I’m always delighted to witness the organic innovation that happens at BlakYaks. Our recent foray into the Artificial Intelligence space is but one facet of our extensive research and development.

In this blog, I share some early insights into our teams’ work with the Azure OpenAI service, alongside a glimpse into other promising areas we are exploring to bolster productivity within our business.

BlakYaks YakBot

Our journey started with the deployment of the Azure OpenAI service within our own Azure tenant. We've gone a step further and developed our very own “YakBot” console application, acting as a seamless gateway to the Azure OpenAI service through its API.

By equipping the console with a variety of interesting presets, thoughtfully tailored to our own business needs, we have provided immediate value to our team, thereby fostering fast adoption of our YakBot OpenAI console. Witnessing the growing usage within BlakYaks, we are delighted to observe our extended team members giving real thought to how each of them might contribute high-value features to the YakBot console.

Ensuring quality and thoughtful curation remains paramount to us. To avoid any undesired outcomes, we have taken an early decision to exercise control over the release of engineered presets, implementing this through our Azure DevOps branch policy.

We started by adding a number of features in the YakBot OpenAI service console that make sense and add value to our business given the nature of the Azure cloud native work we do within the market and will look to extend throughout 2023. We have a number of curated presets that enable ChatGPT to function as a productivity assistant in technical areas such as K8s and Docker, as well as non-technical areas such as writing style and clarity. This is done within a closed secure deployment of our own GPT model and benefits from the usual good practices you would expect from the other Azure machine learning APIs.

Ongoing BlakYaks AI projects

Beyond the YakBot OpenAI console, there are some ongoing initiatives within our own business:

• General Use of ChatGPT for Productivity: Leveraging the power of ChatGPT, we're boosting productivity across various fronts, including content creation, editorial tasks, and content hygiene.

• Researching Video AI for Internal Communication: Exploring the potential of Video AI, we aim to enrich internal communication by effectively disseminating information about our policies and standards, such as ISO27001, security, and GDPR policies.

• Hackathons and Team Sessions: Preparing for engaging hackathons centred around the Azure OpenAI service and the YakBot console application. Additionally, our regular "Waterhole" team sessions will focus on sharing and learning about the Azure OpenAI service, fostering a culture of collaboration and continuous learning.

Final thoughts

In conclusion, our dedication to controlled innovation and the pursuit of excellence drives our progress at BlakYaks. Our recent work with Azure OpenAI service is just one example of our commitment to innovation and exploring the art of the possible. Our next steps are to increase the breadth of features exposed via our YakBot OpenAI console.

We are also considering the training data that will be important to our business as well as the additional governance that will be required as we broaden the use across the whole business.

Check out future blogs as our solution develops.