In its second major deal to be announced in as many weeks Thomson Reuters has revealed that it has entered into a partnership with IBM to use its artificial intelligence solution Watson across the breadth of its customer solutions.
The Toronto and New York-listed publishing giant will explore the application of Watson – a cognitive computing system that learns and develops as it is used – across the legal, tax and finance departments.
Thomson Reuters’ chief strategy officer Brian Scanlon said: “Thomson Reuters helps customers make critical business decisions by applying cutting-edge technology and domain expertise to complex sets of data and information. Our work with IBM to apply Watson is a natural complement to our market-leading customer solutions.”
According to a statement issued on Friday (9 October), Thomson Reuters will explore how Watson can be applied to key industry market opportunities, leveraging deep content analytics, natural language processing, decision support and evidence-based learning to enable Thomson Reuters customers to derive greater insight and workflow efficiency.
Mike Rhodin, senior vice president, IBM Watson said: “Working with Thomson Reuters, and their vast trove of data, is an incredible opportunity to combine Watson’s cognitive capabilities with a global leader in decision making solutions across science, legal, tax, and finance.
“The result will be accelerated discoveries for the professionals that rely on these important information solutions, ultimately bringing new levels of speed and precision to critical decisions.”
The deal with IBM Watson follows similar moves by law firms including Dentons, through its technology investment arm NextLaw Labs, which has teamed up with IBM to create a cloud-based technology platform for startups and signed its first portfolio deal with IBM Watson-backed digital legal research company ROSS Intelligence.
It comes hot on the heels of Thomson Reuters’ announcement on 5 October that it has acquired Business Integrity and its ContractExpress document automation solution.
Business Integrity, which this year signed up Ashurst, Clifford Chance and DWF as clients, will become part of Thomson Reuters’ legal business stable.
Click here to read our interview with NextLaw Labs CEO Dan Jansen