Artificial intelligence comes into its own for mainstream businesses

San Francisco

THIS is the year artificial intelligence (AI) came into its own for mainstream businesses, at least as a marketing feature.

On Sunday, Salesforce.com, which sells online software for sales and marketing, announced it would be adding AI to its products. Its system, called Einstein, promises to provide insights into what sales leads to follow and what products to make next.

Salesforce chose this date to pre-empt Oracle, the world's largest business software company, which on Sunday evening began its annual customer event in San Francisco. High on …