The term AI gets tossed around a lot these days. It’s technology du jour, the next big thing after big data.
But what does it really mean? And what impact does it have on web development and design?
Artificial Intelligence (AI): What’s It?
Artificial Intelligence is a branch of software development concerned with building machines and computer programs that function and react like humans.
AI allows machines to model and, most importantly, improve upon the capabilities of the human mind.
From the introduction of self-driving cars to the proliferation of voice assistants such as Siri, Alexa, and Google Assistant, AI is a growing part of everyday life.
Anyone can hire an AI developer to leverage the benefits of AI and ML in web development.
So, how can these technologies impact web development?
How Are Companies Using AI on their Websites (in 2022)?
Web development companies use AI for various tasks, including web design, website maintenance, and web development.
1. Web Design: You can use AI to create custom web designs or generate design ideas based on Customers’ preferences.
2. Web Development: AI can help you automate the development process by writing code or testing websites. You’ve probably heard of Copilot or open.ai, an AI tool that helps developers write code faster.
3. Website Maintenance: You can use AI to monitor your website for broken links, duplicate content, or other issues that need to be fixed.
4. Ecommerce: You can use AI to personalize your customers’ shopping experiences or recommend products and services based on their interests.
5. Chatbots: You can use AI to create chatbots that answer customers’ questions and provide support.
6. Marketing: You can use AI to create targeted marketing campaigns or analyze customer behaviour to improve your marketing strategy.
As you can see, AI has a lot of potential applications in web development. And we’re only just beginning to scratch the surface of what’s possible.
In the coming years, we’ll see even more web development companies using AI to improve their workflows and deliver better client results.
Companies Using AI in their Web Applications:
1. Google: Google is big on AI. They’re among the leading companies using machine learning for web development. They’re using it to improve search results, design better algorithms, and create new products.
For example, they recently released a new AI tool called AutoML Vision, which helps developers create custom image recognition models.
Overview: It starts with RankBrain, Google’s first attempt at using machine learning to rank websites. Through machine learning, Google started understanding how words relate to concepts. They were able to take broader queries and define them more accurately.
In 2018, they moved on from RankBrain to what they called BERT. This neural network-based technique allowed Google to understand the context of words in search queries better.
Today, they’re using a new technique, MUM (multi-task unified model), which allows them to train their models on multiple tasks simultaneously, making them more accurate.
They’re also using reinforcement learning to improve their algorithms. Here, the algorithm is given a goal and then allowed to experiment to determine how to achieve that goal best.
2. Amazon: Amazon is a multinational technology company focusing on ecommerce, digital streaming, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence (AI). The company is headquartered in Seattle, Washington (US), with over 235 offices in different parts of the world.
Overview: Amazon uses AI in its voice recognition and cloud-based machine learning on its cloud services (Amazon Web Service (AWS)).
Founded in 1994, the company started as an ecommerce store and would later include cloud technology into its service pipeline.
In 2015, the company ventured into AI after launching its voice recognition-enabled Alexa device range.
The company is also known for conducting AI innovation contests, where the winner gets to walk away with $500,000.
How Amazon Uses AI: Amazon uses AI for online shopping experiences, Amazon Alexa offerings, and many other products.
Amazon also offers AI solutions. Those new to AI can use their pre-built ML solutions (Amazon Sagemaker Jumpstart) to kickstart deployment.
Microsoft: Microsoft is also using AI for web development. They have Azure Cognitive Search, which uses machine learning to help developers create better user search experiences.
They’re also using machine learning to improve the performance of their Edge browser and develop new features for their Office 365 suite of products.
IBM: IBM is using AI to help developers build intelligent websites. They offer a service called Watson Content Hub, which uses AI to help businesses manage their content more effectively.
Salesforce: Salesforce is using AI to help businesses automate their sales processes. They have Einstein, an AI that recommends the best leads, predicts customer behaviour, and automates email marketing campaigns.
How is AI Impacting Web Development in 2022?
AI has a significant impact on web development. It’s helping developers build better websites, create better algorithms, and automate tasks.
Here are a few ways AI is impacting web development in 2022:
Creating Smarter Algorithms: AI is helping developers develop more intelligent algorithms. Through machine learning, algorithms are getting better at understanding data and making predictions.
For instance, say you’re a developer working on an ecommerce store. You can use AI to develop an algorithm that recommends products to customers based on past purchases.
Or, say you’re working on a financial management system. You can develop an AI-powered algorithm that helps people manage their finances by tracking their spending habits and income. The system can also offer some suggestions on how to save money.
Pre-planning the code: Developers are using AI to pre-plan their code. By doing this, they can automatically generate error-free code that meets all the requirements. That’s especially helpful for complex applications.
