News

IBM buys a familiar Watson-based shopping assistant

November 21, 2016

IBM is acquiring the Expert Personal Shopper (XPS) division from Fluid, which built the shopping assistant tool using IBM's Watson cognitive computing technology.

The dialogue-based platform, which recommends products, is focused on personalizing the consumer experience and uses natural language to interact with shoppers, according to an eWeek report.

It's a bit of a homecoming of sorts as IBM has been a major investor in Fluid and worked with the company on developing XPS.

"Three years ago, Fluid, in collaboration with IBM Watson, developed the very first commercial example of conversational commerce," said Kent Deverell, CEO of Fluid, in a statement. "Since then, we've been hard at work developing Fluid XPS, a leading platform for intelligent, dialog driven product recommendations, and are very excited about its future as part of IBM iX."