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AI in Customer Service: Enhancing User Experience

  • By Gcore
  • 8 min read
AI in Customer Service: Enhancing User Experience

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the way businesses communicate with their customers. From engaging customers with AI-powered chatbots to offering 24/7 support through intelligent systems, AI is more than a technological advancement; it’s now considered an essential part of modern customer service. This article will explore the multifaceted impact of AI in customer service, detailing its applications, benefits, and its vital role in enhancing customer loyalty and operational efficiency, all of which help businesses to stand out in today’s market.

What Is AI for Customer Service?

AI for customer service, or AI customer experience (CX,) enhances how businesses provide customer service by making technology-based interactions efficient by increasing self-service options and decreasing the need for human agents, even for complex tasks. Ultimately, the goal is to enhance key performance indicators (KPIs) like customer loyalty and engagement.

Examples of AI in customer service include:

  • Self-service food-ordering kiosks
  • Business call screening tools
  • Product recommendation chatbots
  • Predictive analytics for customer service agents
  • Enhanced knowledge base search results

These artificial intelligence systems understand unstructured information in a way similar to humans: They learn from interactions with customers and apply this knowledge to future engagements. They can offer a level of personalization that feels like natural human communication. By performing repetitive customer service tasks and providing quick answers to simple inquiries, AI frees up human customer service agents to focus on the most complex or highly individualized issues.

How AI in Customer Service Works

AI customer service is a three-stage process: insights, customer interaction, and automation. To see how these interconnect, let’s consider the example of an e-commerce retailer, which we’ll call “RetailX.”

Stage One: Insights for Data-Driven Decisions

The AI insights generation cycle

The first stage involves using automated algorithms to collect and interpret data from various relevant digital sources. This shows broad trends in customer behavior, enabling organizations to decide how AI customer service can be of use.

At RetailX, the AI system gathers data from various customer interactions, including website visits, online purchases, cookie records, and customer reviews. RetailX then uses AI algorithms to analyze customer activity, like the time spent on different product pages and reviews given for past purchases, to make sense of the data and generate a holistic customer profile. Natural language processing (NLP) facilitates the analysis of customer reviews and feedback, generating a detailed understanding of what customers think and want.

Imagine a RetailX customer who frequently browses athletic gear. AI detects this pattern and starts to predict what products might interest them in the future, setting the stage for targeted customer service interactions.

Stage Two: Enhancing Customer Interaction

Customer interaction is at the heart of a memorable customer experience. The second stage of the AI in customer service flow focuses on using personalized insights to create an individualized and engaging customer experience.

In e-commerce, AI-driven systems analyze factors about individual user behavior, such as the time spent on a page or interactions with item types, all in real time. A nuanced, instantaneous analysis lets the AI offer suggestions that are highly tailored to what you’re likely to want at that moment. The result is an engaging and effective shopping experience, increasing the chances of you making a purchase.

For example, when our athletic gear enthusiast logs back into RetailX, AI algorithms populate the homepage with sports equipment and clothing, based on the specific sporting interests and brands in which our individual has already shown interest. The personalization isn’t limited to the website; it extends to the mobile app, social media, and email marketing as well, suggesting products aligned with the customer’s historical data while providing a cohesive customer experience across multiple channels. RetailX continuously updates these recommendations based on new data as it’s interpreted, keeping the experience fresh and relevant. 

RetailX leverages AI in Internet of Things (IoT) devices like smart home devices, to keep the customer experience cohesive and personalized across multiple touchpoints, For instance, if our athletic gear enthusiast uses a smart speaker that’s synced with RetailX, they could receive audible recommendations for new running shoes or hydration gear based on their recent activity data.

Stage Three: The Power of Automation

Automating business processes makes customer experiences simple

This leads us to automation, wherein AI takes over routine tasks based on the information it gathered in stages one and two, making operations more efficient and freeing human agents to tackle nuanced and complicated issues. Automation encompasses multiple customer service tasks that AI can perform.

