Special focus: The digital power of AI’s ascent

With AI’s global rise continuing to dominate global headlines, editor Neill Barston explores how the industry is being transformed with new digital processes having a major impact

Unless you’ve been marooned on a desert island over the past year and a half, then it is almost impossible not to have taken stock of the phenomenal rise of AI in so many spheres of industry.

The rapidity with which its stellar rise, propelled by the likes of the ChatGPT internet app has been remarkable since it burst onto the scene in late 2022, garnering a slew of international media headlines.

It has variously been hailed as set to prove globally game changing, such is its potential scope for driving developments across education, healthcare, product development, and within creative design and writing industries, that it has left many institutions, governments and businesses scrambling to catch up. Moreover, its arrival has championed by a wealth of high profile figures, including former British PM Tony Blair.

pic: Adobestock

Earlier this summer, he described AI’s emergence as ‘a revolution every bit as far reaching as the 19th century industrial revolution, and probably more so,” in its potential for unleashing growth within a presently comparatively stagnant economy being experienced within the UK. Meanwhile, across the pond, tech entrepreneur Elon Musk asserted a somewhat bleaker viewpoint that at some unspecified point in the future, that ”probably none of us will have jobs,” such will be the ubiquitous nature of generative AI and its swift insertion into many job functions and industries.

This has led to a mood of caution and potential pushback within many sectors, amid recognition that a degree of management of its vast digital capabilities is urgently required. Indeed, as many media observers have noted, while its potential power is indeed vast, it is not without its flaws – and is only as good as the huge cache of publicly available data that it can mined from across the internet.

This has already led to mistakes being made in ‘generative AI’ content within the publishing world, sending warning ripples right across the world on just how far such technology should be pushed. As far as the manufacturing world is concerned, and specifically in our instance, global confectionery and snacks markets are already starting to tap into the core gains that its advocates have been vociferously championing.

Significantly, according to study from Gitnux stated that AI’s use within the broader sweets and snack category is set to increase by 25 per cent a year over the next five years, as the industry seeks to enable positive growth in the wake of lean Covid-19 performance in many markets.

For his part, Confectionery Production board member and sector specialist Graham Godfrey recently explored on this very topic, stating AI can be used in a number of traditionally challenging operations including being applied to process and operations control. This is notably the case in his view on issues of how it can influence quality control methodology and reducing yield loss and optimising cleaning schedules.

Indeed, as Godfrey explored, other significant areas that it can influence the sector come in the form of evaluating the quality and appearance of panned goods, and in monitoring aeration processes.

As he, along with many other sector observers have noted, the sheer number crunching power of AI could also be put to significant use in terms of accurately measuring operating conditions in manufacturing set-ups, and adapting ingredient requirements accordingly.

Value of ChatGPT
Furthermore, additional research from Mckinsey asserted that generative AI could be worth as much as $4.4 trillion a year in terms of its global applications, as younger generations of consumers and workers drive the digital agenda.

This was especially evident at this year’s Sate of the Industry Conference in Miami, which featured keynote presentations on how AI is already starting to influence the way we do business across industries.

NCA’s president and CEO, John Downs addressing this year’s State of the Industry conference in Miami. Pic: Neill Barston

As the major sector event explored, such tech has used across other areas of operations including examination of safety protocols, with algorithms being created for maintaining consistency in business practices, as well as tracking food supply chains and assisting in other core duties such as automation of packaging product ranges.

The conference included a presentation from Conor Grennan, Head of Generative AI at NYU Stern, and Linked learning instructor for AI, who offered an upbeat assessment of how individuals and companies can benefit from engaging in the bold new technological landscape.

Discussing ChatGPT’s emergence, he noted: “ChatGPT is a software that doesn’t act like a software, it acts like a human, so what looks like a digital transformation sends companies immediately down the wrong path about how to integrate into our organisations. So it’s actually change management and leadership, it’s about behaviour, and not about how well you know technology,” he enthused, noting his own background was far from a tech industry, having worked extensively in academia. In terms of its application, he explained that ‘generative AI’ which has emerged to assist with creation of audio, design and text content, as well as background data, his experienced revealed that a willingness to embrace the potential of such support tools and using them in an organic a fashion as possible was a significant factor. “

With generative AI, having worked with thousands of leaders, and dozens of very large companies, it has nothing to do with where you are on the spectrum (of technology knowledge), it has everything to do with the leadership of an organisation, and its culture, as to whether or not a business will do this well,” explaining that one of the biggest gains to be had from its use was in terms of helping team members potentially becoming more productive in managing their respective roles. The State of the Industry event also featured a presentation from Google’s Paul Tapfenhart, the global retail solutions director at Google Cloud. He boldly asserted that “leveraging AI is going to be the route to success for your business,” as he outlined his own mega corporation’s approach to using such digital systems. Intriguingly, he stated that many of the algorithms that are behind the latest iteration of generative AI were in fact being worked upon initially some two decades ago, and have been consistently honed ever since.

