Siemens and Microsoft partner on generative AI Siemens and Microsoft

Siemens and Microsoft are partnering to harness the power of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for industrial operations.

The companies are integrating Siemens’ Teamcenter software for product lifecycle management with Microsoft’s collaboration platform Teams and the language models in Azure OpenAI Service as well as other Azure AI capabilities.

The aim is to demonstrate how generative AI can enhance automation and operations through AI-powered software development, problem reporting and visual quality inspection.

“The integration of AI into technology platforms will profoundly change how we work and how every business operates,” comments Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Cloud + AI at Microsoft.

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“With Siemens, we are bringing the power of AI to more industrial organisations, enabling them to simplify workflows, overcome silos and collaborate in more inclusive ways to accelerate customer-centric innovation.”

With the new Teamcenter app for Microsoft Teams, anticipated later in 2023, the companies should enable teams across business functions to “close feedback loops faster and solve challenges together”.

For example, team members can use mobile devices to document and report issues using natural speech. Through Azure OpenAI Service, the app can parse that informal speech data, automatically creating a summarised report and routing it within Teamcenter to the appropriate expert.

Observations also can be recorded in the team members’ preferred languages, which are then translated into the official company language with Microsoft Azure AI.

With the Teamcenter app, workers who do not have access to product lifecycle management tools should be enabled to impact processes more easily as part of their existing workflows.

Siemens and Microsoft are also collaborating to help software developers accelerate the code generation for programmable logic controllers.

For example, they report having developed a concept for how OpenAI’s ChatGPT and other Azure AI services can augment Siemens’ industrial automation engineering solutions, enabling a significant reduction in time and the probability of errors by generating PLC code through natural language inputs.

Cedrik Neike, Member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and CEO Digital Industries, says that advanced artificial intelligence is emerging as one of the most important technologies for digital transformation.

“Siemens and Microsoft are coming together to deploy tools like ChatGPT so we can empower workers at enterprises of all sizes to collaborate and innovate in new ways.”