Take the example of our RetailX customer finally ready to purchase a pair of running shoes. The moment they click “Buy,” AI springs into action. It conducts an instantaneous inventory check and manages payment processing, minimizing delays. If the customer has a question, AI customer service bots equipped with natural language processing can resolve straightforward queries, like order status or return policies. For complex questions that require emotional intelligence, raise truly novel issues, or require nuanced understanding, the system reroutes the issue to human customer service agents.

This automation not only expedites the transaction but also generates new data as interactions unfold. This fresh data is channeled back into the first stage, continually refining the customer experience.

AI in Customer Service Applications

Let’s look at exactly what roles AI can support or take over in the realm of customer service.

Chatbots and 24/7 Support for Customer Retention

AI chatbots make it economically feasible for smaller companies to offer round-the-clock assistance. They use natural language processing to understand and respond to customer queries in real time, contributing to higher customer retention rates. While it’s true that 24/7 support existed before AI, the technology makes it more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable.

For instance, if you operate an online travel agency, you could deploy a customer service chatbot that provides instant updates on flight delays or cancellations. By offering timely and accurate information of this kind, your agency builds trust and creates a valued service—qualities essential for retaining customers for future interactions.

Personalized Customer Experience

AI empowers brands to offer personalized experiences to their customers. Algorithms analyze past user behavior and interactions to generate tailored recommendations. This level of customization increases engagement and fosters long-term relationships.

A movie streaming platform could use AI to take the concept of personalized film suggestions to the next level, adapting to your changing preferences. Say you started kayaking as a new hobby. AI could discover this through your activity across online platforms, and might recommend a documentary movie about the sport. This elevates your movie-watching experience from customized to truly individualized, promoting continued subscription renewals.

Data-Driven Surveys for Dynamic Feedback

Traditional surveys have been a cornerstone in gathering consumer insights, but AI-powered surveys offer a nuanced approach. They adjust questions in real time based on a respondent’s prior answers. This iterative process ensures that each question adds a layer of depth, making the data collected highly specific.

For instance, if you frequently eat at a certain restaurant chain and consistently choose vegetarian options, AI would note your preference. The restaurant could customize a survey sent to you to ask questions only about their vegetarian offerings, generating focused and actionable data and creating a highly relevant survey, thus improving survey engagement and completion rates.

Sales and Marketing Through AI-Enhanced Conversion

Predictive analytics in sales and marketing are nothing new. However, AI continuously analyzes user behavior, streamlining the journey from browsing to purchase, without altering the essence of the sales funnel.

Imagine an e-commerce scenario where you add a smartphone to your cart. The AI system could suggest adding a case with an image of your favorite band, a complementary item that you’re likely to need with a personal preference element, making the entire process more targeted and efficient.

Facial Recognition for Security and Personalization

While conventional facial recognition methods rely on static algorithms, AI-driven facial recognition adapts to variables like lighting, angle, and even aging, enhancing its accuracy over time. This continuous learning capacity ensures that security remains stringent without the need for frequent manual updates. It serves as an additional layer of authentication, improving existing security measures while adding a touch of personalization to the customer journey.

In a banking scenario, ATMs with AI-augmented facial recognition could not only verify customer identity with higher accuracy but also adapt to changes like facial hair or glasses. Upon successful authentication, the system could offer a personalized dashboard tailored to the customer’s past behavior and preferences, improving user engagement.

Virtual Assistants Beyond Hands-Free Support

Voice-activated virtual assistants take the monotony out of routine tasks. They handle activities like appointment scheduling with speed, relieving human customer service representatives of the most basic tasks.

Take healthcare appointment scheduling as an example. An AI virtual assistant understands voice commands, enabling patients to effortlessly book, reschedule, or cancel their appointments. Humans can perform all these tasks, but by handing them over to AI, representatives are free to engage in face-to-face interactions in the healthcare setting without a phone continuously ringing in the background.

