AI Everywhere
AI is starting to show up everywhere in our lives, and Contextual aims to be the platform that makes rapid design, development and deployment of new AI solutions. This means delivering on AI solutions that span B2B functions and tasks through to consumer-focused AI innovations. One of the most interesting recent innovations on the Contextual platform is Finley Mail, an AI solution that bridges the physical and digital worlds seamlessly.
AI is helping deliver the mail!
Finley Mail has partnered with Contextual to build the world’s smartest mailbox. Finley Founder Tyler Hall saw an AI opportunity to bring the nearly 250 year old United States Postal Service (USPS) into the 21st century. As a prior co-founder of the home automation and intelligence platform SmartThings (owned by Samsung), Tyler recognized that classically disconnected and ‘dumb’ home devices, like mailboxes, could be augmented with new technology to instantly make them more intelligent, insightful and helpful.
“I’ve always been passionate about the intersection of technology and our day to day lives. This began with how we transformed the Smart Home industry with SmartThings and continues to this day with the vision for Finley. By partnering with Contextual, we’re able to dramatically accelerate our development productivity in creating both the AI-driven backend and the critical APIs serving the front end for Finley.”
- Tyler Hall, Finley Mail Founder
AI at the Edge - The Finley Smart Mailbox
The Finley Mail experience starts with adding modern technology to the mailbox itself. This mailbox includes a camera, edge AI intelligence with a custom trained visual AI model, and Amazon Sidewalk-based cloud connectivity. A motion-activated camera, designed to optimize battery life, captures a series of images any time motion is detected in the mailbox. The edge AI model then determines if mail has been delivered or picked up and sends alerts to the cloud to immediately notify you of activity. Contextual’s AI Automation platform steps in to look for anomalies (multiple deliveries, pickups at unexpected times), based on new events and historic patterns.
Stop Junk Mail at the Source
The AI intelligence of the Finley Mail platform doesn’t stop in the box though. By making it easy for users to pipe in data fromUSPS’s Informed Delivery platform, Finley receives digital scans of the expected mail to be delivered that day. Each of these images is passed, via Contextual, through a secondary AI identification and classification workflow. Mail is quickly identified and categorized based on the sending party as junk mail, promotional, financial (like bills or statements), or more. Critical pieces of mail are logged in the Contextual platform to make it simple to search, retrieve, categorize and summarize historic mail. Wish you get that pesky company to stop sending you their 112-page seasonal catalogue? Simply tap the “Unsubscribe” button associated with that mail in the mobile app, and Finley will contact the sender and request you be put on their “do not mail” list.
A Beautiful App
While Contextual easily powers AI automation workflows, it also powers the Finley mobile application experience through a robust and scalable API. From real time status notifications from the edge-connected Finley mailbox to simple reporting and analysis, Contextual delivers the key features required for any modern AI application.
Read more about this Contextual success story.
Have An Idea?
If you’ve got an idea for an AI-driven application or experience, don’t be afraid to reach out. Through our deep partnerships with development partners and the depth of our technical platform, Contextual can help you bring your idea to life with speed and confidence.
