Messagepoint highlights AI research at Communitech’s Data Hub

There’s a lot of hype out there surrounding Artificial Intelligence (AI). The vision of a society in which humans are replaced by intelligent machines is a long way off, if it ever becomes reality. But, no one can argue the fact that AI is making its way into many aspects of our lives – bringing new benefits and real value. From shopping recommendations on Amazon, to content suggestions on Netflix, to suggested news articles by Apple News or Reddit – the insights and predictive capabilities of AI have broad applicability to many industries and use cases.

Investing in Content Intelligence

At Messagepoint we identified Content Intelligence – the application of AI and machine learning to more intelligently manage, use or create content – as the next frontier of value for our customers. As an early adopter of AI, we have pushed the boundaries of innovation and invested in AI research for many years.
In 2017, for example, Messagepoint applied for the i3 (IBM Innovation Incubator) program and received funding for advanced analytics research projects into two areas:

• Multi-lingual semantic textual similarity – the ability to measure the degree to which two given content pieces are similar in meaning
• Universal ingestion – the ability to extract quality content from large volumes of documents with varying file formats and bring them into a common repository

The i3 program brings together Messagepoint, UWO and Communitech

The i3 program is focused on accelerating the growth of small to medium-sized enterprises – and one way they do this is by matching data analytic projects (those addressing important business questions and pursuing breakthrough ideas) with post-doctoral researchers from leading universities. Then, they are given support services from a local incubator hub.

In pursuing their AI research projects under the i3 program, Messagepoint’s Atif Khan, Vice President of AI & Data Science and his team collaborated with data scientists from the University of Western Ontario (UWO), under the direction of Dr. Robert Mercer, specializing in computational linguistics (CI) and natural language processing (NLP). They, in turn, were matched with and supported by i3 resources located in Communitech’s innovation hub.

Sharing the projects’ success

This week, Messagepoint and UWO shared the successful results of their two i3 research projects at a Communitech Data Hub session. Over the course of 1.5 years, the research rapidly progressed from ideation, to research, to product development and has recently found its way to customers with Messagepoint’s latest product launch.

“The support of Communitech and the i3 program has been essential to our success, enabling us to define highly focussed outcomes, separate and apart from our internal R&D efforts, and to boost our expertise through partnership with leading researchers at the University of Western Ontario. And, now our customers are benefiting from the results”, says Atif Khan.

Shown above: team members from Messagepoint, UWO, and Communitech pose for a group photo

Results now generally available

The research completed through i3 is reflected in Messagepoint Advanced Rationalization and Content Intelligence Engine (MARCIE) – an AI-powered and machine learning engine that helps companies analyze their inventory of communications and identify opportunities to consolidate duplicate and similar content, while also identifying issues with brand adherence, sentiment, and reading levels within customer communications.

Messagepoint officially announced MARCIE at DOCUMENT Strategy Forum on May 6, 2019, and generally released their machine learning infrastructure as part of their 19.1 release on May 31, 2019.

Learn more

To learn more about Messagepoint’s AI-powered Content Intelligence engine, MARCIE, please visit our website or contact us today. To view a recording of the presentation shared at the Communitech’s Data Hub session, click here.