Adobe enhances its Sensei AI with new services

Smart Layouts, which was shown at Summit last year as a Summit Sneak, was also announced to be in General Availabiilty.

Adobe Sensei demo. An associate is able to use the AI to see what shoes in a customer’s size are in stock.

LAS VEGAS – Adobe’s busy day of announcements on the first day of Adobe Summit here on Tuesday included the announcement of the availability of the next generation of their Adobe Sensei artificial intelligence [AI] and machine learning technology. Attribution AI, Customer AI, and Journey AI services are now available in beta. In addition, Smart Layouts, which was previewed at Summit a year ago as a Summit Sneak, are also now generally available within the Adobe Marketing Cloud

“We have more of a Harry Potter view of the world on machine learning where it is slightly more magical – easier and faster with a sense of wonder,” said Tatiana Mejia, Head of Product Marketing & Strategy for Adobe Sensei. “Adobe AI has been around for almost ten years, with its first use being in red eye reduction.” Sensei, launched three years ago, broadened the AI into an ecosystem which is being extended through the Adobe Experience Cloud.

“There are a lot of jobs our target market audience does that are drudgery, that we can take away with AI, so they can do more story telling and focus on the customer experience,” said Abhay Parasnis, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. “In that sense, Sensei will amplify human productivity and not replace it. Every breakthrough technology over a long period of time changes the dynamic of what the labour force chooses to do.”

“Nothing replaces human ingenuity or creativity, but the biggest thing that terrifies people is the blank page,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe’s CEO. “The hard part is starting the creative process. The digital experience here augments the marketing person’s experiences, and the AI learns and uses the data set to make the decisions in real time.”

“Last year, we talked about Sensei experiences, services, and frameworks, and the tools layer that underlays them,” Parasnis said. “This year, we are announcing that Smart Layouts powered by Sensei are now available. This started last year as a Summit Sneak and is now available in product. It uses data and AI to generate and optimize layouts for audience segments defined down the right hand side. Commerce customers want to be treated as individuals and Smart Layouts let you do that at scale.”

Smart Layouts brings the strengths of hypersonalization into the Adobe Experience Cloud, Parasnis stressed.

“For the first time it can combine analytics data with rich commerce cloud data, which will enable Sensei to predict consumers behavior,” he added.

The new services available in beta are targeted at the enterprise developer market.

“The idea here is to give these customers more choice in the design of custom workflows or applications,” Mejia said.

Customer AI in Adobe Sensei is designed to help with customer for engagement, retention, and upsell by allowing brands to accurately uncover specific segments of users and target each with the right marketing campaign.

“These propensities come with reason codes, which show things like a propensity to purchase or to churn,” Mejia said. “The reason code can make is way into a customer service system.” This can provide insight like retention scoring that would show which individuals are most likely to cancel their membership to a subscription service. “

Journey AI gives brands a way to orchestrate journeys across millions of users, constantly analyzing behavioral data and activating brand experiences at the optimal times. It will enable a retailer for instance, to orchestrate different paths for longtime customers versus early prospects.

Attribution AI can show the conversion impact driven by owned, earned and paid media across the full customer journey, and make informed resourcing decisions for understanding impact. It shows the real impact of channels and campaigns, rather than what is more common now, which is an overemphasis on the first and last touch with a customer.

“Attribution AI helps answer question of whether a channel or campaign was an incremental touch point or whether it sourced a new conversion,” Mejia said. “It can do this at a very granular level.”