Wiliot has unveiled WiliBot, a generative AI (GenAI) chatbot designed to facilitate natural-language interactions with any product connected to the ambient IoT. By merging the capabilities of generative AI with a vast reservoir of real-time data from the physical world, companies—and eventually consumers—will be able to engage in meaningful conversations with the products they manufacture, source, distribute, and purchase.
With WiliBot, businesses can query their products and supply chains with questions such as: What is the shelf life of this product? How did it arrive at the store? Which product should I stock next, and for what reason? Is it safe to stock this item, and why? What is the carbon footprint of this product, and what factors contribute to it being so high or low?
“Ambient IoT and generative AI are increasingly symbiotic technologies,” explained Tal Tamir, CEO, Wiliot. “Ambient IoT generates vast amounts of data about trillions of everyday things, and GenAI can uniquely make sense of all that data. On the flipside, GenAI learns by analysing vast amounts of data. To a real extent, that data has so far been finite, but ambient IoT presents massive new physical world datasets that a GenAI platform like WiliBot — and others — can use to describe products, materials, supply chains, and everything connected to the internet.”
Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform employs stamp-sized, self-powered IoT Pixels that can be attached to products, packaging, containers, crates, pallets, and more. These IoT Pixels communicate information such as location, temperature, humidity, and carbon footprint via Bluetooth to the Wiliot cloud, where businesses can analyse the data.
Wiliot’s AI and machine-learning algorithms can then identify supply chain events and automatically generate alerts or AI-driven responses, enabling businesses to adjust or optimise their operations—for instance, by detecting when shipments of produce or pharmaceuticals have been exposed to unsafe temperatures.
“Although Wiliot’s work in generative AI is relatively recent, the company has long been a pioneer in artificial intelligence and machine learning for deriving insights into ambient IoT data,” Tamir added. “As more companies have begun rolling out Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform, we’ve been asked how GenAI capabilities might make the transformation even easier. Our answer is WiliBot, the real-world combination of ambient IoT and AI.”
Wiliot will begin piloting WiliBot with key enterprise customers immediately, with a broader rollout planned for late 2024 and into 2025. During the pilot phase, WiliBot will assist businesses in querying their ambient IoT-enabled products and supply chains.
Looking ahead, this fusion of ambient IoT and generative AI will be extended to consumers, both in-store and at home, through a suite of mobile applications. These apps will allow consumers to converse with their products to gain insights into their carbon footprint, material composition, ethical sourcing, quality, safety, and more.
“Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform already allows companies to gain unprecedented intelligence about trillions of products,” Tamir concluded. “Now more businesses – and in the future consumers – will be able to ask about and easily understand everything about those products. With WiliBot, we’re answering the question, ‘What if your products could talk?’ Now they can, in natural language, thanks to WiliBot.”
WiliBot is built on a leading large language model (LLM), combining the ground breaking capabilities of ambient IoT with the computational power of GenAI, ushering in a new era of supply chain visibility.
The critical link between ambient IoT and AI has been highlighted in recent projects with major food retailers. In these projects, Wiliot’s Ambient Data Platform revealed that approximately 5% of food in the supply chain is lost, damaged, or spoiled before reaching store shelves. The Wiliot platform has been able to resolve two-thirds of these issues, leading to a safer food supply, greater customer satisfaction, and reduced costs. WiliBot will now democratise access to these insights across organisations.
Wiliot will demonstrate WiliBot and its Ambient Data Platform at MWC Las Vegas 2024, taking place from 8-10 October in West Hall Booth 910. The company will also discuss the convergence of ambient IoT and artificial intelligence in a session on 9th October titled “5G Advanced Release 19: Transforming Industries with Ambient IoT and AI.”
There’s plenty of other editorial on our sister site, Electronic Specifier! Or you can always join in the conversation by commenting below or visiting our LinkedIn page.