One area in particular that its own services have already benefitted from hugely is in terms of driving efficiencies in back-end operations and customer services, which are able to respond rapidly to shifting consumer demands. Indeed, this has been reflected in the rapid rise in online assistance and customer ‘bots’ designed to offer initial contact with consumers that are now standard in many major companies operations.

Influencing consumers
As our title has reported over the past year, there’s been a marked trend for the deployment of AI in terms of product development, which has spawned major investment from some of the largest businesses in the sector. Nestle, which remains the food industry’s largest food and beverage firm in the world, last year opened its Institute of Agricultural Sciences, which has tasked itself with advanced formulation across product categories, which is reportedly using AI to advance progress on a number of product ranges. For its part, this summer, Mars Wrigley turned to artificial intelligence for its latest marketing campaign for Snickers in reaching out to consumers through employing a ‘deepfake’ celebrity endorsement.

This came in the form of ex Roma and Manchester United coach Jose Mourinho, who has taken the reins at Fenerbache in Turkey, and teamed up with the brand to authorise a digital clone for a unique initiative known as Own Goals, with his virtual self offering fans brand-related tips on how to improve their game. As the confectionery giant explained, the personalised video venture using the WhatsApp social media platform is considered a first of its kind, working with T&Pm and Helo, powered by ElevenLabs, Synclabs and Open AI GPT 4.0, sees eight separate stages in the AI pipeline create a unique ‘chain of thought’ architecture. In addition, for the company’s Starburst brand was given what was described as the biggest screen launch in twelve years for the business.

An AI Jose Mourinho is hoping to be a ‘Special One’ this summer at the Euros. Pic: Snickers

The firm’s “Different Every Time” campaign used artificial intelligence to deliver content in different styles that was reportedly designed to offer greater variety to consumers, with a key message that they’re not just being sold something in a sole, set pattern.

Another of its breakthroughs using such generative artificial intelligence has come in the bakery sector, as it used a machine learning model analysing hundreds of recipes from traybakes and scones to develop the world’s first Maltesters AI cake. Meanwhile, there have been other key examples this year, including KitKat employ AI to develop a campaign for its Canadian market using the classic ‘Have a Break’ slogan, with a special CGI generated video launch for the flagship brand, seeking to engage the sought-after younger generation of consumers.

Supply chain AI
Another very significant area that AI is already claiming notable success is in how over the past three years, it has been deployed to major supply chains including the cocoa sector, for environmental mapping services. As we reported back in 2021, Barry Callebaut hailed a groundbreaking large-scale High Carbon Stock map, using artificial intelligence offering precise coverage of areas at risk of deforestation in cocoa-growing territories of Malaysia, Indonesia and Philippines. The new sustainability project is a venture between EcoVision Lab, part of the Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing group at ETH Zurich, who have the capability to develop highly automated AI solutions applied to ecological challenges.

Consequently, its team is reportedly using data from a NASA laser scanner attached to the International Space Station and imagery from the European Space Agency (ESA), which allows large areas to be mapped.

As Barry Callebaut found, identifying and measuring specific areas of forest that are at risk in a high level of detail has been historically especially challenging and costly, which this latest scheme has set out to address. The company has since filtered the results of the enhanced mapping into its own sustainability programmes aiming to eliminate deforestation from its chains – which sits at the heart of incoming EUDR laws stemming from the European Commission.

Ivory Coast Cocoa Farming, where levels of deforestation are continuing to prove a notable problem.

These are anticipated to have a huge impact on their introduction at the end of this year on a number of sectors including across confectionery and snacks markets. Similarly, ingredients company, ofi has used such advanced satellite mapping to monitor child labour, with these digital tools enabling progress against its core goals.

Long-term benefit
As industry consultant Graham Godfrey concluded, there are indeed long-term potential benefits to the sector, largely around data management. Yet it will clearly, as we have seen, not be limited to that, as its creativity capabilities are already being explored on a global basis.

Godfrey commented: “AI – and the exploitation of the opportunities it presents, will become vitally important to all manufacturing sectors in the next five years. Food and confectionery will be a prime area of opportunity because the properties of ingredients and the impact of processes on those ingredients is rarely if ever completely predictable.

“Maximising the benefits of AI systems potential will need improvements in analytical and measurement techniques to understand the properties of ingredients, part processed and finished products such that the AI systems can use data to make predictive corrections for measured deviations. “Many quality and control procedures within the industry rely not only on measurements but on interpretation of those measurements and often on human reaction to various parameters – “taste” and “texture” being notoriously difficult areas to align current measurement techniques with organoleptic experience,” noted the specialist, who added that AI holds the important ability to learn dispassionately and therefore to respond to a broad range of data and inferential information and it is this ability in particular which will impact control, quality and cost in the confectionery industry in the future.

His views are being echoed by numerous sector players around the world, so quite how this already multi-billion industry will evolve in the next few years, will be fascinating and thought-provoking digital journey of discovery.