Content Optimization for Audience Resonance

AI brings precision to content creation and optimization. Algorithms sift through customer interactions to tailor content that speaks directly to an individual consumer’s needs and preferences.

An e-commerce platform could use these algorithms to automatically translate product descriptions into multiple languages. This tailors the customer’s shopping experience to their linguistic preferences, making the platform more accessible globally. It could also suggest blog posts that refer to product lines in which the individual customer is likely to be interested, based on their broader online activity.

Real-Time Feedback Analysis

Customer feedback is integral to business improvement. AI analyzes data from various channels in real time, pinpointing areas that warrant immediate attention—a task that humans can also perform, but less rapidly and less efficiently than AI.

Consider a hotel chain that applies AI algorithms to review customer feedback on room amenities. If multiple guests complain about the Wi-Fi quality, the hotel can prioritize this issue and determine whether it’s a general problem or relevant to specific rooms only, ensuring that future guests have a better experience.

Overcoming Challenges and Risks of AI in Customer Service

AI in customer service is an intricate field with distinct challenges. The information required for AI to function optimally is often scattered across various channels, making unification a significant hurdle. Some companies are also hesitant about AI’s cost and potential return on investment, while others struggle with misconceptions about its capabilities. The line between using artificial intelligence for positive customer impact and respecting privacy and data risks must be carefully drawn, with the technology fine-tuned for each specific application.

These are serious challenges, but there are ways to confront them:

  • Address potential inaccuracies and misinformation: Reducing errors in communication is vital, but the ultimate goal is to enhance user satisfaction by creating experiences that resonate with human instincts and expectations. This is done by:
    • Being vigilant about errors: Potential inaccuracies, if left unaddressed, can erode trust and damage the brand’s image. Implementing timely corrections is not just a technical necessity but a strategic tool to preserve the integrity of the information. Ensuring that the content is accurate reflects the brand’s commitment to quality and fosters a relationship of trust with the audience.
    • Training AI systems: By using large and varied datasets of both text and code, AI can be taught to converse and engage with humans in ways that feel natural. This focused training is a means to bridge the gap between artificial intelligence and human connection. 
  • Ensure human oversight for AI: Balancing the capabilities of AI with human understanding is essential to maintaining integrity and empathy in automated interactions. This is achieved by:
    • Combining AI with human insight: While AI provides the efficiency and speed of automation, human involvement remains important for ensuring accuracy and authenticity. For example, the integration of AI customer service chatbots with human customer support staff results in a system that is not only efficient but also personalized, compassionate and responsive.
    • Transparency about data usage: Being open about data usage builds trust and also forms a vital part of a broader governance strategy. Laying out how information will be handled, protected, and leveraged assures stakeholders that their privacy is respected, promoting a relationship of trust and alignment with ethical business practices.
    • Support for employee growth: Integrating AI into business operations can impact staff roles. By investing in training and new career paths, companies demonstrate their focus on employee well-being. This proactive approach also portrays the organization as resilient and innovative.

Conclusion    

The integration of artificial intelligence in customer service opens new horizons for businesses to create exceptional customer experiences. As we embrace this transformative technology, it is crucial to consider the challenges and ensure human oversight for AI-generated content. Looking ahead, companies that strategically adopt AI in customer service will stand out as technology-savvy innovators, creating breakthrough experiences that strengthen customer-brand connections.

Ready to take your customer service to the next level? Explore Gcore’s AI solutions and revolutionize your customer experience! Our AI Infrastructure enables you to build, train, and deploy machine learning models for any use case. With cutting-edge frameworks and support for AI hardware, you can create personalized interactions, gain predictive insights, and boost customer satisfaction.

Find out which solution works best for your AI requirements.

