As data science gets set to drive the artificial intelligence (AI) market in 2017, a few Indian startups are initiating development of conversational bots, speech recognition tools, intelligent digital assistants and conversational services to be built over social media channels, a joint study by PwC-Assocham said.

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Organisations are looking to leverage AI capabilities for predictive modelling.

"Online shopping portals have extensively been using predictive capabilities to gauge consumer interest in products by building a targeted understanding of preferences through collection of browsing and click-stream data, and effectively targeting and engaging customers using a multi-channel approach," the report added.

To enable consumers to find better products at low prices, machine learning algorithms are being deployed for better matching of supply with consumer demand.

Some of the areas where AI can improve legal processes, said the findings, include improved discovery and analysis based on law case history and formulation of legal arguments based on identification of relevant evidence.

"Researchers and paralegals are increasingly being replaced by systems that can extract facts and conclusions from over a billion text documents a second. This has the potential to save lawyers around 30 per cent of their time," the findings showed.

China is expected to have installed more industrial robots than any other country -- 30 robots per 10,000 workers.

A few thousand workers have already been replaced by a robotic workforce in a single factory, the study added.