Web developers use AI to perform fundamental tasks, such as adding, updating, and controlling database records. Some are using AI to forecast which activities are well on the way to completion and when, so they can better staff their teams.
Thanks to AI, many front-end applications automatically generate their functional code with no human intervention.
Data Mining: Data mining is so pervasive in web development today. Developers use it to understand user behaviour, find trends, and make predictions.
AI tools work at the backend to gather data, process it, and make it available to developers through reports and visualizations. They even gather questions and clicks to understand users’ interests and review them to improve user experience.
With no human intervention, AI can work quickly and accurately to process large amounts of data. That helps developers focus on other tasks, such as creating better user interfaces.
Automating Tasks: AI is helping developers automate tasks. That includes code testing, deploying code, and monitoring servers.
By automating these tasks, developers can focus on more important tasks, such as creating new features and fixing bugs.
In the future, AI will likely automate even more tasks, including creating websites and managing databases.
Excellent Customer care with AI: Website visitors aren’t just numbers. They are real people with real needs.
That’s why many web development companies are using AI to provide excellent customer care services.
Chatbots can mimic genuine discussions, gain useful knowledge about customer behaviour and preferences, and adjust their responses accordingly.
By automating routine customer service tasks, such as answering FAQs, web development companies can focus on providing a better overall experience to their customers.
You can integrate an AI-powered chatbot on your website to provide 24/7 customer support. This way, your customers can get the help they need, even when you’re unavailable.
Improving Website Quality: Many web development companies are using AI to improve the quality of their websites.
For instance, they use AI to test websites for bugs and errors. That helps them identify and fix problems before their customers even see them.
How — you ask? AI can simulate different user behaviours and test how the website responds. For instance, it can test how the website loads on different devices or what happens when a user clicks on a broken link.
It can also find and fix errors in the code, such as typos, syntax errors, and missing semicolons.
In short, AI can help web development companies build better websites.
The Rise of Artificial Design Intelligence (ADI) Systems
The growing field of ADI systems has influenced a shift in the way people design websites.
ADI systems are computer programs that create designs based on user input.
In the traditional design process, designers create concepts based on their understanding of the user’s needs. It takes a great deal of creativity and experience to come up with good designs.
It begins with your team sharing ideas, jotting them down on a whiteboard, and turning them into digital wireframes. Once the wireframes are complete, designers create visual designs based on them.
Before any A/B testing, the wireframe must be set out and translated into HTML before the development process kickstarts.
The entire process can take weeks or even months.
But with ADI systems, things are different.
ADI systems use data and artificial intelligence to generate concepts. All the designer needs to do is input the user’s requirements.
ADI systems are still in their infancy but quickly evolving, becoming more sophisticated and user-friendly.
Some popular ADI tools include Adobe Sensei, Wix ADI, and the Grid.
The Grid was one of the earliest ADI systems and is still one of the most popular. It’s a website builder that uses AI to create designs based on user input.
Wx ADI, on the other one, is relatively new (launched on June 7th, 2016), but it’s already become one of the most popular ADI tools. It’s a website builder that uses artificial intelligence to eliminate some of the challenges of building a website — time, content creation, and design.
Wix ADI works by asking you a series of questions about your business, such as your industry, the kind of website you want, your logo, and your colour scheme. It then uses this information to create a completely custom website for you.
It’s the first technology worldwide that combines web design with content creation and AI.
Wix ADI trawls the web, locating relevant content from around the web and curating it into a format that’s easy for you to digest and add to your website.
Using AI to Improve UX
User experience (UX) is a term that’s often used interchangeably with user interface (UI).
While UI is the overall look and feel of your website or app, UX is the actual experience your users have while using it.
It encompasses everything from the colours and fonts you use to how user-friendly your website is.
In short, good UX design makes for a better user experience.
It can also be used to test different design concepts to see which ones work best for your users.
What Are the Advantages of Using AI in Web Development?
Several factors have contributed to the growing popularity of AI in web development.
The following are some of the main advantages of using AI in web development:
- It can help you create better websites and apps.
- It can help you create more personalized user experiences.
- It can help you improve the usability of your website or app.
- It can help you test different design concepts to see which ones work best for your users.
- It can help you save time and money.
- It can help you stay ahead of the competition.
- It can help you make better decisions about your web development projects.
- Adaptability means the system can learn from its mistakes and improve with time.
The most critical consideration in using AI for web development is how users interact with it. If customers find your website problematic to interact with, many will leave and never return.
Part of your job as a web designer is to ensure users can easily recognize what they should do next, and that’s where machine learning comes in to help.
Interactive web design is a branch of web design that uses AI and machine learning to create websites and apps that are more responsive to users.
It’s based on the principle that websites should be designed for users, not designers.
In other words, your website should be designed to make it easy for users to find what they’re looking for and do what they want.
