Discover how AmpAI prioritizes compliance and delivers valuable insights while respecting data privacy regulations.
Hello, Joyce, please share your professional journey and how it has brought you to your current role as the Head of Generative AI at Amperity.
I’ve always been fascinated by decision-making and how we can make more informed decisions, which is what drew me to statistics and machine learning. I started my career in consulting and then joined Custora, a customer analytics platform, as a founding member of the product team. Over a five-year period, we were able to grow Custora from a minimum viable product (MVP) to a product used by seven of the top 20 brands by ecommerce revenue. Custora was acquired by Amperity in 2019. Since joining Amperity, my focus has been AI, ML, and ML Operations in the service of helping brands leverage their first-party data. When using ML models in the wild, ensuring they’re reliable, can be re-trained frequently, and are built on a robust identity-resolved data foundation is essential to success. ML Operations is particularly important here and often overlooked. Over the last year, we realized there was so much value we could provide to customers in the Gen AI space, and I stepped in to lead our Gen AI efforts. Gen AI will democratize data access, unlock more data-driven decision-making, make personalized experiences a reality, and give brands the opportunity to reduce resource constraints in the realms of creative and customer service.
What sets Amperity’s AI capabilities apart from other tools currently available on the market?
Amperity’s use of AI is two-fold: creating the world’s best unified customer profile and enabling easy access to this profile. We use our patented, AI-powered Stitch algorithm to create customer profiles that comprise of how a single customer has interacted with a brand across many touchpoints. We then augment the profile with our predictive capabilities to calculate key metrics that represent critical moments in a customer’s lifecycle.
Amperity’s second use of AI is to enable brands to access that profile. Using generative AI, we enable users to easily ask and answer questions about their customer profile without needing to write SQL or have a deep knowledge of the underlying schema. The goal is to use generative AI to make every organization more data driven and customer-centric and every individual capable of deriving actionable insights from the data.
Let us know about the benefits AmpAI provides for its users, and how do these advantages contribute to their business objectives?
With Predict, we can more accurately anticipate customer behavior than what would be possible with historical metrics. This impacts the business in a number of ways, including improved return on investment on paid media. For example, Amperity customer Brooks Running saw a 128% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS) after implementing Predict.
With Amperity’s generative AI capabilities, brands can derive actionable insights and make more informed, data-driven decisions that ultimately grow the business. Amperity customer Bobit stated, “Before Ai Assistant, we turned to our developers to write SQL, often with a turnaround time of days. With Ai Assistant, my team can write queries and provide answers to Bobit’s leadership in a matter of minutes. Ai Assistant has pushed us to be more data-driven and empowers my team.”
In light of increasingly stringent data privacy regulations, how does AmpAI ensure compliance while delivering valuable insights to its users?
AmpAi prioritizes compliance without compromising insight. All of the GPT modeling behind AmpAi is run on Azure open AI service, meaning that none of the data is used to train OpenAI’s models or improve Microsoft services and no data is stored in between application programming interface (API) calls. Additionally, all of the data used is first-party customer data, making it more reliable, accurate and consensual. The goal is to democratize data access and enable the business user to quickly ask and answer questions about their customers.
Could you elaborate on the personal strategies you employ to remain innovative and effective in the dynamic field of AI development and data analytics?
There are two ways I remain innovative and effective in the evolving AI and data space:
There is no substitute for being hands-on with technology. While reading is helpful, I try to always have a side project where I’m experimenting with a new technology. I find that I learn the most when I’m working on something.
AI is changing at a rapid speed and sometimes it can feel difficult to keep up. I always ask myself what’s likely to remain the same and what’s likely to quickly change. I invest my time in learning about technologies and principles that are relatively durable and am more high level with areas I think will quickly evolve.
As a respected leader in AI technology, what advice would you offer to individuals aspiring to pursue a career in this specialized field?
To those looking to enter the field, I recommend building a solid foundation in data science and machine learning, coupled with practical experience. Stay curious, embrace challenges, and never stop learning. The field of AI is as much about solving complex problems as it is about understanding the nuances of human behavior.
As we wrap up, are there any final reflections or key insights you would like to share regarding the significance of AI in shaping the future of business operations?
AI is not only reshaping business operations; it’s fundamentally altering how we understand and interact with customers. The key to success lies in using AI not only as a tool for automation but also as a way to deepen brands’ connections with consumers, making every interaction more personalized and meaningful.
Looking ahead, what trajectory do you envision for AmpAI as it continues to evolve and adapt to meet the evolving needs of businesses in the data analytics landscape?
AmpAi will continue to evolve and improve, introducing more products under Assist and Explore to further democratize access to data. We aim to make every user, regardless of technical expertise, capable of harnessing the power of customer data to drive innovation, efficiency and growth.
As AI evolves, the unified customer profile will be critical in making personalization resonate with target audiences downstream. There will be many tools emerge that focus on personalization across content creation, AI concierge and customer service. But it’s essential that brands can lean on a trusted customer data foundation to power personalization efforts to ensure they’re reaching the right customers with the right strategies at the right time.
Joyce Gordon
Head of Generative AI at Amperity
Joyce is the Head of Generative AI at Amperity, leading product development and strategy. Previously, Joyce led product development for many of Amperity’s ML and ML Ops investments, including launching Amperity’s predictive models and infrastructure used by many of the world’s top brands. Joyce joined the company in 2019 following Amperity’s acquisition of Custora where she was a founding member of the product team. She earned a B.A. in Biological Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and is an inventor on several pending ML patents.
