The integration of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks into all areas of our lives has long been one of the main tasks of IT developers around the world. Ukraine is no exception: in recent years, artificial intelligence technologies have attracted more and more attention from IT specialists, and startups that work in this area have conquered the AppStore and GooglePlay charts in countries all over the globe. Sergey Kartashov, the Senior Partner at technology company Roosh, spoke about the development of AI and ML in the Ukrainian IT sector.
AI and ML technologies are not considered anymore as an object of theoretical research in the academic community, now they have got more of a practical nature. They are used in developing computer games and mobile apps, financial structures, analytics, and even medicine.
For example, during the coronavirus pandemic, Chinese doctors have created an AI-based system that allows them to track how residents comply with the quarantine restrictions. Moreover, IT specialists are now actively developing services to diagnose various diseases using machine learning technologies.
Startups that implement these technologies often become an object of interest of private investors all over the world, says Sergey Kartashov (Sergejs Kartasovs). Back in 2020, about 40% of the total investment in the IT industry went to AI projects. The most popular industries among investors are education, medicine, and drone development.
In Ukraine, the development of AI and ML technologies is going less intensively compared to Western countries. However, today Ukrainian technology companies can deliver promising high-quality products based on artificial intelligence. Over the past decade, there have been many such projects. Sergey Kartashov cites the example of the text checking program Grammarly, the scoring system for financial institutions Scorto, and the technology for recognizing objects and faces on images developed in Viewdle which was later acquired by Google Inc and used in its search engine.
Roosh also has lots of these kinds of projects. One of the most striking is the mobile app Reface. Its functionality allows a user to change faces in videos and GIFs. In the future, the app can provide a user with an opportunity to watch movies or TV shows with themselves as the main character. No surprise, the app quickly made it to the top of the App Store’s entertainment software and even surpassed apps like TikTok, YouTube, and Netflix last fall.
“Developments based on artificial intelligence have already become a part of everyone’s life, just look around,” says Senior Partner at Roosh. These are programs for translating and correcting texts, robotic vacuum cleaners, fingerprint scanners in mobile devices, automatic face recognition in social networks—everything that people use every single day.
“The future is already here”, believes Sergey Kartashov. And Ukraine has every chance to take its place on the world stage in developments related to artificial intelligence and machine learning.