Talk to an expert

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3 underestimated security risks of AI workloads and how to overcome them

3 underestimated security risks of AI workloads and how to overcome them

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We also look at how investing in your AI security can save time and money, explore the challenges that lie ahead for AI security, and offer a simplified way to protect your AI workloads with Gcore.Risk #1: data poisoningData poisoning is a targeted attack on the integrity of AI systems, where malicious actors subtly inject corrupted or manipulated data into training pipelines. The result is a model that behaves unpredictably, generates biased or false outputs, or embeds hidden logic that can be triggered post-deployment. This can undermine business-critical applications—from fraud detection and medical diagnostics to content moderation and autonomous decision-making.For developers, the stakes are high: poisoned models are hard to detect once deployed, and even small perturbations in training data can have system-wide consequences. 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These perturbations—often imperceptible to humans—can cause models to misclassify images, misinterpret speech, or misread sensor data. In high-stakes environments like facial recognition, autonomous vehicles, or fraud detection, these failures can result in security breaches, legal liabilities, or physical harm.For developers, the threat is real: even state-of-the-art models can be easily fooled without adversarial hardening. The good news? You can make your models more robust by combining defensive training techniques, input sanitization, and secure API practices. 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Securing AI from the ground up: defense across the lifecycle

As more AI workloads shift to the edge for lower latency and localized processing, the attack surface expands. Defending a data center is old news. Now, you’re securing distributed training pipelines, mobile inference APIs, and storage environments that may operate independently of centralized infrastructure, especially in edge or federated learning contexts. Every stage introduces unique risks. 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How AI is reshaping the future of interactive streaming

Interactive streaming is entering a new era. Artificial intelligence is changing how live content is created, delivered, and experienced. Advances in real-time avatars, voice synthesis, deepfake rendering, and ultra-low-latency delivery are giving rise to new formats and expectations.Viewers don’t want to be passive audiences anymore. They want to interact, influence, and participate. For platforms that want to lead, the stakes are growing: innovate now, or fall behind.At Gcore, we support this shift with global streaming infrastructure built to handle responsive, AI-driven content at scale. This article explores how real-time interactivity is evolving and how you can prepare for what’s next.A new era for live contentStreaming used to mean watching someone else perform. Today, it’s becoming a conversation between the creator and the viewer. AI tools are making live content more reactive and personalized. 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What are virtual machines?

