The Drum has released the first magazine edited using artificial intelligence (AI) following a partnership with IBM Watson to create the special issue.

The Drum Ai Issue

The magazine, published today (15 June), includes a number of features that involved the analytical functions that IBM's AI can provide in order to examine the role such technology can provide to modern day marketers.

1,000 special editions of the issue have been sent to readers with a personalised The Drum Top Trumps Super Marketers card placed on the front featuring Watson analysed personality ratings. These will be available to match and play against other opponents through a specially created new online app. Those without a card will also be able to challenge other marketers in the industry by logging into the app and comparing their scores with further competitors.

Watson has also been trained to answer questions put to it by industry luminaries around the insights of advertising legend David Ogilvy and a number of predictions around potential winners at Cannes Lions this year have also been made by the AI.

Also contained within the issue is a guest leader by IBM Watson chief David Kenny, a debate on the merits of AI and an analysis of the development of the Queen's language over her reign as monarch, displaying how the technology can analyse the evolution of brand language.

Gordon Young, editor-in-chief of The Drum, commented: "The Drum was given the opportunity to play with the IBM Watson system to help create this issue and, as a result, much of our content benefits from artificial intelligence. You can judge for yourself whether that is better than our normal intelligence, but rest assured our team wasn’t quite as relaxed as our cover might suggest. Many thanks to Watson and the IBM team for giving us an insight into the possibilities of this amazing technology, which we believe will help change the world – as we hope some of this issue’s features will attest."

Writing in the magazine, Kenny said: "Right now AI is more about people querying machines. My dream is that Watson will ask us questions, giving computers abductive rather than deductive reasoning skills. Abductive reasoning will lead to conversation and dialogue with humans. And that in turn will lead to more creative thinking, because machine learning means cognitive computing systems will become smarter over time on their own. We’re on that path now, but much work is ahead of us."

The cover for the magazine was also specially shot by photographer Julian Hanford, featuring some of The Drum team involved in the making of the issue.

Subscribe and purchase the latest edition in print of through the app on The Drum website.