations better utilize AI? Learn how these five products are helping revolutionize the marketplace.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage. It’s not new, but it does seem to be reaching new heights. With improved computing hardware, cheaper storage, and advanced open-source software libraries, AI has become more accessible and useful than ever before. If you’ve been wondering how your company can use AI to enhance its products, you’re in the right place. Let’s take a look at five products in the marketplace today and see what we can learn from them.
GitHub Copilot: Elevate your existing offerings with AI
First up is GitHub Copilot. GitHub is a website that software developers use to manage their code repositories. It can store files, help keep track of bugs, help you build and run your software projects — and now it can help you write the actual code. Billed as “your AI pair programmer,” GitHub Copilot uses AI to help software developers write code. “It draws context from comments and code to suggest individual lines and whole functions instantly.” If you’re in the software development world, it’s definitely worth checking out; if not, don’t worry — we can still learn some business-level concepts from it.
GitHub was already an industry standard before the introduction of Copilot. With Copilot, they’ve found a product that fits in perfectly with their existing offerings, enhancing their services while giving users more tools to do their jobs. They charge a separate subscription fee for Copilot, creating an additional revenue stream while keeping their legacy products intact. Other businesses can learn from GitHub’s approach by considering new innovative products that can complement their brand and generate additional revenue. People are excited about AI right now, and if the product is helpful, they’re probably willing to pay for it.
ChatGPT: User experience always matters
Surprise, surprise — we’re going to talk a little about ChatGPT in an article focused on AI. If you’re not familiar, ChatGPT is a chatbot that uses AI to answer questions, create poems, write code, or do pretty much any other text-based task. ChatGPT is built by OpenAI and uses their generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) family of large language models under the hood. My goal here isn’t to talk about the many fun and exciting things it can do but rather to look at another reason it took off so quickly.
OpenAI initially introduced the OpenAI Playground in June 2020, more than two years ahead of ChatGPT. The OpenAI Playground utilizes the same underlying technology and can perform a similar, if not a broader, set of tasks than ChatGPT can. So, why didn’t we hear more about generative AI and OpenAI when the Playground was launched? What is it about ChatGPT that quickly resonated with so many people? I believe it primarily boils down to user experience.
The Playground features a somewhat cumbersome interface where you need to guide the AI into providing the desired responses by using various prompts and completion formats. Additionally, you can adjust different settings and modify the model’s configuration to achieve your intended outcomes. While this configurability can be helpful, it can also be confusing and is best suited for advanced users.
In contrast, ChatGPT eliminates the need for adjusting settings. You simply chat with it as if you’re messaging a coworker, and off you go. User experience has always been crucial on the web, and this holds especially true today. Incredible technology advances that don’t have a clear and familiar way to interact with them will still gain some traction, but pair that incredible technology with a great user experience, and you’ll really have something special.
IdentiFlight: More than just software — AI in the real world
IdentiFlight uses AI to identify when eagles and other birds are flying too close to wind turbines and then shuts those turbines down to prevent collisions. The product uses an array of cameras and other sensors to detect a bird, its classification, its flight path, and more.
I wanted to call this one out for a couple of reasons. First, it was on the top of my mind as a company I used to work for played a role in its development. Second, and more importantly, I think it’s an excellent example of what you can do when using cameras and other peripherals in combination with AI. It’s easy to get caught in a software-only mindset with AI. Having great AI software can take you quite far, but combine it with sensors and other peripherals, and the sky is the limit.
Levi’s: With great power comes great responsibility
Levi’s, the classic denim company, might not be on your bingo card of companies leveraging AI in interesting ways, but here we are. Levi’s has a long history of innovation, and they aren’t stopping now. Recently, the company has been using AI to help design clothes. Their software can “define edges of a garment, locate button placements and determine pockets, to name a few.” They also have image recognition tools that can help determine the exact color of a thread, which used to take a lot of manual effort and time.
Recently, however, Levi’s received backlash for its plan to employ AI in creating images of models from various ethnic backgrounds to showcase their clothing. The primary concern revolves around the replacement of human models, especially those from diverse backgrounds, with AI, all while positioning it as a step towards achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. AI advancements are happening rapidly, and you can gain a competitive edge by embracing them; however, you should be thoughtfully considering the many ethical and human concerns each step of the way.
Embracing AI can benefit all companies, regardless of age, industry focus, or product/service offerings. It might not be in building consumer-facing products; in fact, I’m guessing there are more uses for internal-facing AI applications than for external, consumer-focused applications. Take a little time and identify some internal pain points your company is dealing with. How might the thoughtful and responsible application of AI help fix those problems?
Amazon Web Services (AWS): DIY AI with cloud providers
AWS has many services available to help you create your own intelligent products. These include AWS Rekognition, an image and facial recognition platform, and AWS Lex, which can be used for building AI-powered chatbots. Amazon Bedrock is a generative AI service that allows developers to interact with various foundational models. Agents for Bedrock can help you create software that safely and securely generates content based on your company’s proprietary information. There are services for industrial machine maintenance, fraud detection, business metric forecasting, and more.
In addition to AWS, Google Cloud Platform and Azure also offer a host of different options. You can leverage these resources to design your own models or use out-of-the-box models. There’s a reason cloud providers are offering all these tools: people are using them, and companies are racing to figure out how to use AI to help their businesses. If you haven’t started exploring how your company can embrace AI, now’s the time.
Ready to talk AI?
In an era where AI’s impact is profound and pervasive, every organization stands to benefit. From GitHub’s Copilot elevating software development to IdentiFlight’s real-world applications, AI is a game-changer. Yet, as Levi’s ethical considerations suggest, it also demands responsible implementation.
Getting started with AI doesn’t have to be daunting. The first step is identifying your organization’s specific pain points that AI can address. Once you’ve pinpointed these areas, consider existing solutions, like cloud-based AI services from AWS or Google, to kickstart your AI journey. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel; leverage established AI technologies and platforms to accelerate your initiatives.
Slalom has helped hundreds of organizations use AI to automate repetitive processes, amplify efficiencies, generate rapid insights, and make sense of complex patterns. By using AI to improve decision-making, speed, and efficiency, we create new opportunities for people to do what only humans can — think creatively and innovate boldly.
Slalom is a global consulting firm that helps people and organizations dream bigger, move faster, and build better tomorrows for all. Learn more and reach out today.