A virtual machine (VM), also called a virtual instance, is a software-based version of a physical computer. Instead of running directly on hardware, a VM operates inside a program that emulates a complete computer system, including a processor, memory, storage, and network connections. This allows multiple VMs to run on a single physical machine, each with its own operating system and applications, as if they were independent computers.VMS are useful because they provide flexibility, isolation, and scalability. Since each VM is self-contained, it can run different operating systems (like Windows, Linux, or macOS) on the same hardware without affecting other VMs or the host machine. This makes them ideal for testing software, running legacy applications, or efficiently using server resources in data centers. 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Popular hypervisors like VirtualBox and VMware enable users to run multiple operating systems simultaneously while providing strong isolation.Modern hypervisors optimize performance by giving VMs direct access to certain hardware components when possible, reducing the need for constant intervention. However, some level of overhead remains because the hypervisor still needs to manage and coordinate resources efficiently. This means that while VMs can leverage most of the system’s hardware, they can’t use 100% of it, as some processing power is always reserved for managing virtualization itself. This small trade-off is often worth it, as hypervisors keep each VM isolated and secure, preventing one VM from interfering with another.VM layersFigure 1 illustrates the layers of a system virtual machine setup. The layer model can vary depending on the hypervisor. Some hypervisors include a built-in host operating system, while modern hardware offers native virtualization support. Many hypervisors can also manage multiple physical machines and VMs efficiently.VM snapshots are an essential feature in cloud computing, allowing users to quickly restore a virtual machine to a previous state.Figure 1: Layers of system virtual machinesHypervisors that emulate hardware architectures different from what the guest OS expects have a bigger overhead, as they can’t relay commands directly to the hardware without first translating them.VM snapshotsVM snapshots are an essential feature in cloud computing, allowing users to quickly restore a virtual machine to a previous state. The hypervisor can save the complete state of the VM and restore it at a later time to skip the boot process of the guest OS. The hypervisor can also move these snapshots between different physical machines, making the software running in the VM completely independent from the underlying hardware.What are the benefits of using VMs?Virtual machines offer benefits including resource efficiency, isolation, simplified operations, easy migration, faster deployment, cost savings, and security. Let’s look at these one by one.Multiple VMs can run on a single physical machine, making sharing resources between various guest operating systems easier. This is especially important when each guest OS needs to be isolated from the others, such as when they belong to different customers of a cloud service provider. Sharing resources through VMs makes running a server cheaper because you don’t have to buy or rent a whole physical machine, but only parts of it.Since VMs abstract the underlying hardware, they also improve resilience. If the physical machine fails, the hypervisor can perform a quick recovery by moving the snapshots to another machine without changing the guest OS installations to minimize downtime. This abstraction also allows operations teams to focus their deployment efforts on a standardized VM instead of considering different physical implementations.Migrations become easier with snapshots as you can simply move them to a faster machine without modifying the software running inside the VM.Faster deployments are possible because starting a VM is just a software execution instead of setting up a physical server in a data center. While you had to buy a server or rent it for months, with fast deployments, you can now rent a machine for hours, minutes, or even seconds, which allows for quite some savings.Modern CPUs have built-in virtualization features that enable easy resource sharing and enforce the isolation at the hardware layer. This prevents the services of one VM from accessing the resources of the others, improving security compared to running multiple apps inside one OS.Common use cases for VMsVMs have a range of use cases. Let’s look at the most popular ones.Cloud computingThe most popular use case is cloud computing, where VMs allow the secure sharing of the cloud provider’s resources, enabling their customers to rent only the resources they need for the period their workload will run.Software development and testingSoftware development often requires specific tools and libraries that aren’t available on a production machine, so having a development VM with all these tools preinstalled can be helpful. An example is cloud IDEs, which look and feel like regular IDEs but run on a cloud VM. A developer can have one for each project with the required dev tools installed.VMs also allow a developer to set up a machine for software testing that looks exactly like