Content Customization
The words you use on your website, whether on your blogs, articles, videos, or product descriptions, will impact how users perceive your brand. It starts with the tone you use, the personality you inject, and the language you use.
Your content should be engaging, informative, and relevant to your target audience.
It should also be properly formatted and easy to read.
The good news is that AI can help you with all of these things.
AI can help you create better content by understanding what your audience wants and tailoring it to meet their needs.
It can also help you format your content in a way that’s easy to read and understand.
You can also use AI to personalize your content.
For instance, you can use AI to collect data about your users and then use it to create a customized experience for each one.
You can also use AI to test different content concepts to see which ones work best for your users.
Usability Testing
Usability testing is a process of testing how easy it is for users to use your website or app.
It’s important because it can help you identify problems with your website or app before they become significant issues.
It can also help you improve the overall user experience of your website or app.
Usability testing is usually done manually, which can be time-consuming and expensive.
It can also be difficult to get accurate results.
However, AI can help you automate usability testing and get more accurate results.
AI can help you test different design concepts to see which ones work best for your users.
It can also help you identify usability issues with your website or app.
AI as a Web Designer
AI is also changing the role of web designers.
In the past, web designers were responsible for creating the look and feel of a website. Their job was to ensure the website was visually appealing and easy to use.
Now, this role has been replaced by AI technologies.
Several companies have already developed AI-powered web design platforms allowing users to create their own websites without any coding or design knowledge.
ADIs are also being used to create website prototypes.
In the future, likely, AI will completely replace the role of web designers.
10 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Applications in 2022
AI has so many web development use cases. They can range from content personalization to interactive web design and predictive maintenance.
Any task done by a human can be done by a machine, given enough time and data.
That’s especially true in the case of web development, where many repetitive tasks can be easily automated.
This section discusses 10 AI applications in web development:
#1. AI Applications in Ecommerce
Ecommerce is one of the most popular applications of AI.
There are many repetitive tasks in ecommerce, such as customer support, product recommendations, and order processing.
All of these tasks can be easily automated with AI.
Personalized Shopping
AI technologies are being used to create personalized shopping experiences for users.
For instance, Amazon uses AI to recommend products to users based on their interaction with the platform and past purchase history.
Facebook also uses AI to recommend products to users based on their interests.
These recommendations are made in real-time and constantly updated as the user interacts with the platform.
The recommendations can be based on the user’s browsing history, preferences, and interests. The goal is to help improve customer relationships and ultimately win loyalty.
AI-powered Assistants
Virtual shopping assistants are becoming increasingly popular in ecommerce.
These assistants are powered by AI and can help users find products, compare prices, and place orders.
Some popular virtual shopping assistants include Amazon Alexa, Google Home, and Apple Siri.
In the future, more ecommerce platforms will likely use AI-powered assistants to provide a better shopping experience for users.
Fraud Prevention
Fraud is a big problem in ecommerce. Every year, billions of dollars are lost to fraudsters. AI can help ecommerce companies prevent fraud by identifying suspicious behaviour. For instance, AI can be used to detect patterns in user behaviour that may indicate fraud. It can also be used to verify the identity of users.
#2. AI Application in Education Websites
AI Application in Education Websites: While education is not typically considered an industry that would benefit from AI, there are many ways in which AI can be used to improve education websites.
Automating Administrative Tasks:
Education has many administrative tasks, such as grading papers, facilitating parent/guardian interactions, managing enrollment and courses, and managing student records. These tasks can be easily automated with AI.
For instance, there are AI-powered platforms that can grade essays.
AI-powered student information management systems can automate tasks such as tracking attendance and calculating grades.
More education websites will likely use AI to automate administrative tasks in the future.
Creating Personalized Learning Experiences:
AI can be used to create personalized learning experiences for students.
For instance, AI can be used to recommend relevant content to students based on their interests and learning level.
AI can also be used to create customized learning plans for students, monitor students’ data thoroughly, and prepare lesson plans and study guides.
In the future, more education websites will likely use AI to create personalized student learning experiences.
Creating Smart Content:
AI can be used to create innovative content that is both interactive and engaging.
For instance, AI can be used to create quizzes and games that are designed to teach students specific concepts.
AI can also be used to create digital books that are interactive and engaging.
They can also be used to generate audio and video summaries and integral lesson plans.
Voice Assistants:
Without even a direct investment of the teacher or lecturer, students can access a tutor or set of tutors through voice assistants.
That technology can come in handy when reviewing material alone, and you don’t necessarily want to be interrupted by questions or notifications.
That is also an excellent way for students to get comfortable with the material and their level of engagement with it, as they can keep track of their progress and set goals.
E-Learning Platforms:
AI will power future e-learning platforms.
They’ll help personalize the learning experience of each student.
They will also be able to provide real-time feedback and recommend content based on the student’s interests and learning levels.
