This article was based on the interview with Meenal Nalwaya, Head of Product at Reka by Greg Kihlström, AI and MarTech keynote speaker for The Agile Brand with Greg Kihlström podcast. Listen to the original episode here:
The current buzz around AI has many enterprise marketing leaders scrambling to understand how to effectively leverage this technology. While text-based AI has seen significant adoption, the potential of multimodal AI—which incorporates visual and audio data—remains largely untapped. Meenal Nalwaya, Head of Product at Reka, a company building multimodal AI agents, offers valuable insights into how this emerging technology can revolutionize enterprise operations and unlock new opportunities for marketers. Multimodal AI isn’t just a shiny new toy; it’s a powerful tool with the potential to reshape how businesses operate, analyze information, and interact with their customers. Let’s dive into some key takeaways from my conversation with Meenal.
One of the biggest obstacles facing businesses today is the sheer volume of data they generate, much of which is in visual and audio formats. Traditional AI struggles to process and analyze this data effectively, leaving valuable insights hidden. Reka’s multimodal approach addresses this challenge head-on, enabling enterprises to “see, listen, and reason” across their entire data landscape. As Meenal explains, “If you look at most of the AI adoption that’s happening around you, it’s really focused around using text data…But images and videos have not gotten that sort of love. And our focus is really around multimodal from that perspective.” This shift toward multimodal AI unlocks a wealth of information previously inaccessible, empowering businesses to make more informed decisions and create more targeted marketing campaigns.
Multimodal AI Empowers Deeper Understanding
Reka’s technology empowers businesses to analyze visual and audio data in ways previously unimaginable. In the security industry, for example, Reka’s AI agents can analyze hours of security footage, identifying critical events and patterns that would be impossible for humans to detect manually. Meenal shares a compelling example: “We worked with the Ohio Police Department…and now with these Reka powered agents, they are able to achieve 65% faster case resolution and 42% reduction in crime.” This demonstrates the transformative potential of multimodal AI to improve efficiency and achieve tangible real-world outcomes. For marketers, this same technology can be applied to analyze customer behavior, preferences, and trends based on visual and audio interactions.
Unlocking Value in Media Archives
For media companies, Reka’s technology offers a game-changing solution to the challenge of managing and monetizing vast content archives. By making every scene searchable, Reka enables companies to repurpose and license content more efficiently, as Meenal illustrates: “Paramount can transform its business in multiple different ways…they can make every scene searchable at the scene, theme, actor, even emotion level.” This ability to quickly locate specific content unlocks new revenue streams and allows media companies to maximize the value of their existing assets. Imagine easily identifying every scene where a particular product is used or every instance of a specific emotion expressed – the possibilities for targeted advertising and content creation are endless.
From Wrappers to Full-Stack Solutions
Meenal highlights a crucial distinction in the AI landscape: the difference between wrapper companies that rely on existing models and full-stack companies like Reka that build their own. She argues that owning the entire stack provides critical control over quality, customization, and speed of innovation: “Companies will…move towards more full-stack companies…it would become more and more critical for them that they own the entire stack and have control.” This full-stack approach allows Reka to tailor its solutions to specific customer needs and address challenges like hallucination more effectively. For enterprise marketing leaders, partnering with a full-stack provider offers greater flexibility and ensures that the AI solution aligns seamlessly with their unique requirements.
AI Product Management: Focus on the “What” and the “Why”
Finally, Meenal offers valuable advice for product managers navigating the rapidly evolving AI landscape. She emphasizes the importance of anchoring AI development in real customer problems and defining clear success metrics: “This tech is cool, but still anchor on the customer problem…your product will really be defined by the success metric.” This customer-centric approach ensures that AI solutions deliver tangible value and avoid becoming mere technological novelties. For marketing leaders, this advice is crucial for ensuring that AI investments translate into measurable business outcomes.
The shift towards multimodal AI represents a paradigm shift in how businesses interact with and analyze their data. By embracing this technology, enterprise marketing leaders can unlock valuable insights, streamline operations, and create more engaging customer experiences. As Meenal points out, the focus should remain on solving real-world problems and delivering measurable results. The future of AI isn’t just about bigger models; it’s about building smarter solutions that empower businesses to thrive in an increasingly data-driven world. By focusing on the “what” and the “why”, marketing leaders can leverage the power of multimodal AI to transform their organizations and achieve unprecedented levels of success. The potential is vast, and the time to explore it is now.