the production environment. Here, the opposite of the development VM is required; it should not have any development tools installed because they would also be missing from production.Cross-platform developmentA special case of the software development use case is cross-platform development. When you implement an app for Android or iOS, for example, you usually don’t do this on a mobile device but on your computer. With VMs, developers can simulate different hardware environments, enabling cross-platform testing without requiring physical devices.Legacy system supportIf the hardware your application requires is no longer in production, a VM might be the only way to keep running your software without reimplementing it. This is similar to the cross-platform development use case, as the VM emulates different hardware, but the difference is that the hardware no longer exists.How to choose the right VM providerTo find the right provider for your workload, the most important factor to assess is your own workload requirements. Ask the following questions and compare the answers to what providers offer.Is your workload compute or I/O-bound?Many workloads, like web servers, are I/O-bound. They don’t make complex calculations but rather simply load data and send it over the network. If you need a VM for an I/O-bound workload, you care more about disk and memory size, as well as network speed.However, compute-heavy workloads, such as AI inference or Kubernetes clusters, require careful resource allocation. If you’re evaluating whether to run Kubernetes on bare metal or VMs, check out our white paper on Bare Metal vs. VM-based Kubernetes Clusters for an in-depth comparison.If your workload is compute-bound instead, you need a high-performance CPU or a GPU and loads of memory. An AI inference engine, for example, only sends a bit of text to a client, but it does many calculations to generate this text.How long will your workload run?Web servers usually run indefinitely, but some workloads only run a few hours or minutes. If you’re doing AI training, you don’t want to pay for your huge VM cluster 24/7 if it only runs a few hours or days a week. In such cases, looking for a provider that allows renting your desired VM type hourly on a pay-as-you-go model might be worthwhile.Certain cloud providers offer cost-effective spot instances, which provide lower prices for non-critical workloads that can tolerate interruptions. These cheap VMs can get shut down at any time with minimal notice, but if your calculations aren’t time-critical, you might save quite a bit of money here.How does your workload scale?Scaling in the cloud is usually done horizontally. That is, by adding more VMs and distributing the work between them. Workloads can have different requirements for when and how fast they must be added and removed.In the AI training example, you might know in advance that one training takes more resources than the other, so you can provision enough VMs when starting. However, a web server workload might change its requirements constantly. Hence, you need a load balancer that automatically scales the instances up and down depending on the number of clients that want to access your service.Do you handle sensitive data?You might have to comply with specific laws and regulations depending on your jurisdiction(s) and industry. This means you must check whether the cloud provider also complies. How secure are their data centers? Where are they located? Do they support encryption in transit, at rest, and in process?What are your reliability requirements?Reliability is a question of costs and, again, of compliance. You might get into financial or regulatory troubles if your workload can’t run. Cloud providers often boast about their guaranteed uptimes, but remember that 99% uptime a year still means over three days of potential downtime. Check your needs and then seek a provider that can meet them reliably.Do you need customer support?If your organization doesn’t have the know-how for operating VMs in the cloud, you might need technical support from the provider. Most cloud providers are self-service, offering you a GUI and an API to manage resources. If your business lacks the resources to operate VMs, seek out a provider that can manage VMs on your behalf.SummaryVMs are a core technology for cloud computing and software development alike. They enable efficient resource sharing, improve security with hardware-enforced guest isolation, and simplify migration and disaster recovery. Choosing the right VM provider starts with understanding your workload requirements, from resource allocation to security and scalability.Maximize cloud efficiency with Gcore Virtual Machines—engineered for high performance, seamless scalability, and enterprise-grade security at competitive pricing. Whether you need to run workloads at scale or deploy applications in seconds, our VMs provide enterprise-grade security, built-in resilience, and optimized resource allocation, all powered by cutting-edge infrastructure. With global reach, fast provisioning, egress traffic included, and pay-as-you-go pricing, you get the scalability and reliability your business needs without overspending. Start your journey with Gcore VMs today and experience cloud computing that’s built for speed, security, and savings.Discover Gcore VMs

