9 May 2023 - IBM Watsonx unveiled

Digital Innovation Days

12 years after winning the game show Jeopardy with its software Watson, IBM unveils Watsonx, a new product suite aimed at helping companies develop and deploy artificial intelligence more efficiently. Based on the Red Hat Openshift platform, the solution comprises three main offerings: Watsonx.ai, Watsonx.data, and Watsonx.governance.

Watsonx.ai provides access to prepackaged AI models and datasets, allowing users to train generative AI models and neural networks without starting from scratch. It includes models such as fm.code and fm.geospatial, which assist software teams in generating code and performing tasks like biodiversity monitoring and disaster pattern analysis. Watsonx.ai also offers access to open-source neural networks from the Hugging Face platform.

Watsonx.data is a data lakehouse where organizations can store the information used to train their AI models. It supports multiple query engines for optimized performance and provides automation features.

Watsonx.governance is designed to detect AI biases and model drifts, ensuring compliance with privacy regulations.

Alongside the Watsonx suite, the IBM Cloud platform is to provide new compute options with access to Nvidia GPUs, enabling customers to utilize them for AI training and inference tasks. Also introducing IBM Cloud Carbon Calculator, a machine learning-powered tool, to help enterprises measure the environmental impact of their technology infrastructure.

The suite offers a comprehensive end-to-end AI workflow, empowering businesses to adopt and customize AI for their specific needs. Watsonx also integrates with major IBM software products and establishes partnerships to expand the reach of AI capabilities across its ecosystem with companies like SAP.

In 2023, IBM faces strong competition from similar platforms in the market. Microsoft's Azure AI, Amazon's SageMaker and Google's Vertex AI offer comparable solutions to facilitate AI deployment. Also from AI-focused businesses like OpenAI, Cohere and Anthropic who provide state-of-the-art AI offerings.

But Watsonx sets a path forward for IBM who will establish a dedicated center of excellence for generative AI to assist enterprises on training, fine-tuning, and deploying AI models, but also address key challenges in AI adoption like security, compliance or transparency.