Trend Micro Incorporated announced that thousands of its employees will participate in the company's upcoming AI competition designed to enhance understanding, awareness and expertise in the emerging technology.

Eva Chen, CEO: "The AI contest is built to empower Trenders through a fun and competitive format, allowing them to showcase their creativity and become familiar with AI technology. It's important for us to find joy in the process of innovation without being constrained by daily work. As we develop a better understanding of this technology, we will naturally apply it to our work to continue driving progress at Trend."

While the contest is internal, industry partners have signaled interest in the outcome as organizations work towards the common goal of realizing the potential of artificial intelligence. Microsoft is sponsoring the event, which will run on Trend's AI platform powered by Azure OpenAI.

Ahmed Mazhari, President of Microsoft Asia: "The next major wave of computing is upon us, and I'm thrilled to see Trend Micro embrace the possibilities enabled by AI by putting their employees in the driver's seat on innovating with the technology. There are countless possibilities in this space and Microsoft is proud to support our customers and partners to accelerate their digital transformation powered by Azure OpenAI."

Trend is a pioneer in the use of AI and machine learning for cybersecurity, having embedded the technology in products as far back as 2005 for early use in spam filtering. Over the years, the company expanded and matured its use of AI, developing new models to detect and contain unknown threats more effectively.

Most recently, the flagship Trend Vision One platform integrated advanced AI capabilities to help security operations analysts better prioritize incoming threats. The latest version of the platform released earlier this year adds generative AI in the form of Companion: a new assistant designed to empower analysts to streamline workflows and drive productivity.

In 2018, Trend Micro challenged its employees to help the company take a leap forward in AI innovation. Over 2,000 participated, investing over a quarter of a million hours of their time. This year's competition expects a similar number to take part - not just from R&D, engineering and support functions, but also sales, marketing and other teams across the organization.