Drupal & AI: How Artificial Intelligence Impacts Business in 2022

These days a lot of hype exists around Artificial Intelligence (AI). As per Gartner’s hype cycle ( figure shown below), new emerging technologies in the market follow a “typical progression of innovation, from overenthusiasm through a period of disillusionment to an eventual understanding of the innovation’s relevance and role in a  market or domain”.

Gartner hype cycle 2018

Image1: Gartner’s emerging technology hype cycle of 2018.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence in its most crude definition is that part of computer science that combines analysis and robust datasets using high-speed computing to enable problem-solving. Machine learning and deep learning are subfields of AI and are quite frequently referred to in conjunction with artificial intelligence.

Relation between AI, ML and DL

Image2: Machine Learning and Deep Learning as subfields of Artificial Intelligence

Now that we have a basic understanding of what AI is, let's look at the business opportunities in artificial intelligence by going through the numerous use-cases of AI for businesses available today.

Real-World Applications of Artificial Intelligence in Business Today

Here are some of the common and well-known applications of artificial intelligence prevalent today.

Speech Recognition: Conversational AI, more commonly known as Computer or Automatic Speech Recognition uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to translate speech to text, processing human speech into written format. Also, many smart devices incorporate speech recognition into their systems to conduct voice commands and web searches. Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant are some of the most well-known examples of this technology.  

Customer Service: Artificial Intelligence is now being used more meaningfully to help users along their customer journey through chatbots. It has increased the level of engagement that can be had with site visitors at any given time. They answer frequently asked questions(FAQs) around product handling, customer support,  shipping, reviews enhancing customer engagement, and digital marketing across websites and social media platforms.  Other examples include virtual assistants on e-commerce sites, messaging apps such as Slack, Skype, etc. 

Imaging and Visual Data: Meaningful information such as image classification, object detection, and tracking, pose estimation, facial recognition, and sentiment can be derived from digital images, videos, and other visual data by computers using neural networks in deep learning. Some common applications include photo tagging in social media, radiology imaging in the healthcare industry,  and autonomous or self-driving cars.

Recommendation Engines: Using historical data on consumer consumption data, AI algorithms can predict behavioral patterns that can be used to develop effective cross-selling strategies. This can also be used to make relevant “ You might also like” recommendations to customers during the online checkout process on e-commerce sites.

Automated trading systems: Financial organizations are using AI data prediction models for high-frequency trading to improve stock trading performance and to boost profit.

AI in Agriculture: Image recognition apps and computer vision technologies like object detection help farmers find more efficient ways to increase crop production and damage control.

Artificial Intelligence Tools for Drupal Websites

Drupal free and open-source software has quite a few modules that enable the integration of AI technology onto web applications. Let us now look at some of the Drupal modules that enable the use of Artificial Intelligence on websites.

Top Drupal Modules Using AI

Some of the Drupal 9 modules that use AI to help you innovate and improve your business are:

Azure Cognitive Services API: This module available in Drupal 9 uses cloud-based services with REST APIs and client library SDKs available to help build cognitive intelligence into the web application. Developers can easily integrate intelligent features such as emotion and video detection, facial, speech and vision recognition, speech and language understanding into their Drupal applications. Available modules in this category are 

  • Face API Module
  • Emotion Recognition API Module
  • Computer Vision API Module
  • Azure Text Analytics API Module
Cognitive Services API

Image3: Cognitive Services API feature

This module is available in Drupal 8 & 9.  It is covered by the Drupal Security advisory policy and ten sites report using this module today. To know more about this module: Cognitive Services API

Automatic Alternative Text: This module automatically adds alt text to images on the website when no alternative test has been provided by the user. This technology which was developed in 2016, won the Heller Keller Achievement Award in 2018. It uses object recognition to add descriptions to photos. A key web accessibility (WCAG) feature, provides state-of-the-art algorithms to process images and return information.

Automatic Alternative Text for Images

  
Image4:  Automatic Alternative Text feature

This module is available in Drupal 8. It is covered by the Drupal Security advisory policy and 104 sites report using this module. To know more about this module: Automatic Alternative Text 

Acquia Lift Connector: This module is used to integrate with the  Acquia Lift Service. This module helps enhance user experience through personalization, AB testing, and targeting directly on the front end of the website. Acquia Lift merges content and customer data to deliver cohesive and personalized experiences across multiple channels and devices. By targeting audiences in real-time, marketers will be able to improve their web personalization efforts resulting in better conversion rates.

