GE Aerospace’s (NYSE: GE) 52,000 employee workforce has a powerful new assistant, AI Wingmate, by their side as they work to enhance quality, serve customers, and invent the future of flight.
GE Aerospace technology leaders worked with one of its key partners in AI development, Microsoft, to use Azure AI, including Azure OpenAI Service, to bring enhanced security, compliance, and responsible AI inside GE Aerospace’s own network. Employees now can securely collaborate with AI Wingmate in a human-like back-and-forth conversation on new ideas, new learnings, and new initiatives to propel air travel to new heights.
GE Aerospace employee engagement with the tool has been very strong since its launch in June. To date, the system has received:
- ~500,000 queries, searches, and other employee interactions; and
- 200,000+ pages processed for different AI chats.
“The launch of AI Wingmate will transform employee productivity, allowing our people to spend more time solving our customers’ toughest problems,” said David Burns, Chief Information Officer, GE Aerospace. “Generative AI is changing the way we all work, enabling us to be more productive with our daily work tasks than ever before. Ultimately, this will strengthen our ability to help the aerospace industry meet our highest objectives of enhanced safety, sustainability, and reducing supply chain constraints.”
“Over 60,000 customers spanning industries and countries worldwide are applying the capabilities of Azure AIto deliver tangible results,” said Nick Parker, President, Industry & Partner Sales, Microsoft. “We are deeply committed to helping businesses like GE Aerospace implement multimodal AI-powered applications easily and securely. I’m thrilled to see the impact AI is already having at GE Aerospace as the company continues to infuse AI across the company and leverage its power to drive innovation and growth.”
AI Wingmate is providing GE Aerospace employees with a secure, internal platform to engage and utilize the full suite of generative AI capabilities and infuse new data and information from employees over time to support the company’s business requirements.
“As our workforce continues to become familiar with AI Wingmate, it will become an increasingly more valuable partner over time for GE Aerospace employees,” added Burns. “We are particularly excited about plans to launch a new generative AI based module exclusively dedicated to FLIGHT DECK, our proprietary lean operating model that is the foundation of how we work. The generative AI platform will serve as a vehicle for employees to learn about FLIGHT DECK and its ten fundamentals.”
How it works
GE Aerospace employees are using AI Wingmate to enhance their productivity and work experience by having:
- Instant access to information: Employees can quickly obtain information relevant to their tasks, reducing the time spent searching through documents or waiting for responses from colleagues.
- Faster learning and discovery: Employees can use AI Wingmate to perform more advanced searches and queries to support their project work.
- More advanced support tools: Employees can use AI Wingmate to draft more tailored communications for specific audiences, rapidly create documents, or ask questions to help understand a complex problem.
The launch of this new internal generative AI platform represents a key milestone in GE Aerospace’s more than a decade’s long journey successfully integrating AI across its business operations. Over this time, GE Aerospace has more than doubled its investment in AI technology, positioning the company as one of the top AI patent holders within the aviation industry.
Today, GE Aerospace is using AI to enhance everything from engine monitoring and part inspections to delivering insights for our airline customers to enable predictive maintenance measures and new ways to optimize fuel efficiency and safety. Click here to learn more about how GE Aerospace is using AI today and future applications under development.
“The integration of Azure AI platform capabilities including Azure OpenAI Service is delivering a step change in how GE Aerospace employees work and deliver for our customers,” said Burns. “AI Wingmate is more than just a smart platform. It’s a true catalyst for changing the way we work and what is possible for us to achieve in advancing the future of flight.”
