A new spinout from Deakin University will market a personal assistant and marketing platform already used on campus.
Deakin University has spun out an unnamed Australia-based business to commercialise virtual assistant and marketing technologies already in practice at the university, IT News reported yesterday.
The spinout will externally market products developed at Deakin’s School of Information Technology that have been launched as mobile app features for students.
First, clients will be offered the Genie virtual assistant launched in August 2017, which uses chatbots, artificial intelligence, voice recognition and predictive analytics to help organise academic affairs.
The spinout will also work towards a public release for Scout, a location services platform used to push campus information and marketing offers to students via sensors positioned around the university.
An alpha release of Genie and Scout has secured three unidentified customers from the finance, health and government sectors. Services will be dispatched from Deakin at first until the spinout takes shape structurally.
The business will officially launch in the first half of 2018, and Deakin expects to eventually provide customers with additional technologies.
William Confalonieri, chief digital officer of Deakin University, said the business would refrain from providing the services to local competitors, presumably to avoid mimicry by others.
He added: “The intention is to grow the company until it becomes a serious player in emerging technologies, delivering substantial benefits to Deakin and partners.”
