STAYING AHEAD OF THE AI CURVE

As businesses strive to stay ahead in the rapidly evolving digital landscape, the adoption of AI – such as Large Language Models (LLMs) like GPT – has become increasingly important. However, integrating AI into existing systems and processes poses challenges.

One crucial aspect of adopting AI in an enterprise is enabling the talent in the company to understand how to use and implement it effectively while ensuring data privacy and security. All data fed into the AI system must be protected and handled in compliance with data protection regulations. This requires careful consideration of data handling practices and security protocols, which can be complex and time-consuming.

Kärcher sees it as one cornerstone that employees become familiar with the capabilities of AI and the art of prompt engineering – including proper grammar, syntax, context, and more – early on. As complex tasks may require multiple queries or a more nuanced understanding of the problem, all knowledge workers at Kärcher are encouraged to develop a strategy to incorporate GPT into their workflow or process.

Therefore, Kärcher asked Zoi for support in their AI adoption journey and for expert guidance in setting up a technical infrastructure that provides the necessary computing resources and user interface. Additionally, Zoi was meant to facilitate AI adoption by building an internal community and designing further formats to bring AI awareness, competency, and mindset into the organization.

AN AI CHATBOT ACCESSIBLE TO OVER 15,000 EMPLOYEES WORLDWIDE

Kärcher and Zoi collaborated to build a Kärcher-exclusive chatbot user interface for OpenAI's powerful large language models GPT-3.5 and GPT-4.0. These models are capable of solving complex tasks while providing a natural chat conversation experience.

The user interface is built on the ChatBot UI, an open-source chatbot kit designed to mimic the interface and functionality of ChatGPT. As a result, more than 15,000 Kärcher employees worldwide can now leverage the power of AI for various purposes, such as:

• Research: gathering data, conducting surveys, analyzing trends in language use, …
• Ideation: generating and organizing ideas, providing feedback, enriching them with research data, …
• Language learning: practicing speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills by engaging in conversation and giving feedback, …
• Educational purposes: answering common questions, giving feedback on assignments, …
• Personal productivity: setting reminders, taking notes, managing tasks, …

While considering its limitations, the effective application of GPT can lead to several benefits, including enhanced customer support, product recommendations, quality control, supply chain management, and predictive maintenance. With the incorporation of GPT into their operations, Kärcher can accelerate innovation, improve efficiency, reduce costs, and enhance customer satisfaction.

HARNESSING THE POWER OF AI IN COMPLIANCE WITH EU REGULATIONS

GPT is a sophisticated language model created by OpenAI using a deep learning algorithm called a transformer. The model was trained on a vast amount of textual data – such as books, articles, and websites, to learn the patterns and relationships between words and sentences.

When a user sends a message or question, GPT uses its language knowledge to comprehend the meaning behind the words and produce an appropriate response. The model is trained to generate responses that are coherent, relevant, and grammatically correct.

GPT divides the input into tokens – such as single words or sentences – identifies the token sequence, and uses this information to generate a response. The model considers the conversation context to create more accurate and relevant responses.

The Kärcher ChatBot UI employs a Microsoft Azure interface to OpenAI GPT models, ensuring that the input data is not integrated into the OpenAI GPT models for training purposes.

While using the new AI tools, Kärcher and Zoi remain attentive to AI regulation developments, especially the proposed EU AI regulation. This regulation aims to establish comprehensive guidelines for AI systems in the EU, categorizing AI use by risk level and setting rules for each level. Kärcher is committed to incorporating ongoing legislative processes early while exploring the potential of AI.

Furthermore, an AI-based add-on was integrated directly into the Google Workspace of Kärcher, providing multiple functions for the application in use, e.g. translating or rephrasing text in Google Docs or having all image text recognized through the power of optical character recognition.

Zoi further facilitates AI adoption by building an AI community for knowledge exchange and a company-wide Hackathon with business experts to explore further use cases for AI.

ABOUT KÄRCHER

Alfred Kärcher SE & Co. KG is headquartered in Winnenden, Germany, and has more than 150 subsidiaries in 80 countries. They are the world's leading supplier of cleaning technology and are probably best known for their high-pressure cleaners and range of products and services for professional cleaning of offices, hotels, and supermarkets. The family-owned company employs more than 15,000 people and looks back on a company history spanning more than 85 years.

The ChatGPT functionality is deployed in a compliant manner within Kärcher's IT infrastructure.

The AI Workspace Add-on for Kärcher’s Google Workspace provides useful functions for the respective application. In this example: Google Docs.