IBM Corp. has tried to democratize artificial intelligence for enterprises with the IBM machine learning platform. Now, with its Digital Business Assistant, the company aims to do the same for pretty much anyone with a computer.

“How do we make Watson [IBM’s cognitive platform] tailorable and put it in the hands of every knowledge worker in every company?” said Michael Gilfix, vice president of process transformation at IBM. That is the question that started wheels turning at IBM to produce the assistant, he explained.

The tool is geared toward average nontechnical users to analyze and manage data, email, spreadsheets and more.

Gilfix and James Casey, program director of offering management at IBM, spoke to John Furrier (@furrier) and Dave Vellante (@dvellante), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile live streaming studio, during IBM InterConnect 2017 in Las Vegas, NV.  (*Disclosure below.)

The application programming interfaces-based tool can hook into Software as a Service applications, customer relationship management platforms, email and Google’s G Suite, for example. Users can teach it to monitor all dashboards, analyze data, and push information to them categorized for importance or even sentiment, Gilfix said.

Sentiment secret sauce

This sentiment analysis enabled by Watson can parse email content and keep business relationships from souring. “If I get three emails of negative sentiment from a customer where I also have an open opportunity in the last week, that’s a pattern I want to know about,” Casey said.

Users need not know they are using Watson or how, said Casey. They give a command, and the assistant figures out the technology. “It just makes it really consumable and easy for people,” he said.

Gilfix and Casey anticipate that users will desire pre-built skillsets, so they plan to open up software development kits to developers to extend the assistant for specific industries.

IBM Digital Business Assistant is available in beta now (via waitlist) at ibm.com/assistant.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of IBM InterConnect 2017. (*Disclosure: SiliconANGLE Media’s theCUBE is a media partner at InterConnect. Neither IBM nor other conference sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE