AI, satellite imagery go together in tech and this partnership

Artificial intelligence and satellite imagery are intertwined with one another given their common ties to large volumes of data and at the core of many technology trend discussions in the world.

AI is in the midst of another hype cycle thanks to the emergence of new generative and other similar tools, while earth observation data has been a primary means to follow the story of Ukraine's defense against Russia.

Getting those technologies into the hands of users is where the conversation inevitably turns to and is the centerpiece of a new partnership between Enabled Intelligence and SkyFi.

Enabled Intelligence brings the product line for using AI to work with sensitive and classified data sets, while SkyFi's flagship offering is its Earth observation imagery and analytics platform.

Their teaming arrangement covers both government and commercial customer sets, the latter of which involves clients in requirements-heavy industries such as energy and disaster response.

SkyFi also functions as a marketplace for analysts and other operators to buy the pictures that they use to derive answers from, SkyFi's strategy leader Kate van Dam said.

"Everybody's walking around with GPS in their phones right now, 15 years ago that was really backcountry backpackers," van Dam said. "Where I see geospatial analytics specifically powering every major decision in the future, so much of that is educating the market on the opportunity."

Peter Kant, chief executive for Enabled Intelligence, pointed out this key problem being highlighted across-the-board during the current AI hype cycle: data is only as good and accurate as the annotations and labels it was built from.

"What we've been able to do with our annotations, labels and analytics is increase the power and the effectiveness and accuracy of those artificial intelligence tools being used to analyze that data," Kant said. "Bringing that to a wider commercial market is a wonderful opportunity for us."

SkyFi and Enabled Intelligence Customers for both companies will be able to access Enabled Intelligence’s pre-labeled data library via the SkyFi-provided imagery. Clients will also be able to send SkyFi imagery directly to Enabled Intelligence for customer labeling and analysis.

All that goes into working with U.S. government clients, and national security agencies in particular, is an aspect SkyFi and Enabled Intelligence believe can help them navigate the wider landscape of growth across commercial sectors.

"The government is the most educated consumer of geospatial data and analytics in the world, much of them understand how to use it," van Dam said.

SkyFi looks to provide the kind of platform that helps non-geospatial specialists interpret the data, she added.

"What we've learned and what we've always noticed: the more precise and accurate those analytics or those answers are those labels are, the less costly it is to develop AI tools and the more accurate, unbiased and effective of those A I tools and analytics are," Kant said.