Veritone (VERI -7.05%) is using AI in several down-to-earth, practical ways that aren't typically considered in the artificial intelligence space. In this Fool Live segment from "The AI/ML Show," recorded on Feb. 9, Motley Fool contributors Toby Bordelon and Jason Hall talk the potential for this company to become an AI disruptor.
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Toby Bordelon: This is the company that you don't think of when you think of AI. You probably are not aware that they're a smaller company. They're using it, I think, in ways that are interesting and make a lot of sense. That way it can enhance productivity. It's certainly not the sci-fi stuff people tend to think of when I say artificial intelligence, robots, and all that stuff. This is more down-to-earth practical ways that can actually improve business and improve what people are doing. Let's talk about that. What were one or two of your big takeaways?
Jason Hall: I think the starting one, Toby, is like Veritone's reason for existence was targeting a very labor-intensive thing to use AI to do, which is take audio and video and find the things that you are trying to find, like the example he used about a product placement in a podcast. If you're HelloFresh or you're a company that regularly sponsors podcasts, that's your big marketing thing, it would be a ton of money to pay people to listen to every single podcast that you sponsor to find out if they're actually doing it effectively, if they're doing what you want them to do. Whereas you can take something like their AI tool to literally listen to it to identify if they're doing whatever intelligence you're looking to get out to act upon to be able to do that. I thought that was really interesting.
Then the second one is thinking about essentially the same thing in another area of our life that it applies to, and that's law enforcement. Body cams, all of that data, and being able to apply AI to it to get the best use case out of it. So they talked about something that has happened in California and in another half a dozen states that have similar laws on the books or are either in the legislative process that has been a big thing for Veritone already, and they have two takes from that. Can you see that?
Toby Bordelon: Yeah. I'm seeing that.
Jason Hall: Oh there it is. I'm going to go ahead and exit out of that. There's a couple of things. You see how Veritone, their AI tools can be applied maybe in broad ways we don't necessarily think about. But also as an investor, it's a reminder that you think about a company like Axon Enterprise, for example, that has decades of established relationships with law enforcement, but it's not a guaranteed winner in what they're trying to do right now with body cameras in AI, that there will be competition, and it's not necessarily going to be Microsoft.
You've got a $700 million-company like Veritone that's been working on this technology since, I think, 2014. That doesn't mean Veritone is going to be successful business or a great investment. But because they have spent years and years processing thousands and thousands of hours of audio and video already for other applications, maybe that gives them a little bit of an advantage that their, maybe, Axon, their competitive advantage might not be as strong as we think. I think that's a really important takeaway for me as an investor is thinking about, not necessarily as this just an investable idea but who could it also potentially disrupt.