Features include

  • Drag-and-drop UI for content targeting
  • Unified customer profile
  • Merging anonymous and known visitor profiles
  • Unified content
  • Content distribution
  • Real-time, adaptive segmentation
  • Behavioral targeting and A/B testing
  • Pre-built reports and dashboards

Available in Drupal 7, 8 & 9. 1,928 sites report using this module and stable releases of this module are covered by the Drupal security advisory policy. To know more about this module: Acquia Lift Connector

Chatbot API: Chatbot API is a programming interface that allows the integration of chatbots to websites. Intelligent chatbots are created using natural language processing (NLP) supporting both advanced AI and machine learning.

The chatbot API module in Drupal creates a common layer serving Drupal content to Chatbots and Personal Assistant like Alexa, Dialogflow(ex Api.AI), Google Home, Wit.ai & Co. The developer does not have to create separate custom codes to handle the requests and responses for every chatbot/ personal assistant platform protocol.

Currently, the following platforms are supported:

  • Alexa, by using the internal chatbot_api_alexa submodule together with the Alexa module.
  • Dialogflow, by using the internal chatbot_api_ai submodule together with the Dialogflow Webhook module

129 websites report using this module today. It is available in D8 & 9. Stable releases of this module are covered by the Drupal security advisory policy. To know more about the module: Chatbot API

Search API Solr NLP: This module uses NLP to enhance the search feature in Search API Solr module. Due to the requirement for trained models for natural language processing that might take a lot of space, this functionality is encapsulated in an optional module and not included in Search API Solr itself.

Search API Solr NLP adds new full-text field types to Solr config sets to filter the text for search. The resulting data stored in the index is used for features like auto-complete or spell check.
Available in Drupal version 9.2 and 10, 25 sites report using this module. Stable releases of this module are covered by the Drupal security advisory policy. To know more about this module: Search API Solr NLP

Auto Recommend Content Tags: This module utilizes Apache Stanbol to suggest tags, or search keywords while an editor is typing or creating new content. It hooks with Apache Stanbol via a web socket to provide real-time tags recommendations when adding/editing content. It is available in Drupal 8 & 9 presently!

Drupal 8/9 + Apache Stanbol + Socket.IO = Auto Recommend Content Tags! 

 Three sites report using this module.  Stable releases are covered by Drupal Security advisory policy. 
To know more about the module: Auto Recommend Content Tags  

Textmetric: Formerly known as webtexttool, this module helps in making high-quality content that matches the target audience while making the content Search Engine Optimized (SEO). This should result in higher search engine rankings, more traffic to the website, and increased conversion.

Textmetrics enables organizations to continuously improve the conversion rates of their online and offline texts. Powered by machine learning and artificial intelligence, Textmetrics will assist with real-time suggestions to write high-quality content that matches the website's target audience. 

Ideal for marketing automation and recruitment, this module needs no integration with automatic tracking system (ATS) and it supports Tone of voice, Microsoft Word. Available in Drupal 7, 8 & 9, fourteen sites report using this module and stable releases of this module are covered by the Drupal security advisory policy. 

To know more about this module: Textmetrics

Presently, these are the available modules that integrate AI in Drupal. As the use of AI gets more defined and clear, we are sure more modules will get supported in the future. Do you think we have missed out on any Drupal modules used in the integration of AI in websites? Do share in the comment box below!

Ref Links

  1. https://www.gartner.com/en/documents/3887767/understanding-gartner-s-hype-cycles
  2. https://www.ibm.com/in-en/cloud/learn/what-is-artificial-intelligence
  3. https://blogs.windows.com/windowsdeveloper/2017/02/13/cognitive-services-apis-vision/
  4. https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/everything-you-need-to-know-to-write-effective-alt-text-df98f884-ca3d-456c-807b-1a1fa82f5dc2
  5. https://opensenselabs.com/blog/tech/top-2018-drupal-modules-using-artificial-intelligence
  6. https://becominghuman.ai/how-to-integrate-ai-into-your-drupal-website-the-easy-way-7-drupal-8-ai-modules-at-hand-e84ded415fc4
  7. https://www.specbee.com/blogs/artificial-intelligence-drupal-smart-impact-your-business

Note: The vision of this web portal is to help promote news and stories around the Drupal community and promote and celebrate the people and organizations in the community. We strive to create and distribute our content based on these content policy. If you see any omission/variation on this please let us know in the comments below and we will try to address the issue as best we can.

Advertisement Here

Call for Support