At this latest meeting of GEPPIA's Club Ingénierie du Futur (May 2024), all the stakeholders of GEPPIA's ecosystem were represented: manufacturers, equipment suppliers, digital technology specialists, and industrial end-users. AI experts, experienced automation engineers, and innovation managers shared their visions on the potential impact of AI on the next generations of machines. They discussed their approaches, respective advancements, and the boundaries to set for AI.

All are convinced that artificial intelligence will rapidly transform the development, operation, and maintenance of process and packaging machines. They also believe that a collaborative approach will accelerate these advancements.

AI is already present in process and packaging machines, such as in fault diagnosis algorithms, defect recognition systems through vision, and automatic code generation systems for machine program configuration. The question for manufacturers now is how to create value by integrating generative AI and various learning models into their products, services, and internal processes (knowledge management).

The integration of AI is seen more as a source of innovation than optimization. The emerging idea is that AI is truly effective only when it is trained with a specific intention within a given ecosystem.

It remains to be determined how far to extend the boundaries of this ecosystem to make machines genuinely intelligent and what governance principles to establish to encourage the emergence of collective intelligence while preserving the confidentiality of data and expertise.

These questions echo topics already addressed by the GEPPIA ecosystem in group discussions on Industry 4.0 and cybersecurity. The ongoing collaboration will undoubtedly serve as an accelerator for the development of innovative solutions for the food industry.