Bayer pilots AI system for agriculture

Bayer is piloting an expert GenAI system designed to assist farmers and agronomists in their daily work. The biotech giant said it has been using vast amounts of agronomic data to train the large language model (LLM), which is capable of quickly and accurately answering questions about agronomy, farm management, and agricultural products.

According to Bayer, the new system – which was developed in collaboration with Microsoft and Ernst & Young – is already improving the productivity of its teams in the US and significantly outperforming the out-of-the-box LLMs currently serving the agricultural sector.

“Our unique GenAI system has the potential to serve agronomists and benefit farmers all over the world, further advancing AI as an indispensable technology for agriculture,” Bayer Crop Science’s Amanda McClerren said.

“We’ll continue to use traditional AI to develop better products, and we’re also committed to harnessing new GenAI technology in a thoughtful way that augments and supports knowledgeable experts across the industry,” she continued.

Bayer said that it is currently exploring ways of integrating the new system into its digital offerings, adding that it anticipates broad opportunities for collaboration with other agricultural offerings and partners.

It added that it intends to roll out the pilot of its expert GenAI system to certain agronomists, and potentially farmers, as early as this year; it also said that it is working on a separate GenAI prototype that will allow users to directly interrogate their own farm data.