Telstra is set to inject artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities into both customer and agent facing systems.

The telco is in the process of appointing internal product owners to oversee “applied” artificial intelligence and machine learning projects respectively.

It is intended that the new “delivery-focused” central resources will sit with project teams out in the business “throughout the entire project lifecycle from idea through development and delivery into production”.

They will then have responsibility for expanding the AI or machine learning capability of that system, creating and “grooming” a new feature “backlog” to prioritise features that can deliver the most value.

The telco did not go into specifics for how and where it intends to extract value using AI and machine learning algorithms first.

However, it stated an interested in pursuing projects that involved some form of natural language processing, rule-based systems, and “automated inference and decisioning” technology, which could help it – for example – predictively react to customer preferences.

Telstra is already a significant adopter of another variation of artificial intelligence technology, known as robotic process automation (RPA).

iTnews revealed back in May that Wipro and Raytheon had run a series of RPA projects for Telstra, tackling business projects from streamlining NBN migration to managing staff training.