IBM Corp. today updated its Watson AI tools to help customers eliminate some of the data complexities that prevent them from implementing artificial intelligence-based technologies.

The updates are all part of IBM’s so-called “Watson Anywhere” initiative that involves scaling AI across any kind of cloud computing platform. Watson Anywhere’s main aim is to make data accessible to AI no matter where it’s stored.

It’s built on top of the open source Kubernetes project and enables customers to connect data regardless of where it resides. Watson Anywhere also provides access to a suite of microservices including Watson Openscale and Watson Assistant. Openscale is an open AI platform that helps customers to detect issues such as AI model bias and understand how AI comes to its decisions, while Assistant helps companies to build conversational interfaces like virtual customer assistants.

New features in Watson OpenScale include something called “drift detection,” which allows customers to address concerns about data privacy and algorithm accountability. It works by showing users how far an AI model has “drifted” by comparing the production and training data and the resulting predictions a model creates.

Watson Assistant gains a new Assistant for Voice Interaction capability that makes it easy to plug an AI assistant into an interactive voice response system used in customer call centers. The idea is that callers will be able to ask questions in their natural language and find the answers they need.

Watson Discovery, an AI-powered search product that uses natural language processing and machine learning used to find data across an organization, gets a new “Content Miner” tool. This makes it easier to search large datasets for specific types of content, such as text or images, the company said. The tool offers a “simplified setup format” to help non-technical users and a “guided experience” capability that recommends next steps in configuring projects.

Meanwhile, IBM’s integrated data analytics platform Cloud Pak for Data is now certified to run on Red Hat Inc.’s OpenShift container orchestration platform. The company said customers can be assured that “all the components came from a supported source, container images contain no known vulnerabilities and most importantly that the containers running throughout are compatible across Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments, regardless of the cloud, and whether private, public or hybrid.”

In addition, IBM shared some examples of how its customers are using Watson AI to build their own AI systems. They include the professional services firm KPMG International Cooperative and the Air France–KLM airline. In the case of KPMG, its been working with IBM to enable “greater governance and explainability” of customer’s AI projects through the OpenScale service.

“IBM’s strategy for developing AI tools that enable clients to run AI wherever their data is, is exactly the reason we turned to OpenScale – we needed multicloud scalability in order to give clients the kind of transparency and explainability we were talking about,” said Steve Hill, global and U.S. head of innovation at KPMG.

Air France-KLM said it has built a new voice assistant called My Interactive Assistant using IBM Watson Assistant with Voice Interaction. It said MIA was able to help it improve its customer services by significantly reducing file processing times.

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