AT&T announced it is building a new open source artificial intelligence (AI) platform with Tech Mahindra to make it easier to incorporate the technology in more applications.

The operator’s new Acumos platform will be hosted by The Linux Foundation, and will include a common framework and platform to edit, integrate, train and deploy AI microservices. AT&T indicated the platform will make it simpler to include AI and automation capabilities in use cases including video analytics, content curation, drones, autonomous cars and VR.

“Our goal with open sourcing the Acumos platform is to make building and deploying AI applications as easy as creating a website,” Mazin Gilbert, VP of Advanced Technology at AT&T Labs, said in a statement: “We’re opening up AI. The platform will be available to anyone and the more users who adopt it, the better it will get.”

Code for the project is expected to be made available through The Linux Foundation in early 2018.

Initially, Gilbert said AT&T will focus its own efforts on the telecommunication, media and technology spaces, including the network – a decision which makes sense given AT&T’s internal virtualisation efforts. As of July, AT&T CFO John Stephens said more than 40 per cent of the operator’s network functions had already been virtualised. AT&T is pushing toward a goal of virtualising 55 per cent of its network by the end of this year, and 75 per cent by 2020.

AT&T made its first venture into the open source space with The Linux Foundation earlier this year with the release of Open Networking Automation Platform (ONAP) code to developers. ONAP is the result of a merger between AT&T’s Enhanced Control, Orchestration, Management and Policy (ECOMP) platform and The Linux Foundation’s Open-O open source networking initiative.