How to deploy DeepSeek 70B with Ollama and a Web UI on Gcore Everywhere Inference

Large language models (LLMs) like DeepSeek 70B are revolutionizing industries by enabling more advanced and dynamic conversational AI solutions. Whether you’re looking to build intelligent customer support systems, enhance content generation, or create data-driven applications, deploying and interacting with LLMs has never been more accessible.In this tutorial, we’ll show you exactly how to set up DeepSeek 70B using Ollama and a Web UI on Gcore Everywhere Inference. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional environment where you can easily interact with your custom LLM via a user-friendly interface. This process involves three simple steps: deploying Ollama, deploying the web UI, and configuring the web UI and connecting to Ollama.Let’s get started!Step 1: Deploy OllamaLog in to Gcore Everywhere Inference and select Deploy Custom Model.In the model image field, enter ollama/ollama.Set the Port to 11434.Under Pod Configuration, configure the following:Select GPU-Optimized.Choose a GPU type, such as 1×A100 or 1×H100.Choose a region (e.g., Luxembourg-3).Set an autoscaling policy or use the default settings.Name your deployment (e.g., ollama).Click Deploy model on the right side of the screen.Once deployed, you’ll have an Ollama endpoint ready to serve your model.Step 2: Deploy the Web UI for OllamaGo back to the Gcore Everywhere Inference console and select Deploy Custom Model again.In the Model Image field, enter ghcr.io/open-webui/open-webui:main.Set the Port to 8080.Under Pod Configuration, set:CPU-Optimized.Choose 4 vCPU / 16 GiB RAM.Select the same region as before (e.g., Luxembourg-3).Configure an autoscaling policy or use the default settings.Name your deployment (e.g., webui).Click Deploy model on the right side of the screen.Once deployed, navigate to the Web UI endpoint from the Gcore Customer Portal.Step 3: Configure the Web UIFrom the Web UI endpoint and set up a username and password when prompted.Log in and navigate to the admin panel.Go to Settings → Connections → Disable the OpenAI API integration.In the Ollama API field, enter the endpoint for your Ollama deployment. You can find this in the Gcore Customer Portal. It will look similar to this: https://<your-ollama-deployment>.ai.gcore.dev/.Click Save to confirm your changes.Step 4: Pull and Use DeepSeek 70BOpen the chat section in the Web UI.In the Select a model field, type deepseek-r1:70b.Click Pull to download the model. Wait for the download to complete.Once downloaded, select the model and start chatting!Your AI environment is ready to exploreBy following these steps, you’ve successfully deployed DeepSeek 70B on Gcore Everywhere Inference with Ollama. This setup provides a powerful and user-friendly environment for experimenting with LLMs, prototyping AI-driven features, or integrating advanced conversational AI into your applications.Ready to unlock the full potential of AI? Gcore Everywhere Inference offers outstanding scalability, performance, and support, making it the perfect solution for developers and businesses working with advanced AI models. Dive deeper into our powerful tools and resources by exploring our AI blog and docs.Discover Gcore Everywhere Inference

