In production and logistics, the BMW Group is using a growing number of artificial intelligence (AI) applications – primarily to relieve employees of monotonous tasks. Among other things, cameras with self-learning software are being used to capture live images in production. The software analyzes the images in milliseconds and detects any deviations from the standard. BMW has now shared some of the algorithms from this area of AI on the open source platform GitHub . GitHub is a popular, established platform for software developers on which algorithms and source codes can be shared and further developed. Programmers can leverage the open source codes for their own applications free of charge, within the framework of the relevant license agreements.

BMW also benefits from this open source approach: The further development and improvement of basic algorithms by external programmers relieves internal developers of some of the workload, freeing them up to focus more strongly on advancing specific AI applications. BMW’s quality assurance team checks any changes made by the GitHub community before the algorithms are used again in its own applications.