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Adobe introduced its next-generation Adobe Cloud Platform, called the Experience System of Record, and touted new capabilities for its Sensei artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning platform at Summit 2018 in Las Vegas March 27.

“Intelligence is foundational to everything we are doing at Adobe,” CTO and EVP Abhay Parasnis told Summit attendees during a keynote presentation. “More than anything else, we believe that AI and machine learning will completely transform the future of enterprise architecture,” he said, adding: “There is absolutely no question that we are entering an AI-powered world. In many ways, AI represents the most profound shift in computing for the next decade.” Its impact “will be even more far-reaching” than the creation of the Internet, he predicted.

AI is also “already starting to touch all of our lives — whether it’s our personal life or professional lives,” he went on to say, pointing out it’s already being used for “smarter web searches,” as well as e-commerce recommendations, personal voice assistance, smart thermostats and smartphones that “can literally recognize your face instantly.”

He went on to say: “We are really only at the beginning, with self-driving cars or smart robots that are bound to transform the industry landscape. Now, this AI-powered world requires a complete rethink of the entire technology model and interaction model” and it’s up to companies including Adobe to “shape this future aggressively.” That’s why Adobe is “making a massive investment in AI as we look to the future,” he said.

The company’s new, next-gen Adobe Cloud Platform boasts several technology enhancements, including Sensei services, a new unified customer profile and General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) readiness ahead of May 25, the date that the European Union plans to start enforcing GDPR.

The Cloud Platform “enhancements will make it easier to unify data from disparate systems into an Experience Cloud Profile, enable data scientists and developers to better customize Adobe Sensei capabilities to suit their organizations’ needs and speed the deployment of custom code and workflows,” Adobe said in a news release.

Using the new Sensei services, enterprise developers will now be able to access, via application programming interfaces (APIs), pre-built Sensei algorithms and train them specific to their needs, according to Adobe. The first Sensei service, made immediately available in preview, “gives developers access to algorithms that increase the speed of content delivery, asset production and content personalization, such as automatic image tagging and image cropping,” the company said. Three additional Sensei services will become available in preview 
“in the coming months and will focus on attribution, customer journeys and customer profiles,” it said.

“We are entering a new era for the enterprise,” Brad Rencher, EVP of Adobe’s Digital Experience Business, said. “Today’s modern enterprise needs a new system of record — one that can manage and make sense of the high volume of content and data,” and the company has introduced the Experience System of Record in response to that, he said, noting It “brings together the power of data, content and intelligent services, as well as an open ecosystem, to help each enterprise in their journey toward becoming an Experience Business.”

Adobe also announced new innovations across Adobe Experience Cloud, including advanced capabilities in Advertising Cloud, Marketing Cloud and Analytics Cloud.

The company, for instance, unveiled Adobe Analytics for streaming audio, which it said gives brands a way to gain deep insights into online and offline audio, including understanding listening behaviors, streaming quality and monetization opportunities.

Adobe also announced general availability of Adobe Experience Cloud Device Co-op, a core service of the Experience Cloud that it said leverages the power of Analytics Cloud and Sensei, aggregating anonymous device data from participating Adobe customers and “enabling individual brands to recognize actual consumers, not just devices, across digital touchpoints.” More than 60 global brands already joined the Device Co-op, enabling them to reach over 300 million consumers across 1.8 billion devices in the U.S. and Canada, Adobe said.

The latest release of Adobe Experience Manager, meanwhile, features new Sensei-powered content capabilities including intelligent image discovery that the company said allows for the tailoring of images for different screens and automated personalization of content. Adobe also announced marketers and data scientists can now customize their algorithms in Adobe Target, “unlocking the power” of AI for personalization.

Adobe Advertising Cloud now also includes features powered by Sensei that the company said were designed to “optimize the relevance and performance of search, display and video ads across all screens.”