What is AI inference and how does it work?

Artificial intelligence (AI) inference is what happens when a trained AI model is used to predict outcomes from new, unseen data. While training focuses on learning from historical datasets, inference is about putting that learned knowledge into action—such as identifying production bottlenecks before they happen, converting speech to text, or guiding self-driving cars in real time. This article walks you through the basics of AI inference and shows how to get started.What is AI inference?AI inference is the application phase of artificial intelligence. Once a model has been trained on large datasets, it shifts from “learning mode” to “doing mode”—providing predictions or decisions from new data inputs.For example, an e-commerce platform with a model trained on purchasing behavior uses inference to personalize recommendations for each site visitor. Without re-training from scratch, the model quickly adapts to new browsing patterns and purchasing signals, offering instant, relevant suggestions.By enabling actionable insights, inference is transforming how businesses and technologies function, empowering relevance and instant responsiveness in an increasingly data-driven world.How does AI inference work? A practical guideAI inference has four steps: data preparation, model loading, processing and prediction, and output generation.#1 Data preparationThe first step involves transforming raw input—such as text, images, or numerical data—into a format that the AI model can process. For instance, customer feedback might be converted into numerical representations of words and patterns, or an image could be resized and normalized. Proper data preparation ensures that the AI model can effectively understand and analyze the input. For businesses, this means making sure that input data is clean, well-structured, and formatted according to the model’s requirements.#2 Model loadingOnce the input data is ready, the trained AI model is loaded into memory. This model, equipped with patterns and relationships learned during training, acts as the foundation for predictions and decisions.Businesses must make sure that their infrastructure is capable of quickly loading and deploying AI models, especially during high-demand periods. We simplify this process by providing a high-performance platform with global scalability. Your models are loaded and operational in seconds, whether you’re using a custom model or an open-source one.#3 Processing and predictionIn this step, the prepared data is passed through the model’s neural networks, which apply learned patterns to generate insights or predictions. For example, a customer service AI might analyze incoming messages to determine if they express satisfaction or frustration.The speed and accuracy of this stage depend on access to low-latency infrastructure capable of handling complex calculations. Our edge inference solution means data processing happens close to the source, reducing latency and enabling real-time decision making.#4 Output generationThe final stage translates the model’s mathematical outputs into meaningful insights, such as predictions, labels, or recommendations. These outputs must be integrated into business workflows or customer-facing applications in a way that’s easy to understand and actionable.We help streamline this step by offering APIs and integration tools that allow businesses to seamlessly incorporate inference results into their operations, so outputs are accessible and actionable in real time.A real-life exampleLet’s look at how this works in practice. Consider a retail business implementing AI for inventory management. The system continuously:Receives data from point-of-sale systems and warehouse scannersProcesses this information through trained AI modelsGenerates predictions about future inventory needsAdjusts order quantities and timing automaticallyAll of this happens in milliseconds, making real-time decisions possible. However, the speed and efficiency depend on choosing the right infrastructure for your needs.The technology stack behind inferenceTo make this process work smoothly, specialized computing infrastructure and software need to work together.Computing infrastructureModern AI inference relies on specialized hardware designed to process mathematical operations quickly. While training AI models often requires expensive, high-powered graphics processors (GPUs), inference can run on more cost-effective hardware options:CPUs: Suitable for smaller-scale applicationsEdge devices: For processing data locally on smartphones or IoT devices or other hardware closer to the data source, resulting in low latency and better privacy.Cloud-based inference servers: Designed for handling large-scale operations, enabling centralized processing and flexible scaling.When evaluating computing infrastructure for AI, businesses should prioritize solutions that address latency, scalability, and ease of use. Edge inference capabilities are essential for deploying models closer to end users, which optimizes performance globally even during peak demand. Flexible access to diverse hardware options like GPUs, CPUs, and advanced accelerators ensures adaptability, while user-friendly tools and automated scaling enable seamless management and consistent performance.Software optimizationThe efficiency of inference depends heavily on software optimization. When done right, software optimization ensures that AI applications are fast, responsive, and scalable, making them practical for real-world use.Look for the following to identify a solution that reduces inference processing time and supports optimized results:Model compression and optimization: The computational load is reduced and inference occurs faster—without sacrificing accuracy.Workload distribution and automation: This means that resources are allocated efficiently and cost-effectively.Integration: Look for APIs and tools that connect seamlessly with existing business systems.The future of AI inferenceWe anticipate three major trends for the future of AI inference.First, we’re seeing a dramatic shift toward specialized AI accelerators and custom silicon. New chips are being developed and existing ones optimized specifically for inference workloads. These purpose-built processors are delivering significant improvements in both performance and energy efficiency compared to traditional GPUs. This specialization is making AI inference more cost-effective and environmentally sustainable, particularly for companies running large-scale operations.The second major trend is the emergence of lightweight, efficient models designed specifically for inference. While large language models like GPT-4 showcase the potential of AI, many businesses are finding that smaller, task-specific models can deliver comparable or better results for their particular needs. These “small language models” (SLMs) and domain-adapted models are trained on focused datasets and optimized for specific tasks, making them more practical for real-world deployment. This approach is particularly valuable for edge computing scenarios where computing resources are limited.Finally, the infrastructure for AI inference is becoming more sophisticated and accessible. Advanced orchestration tools are automating the complex process of model deployment, scaling, and monitoring. These platforms can automatically optimize model performance based on factors like latency requirements, cost constraints, and traffic patterns. This automation is making it possible for companies to deploy AI solutions without maintaining large specialized teams of ML engineers.Dive into more of our predictions for AI inference in 2025 and beyond in our dedicated article.Accelerate inference adoption for your businessAI inference is rapidly becoming a differentiator for businesses. By applying trained AI models to new data, companies can make instant predictions, automate decision-making, and optimize operations across industries. However, achieving these benefits depends on having the right infrastructure and expertise behind the scenes. This is where the choice of inference provider plays a critical role. The provider’s infrastructure determines latency, scalability, and overall efficiency, which directly affect business outcomes. A well-equipped provider allows businesses to maximize the value of their AI investments.At Gcore, we are uniquely positioned to meet these needs with our edge inference solution. Leveraging a secure, global network of over 180 points of presence equipped with NVIDIA GPUs, we deliver ultra-fast, low-latency inference capabilities. Intuitively deploy and scale open-source or custom models on our powerful platform that accelerates AI adoption for a competitive edge in an increasingly AI-driven world.Get a complimentary consultation about your AI inference needs

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