Artificial Intelligence (AI) carries the potential to drive innovation in many parts of today’s business environment. Instead of building AI capabilities in-house, some organizations turn towards an emergent phenomenon: AI service platforms. However, as a novel concept in both research and practice, a systematic characterization of AI service platforms is missing.

To address this gap, we defined the concept of AI service platforms and developed a comprehensive taxonomy. Therefore, we relied on existing literature, 14 expert interviews, and a sample of 31 AI service platforms. Our contribution is threefold: First, our taxonomy systematically structures essential properties of AI service platforms, guiding future research and management practice. Second, we derive three generic motives of AI service platforms. Third, we contribute to the literature by critically discussing to what extent AI service platforms fit into the existing academic discourse on digital platforms and elaborate on future research directions.

Our paper “Gateways to Artificial Intelligence: Developing a Taxonomy for AI Service Platforms” presenting the results of this research project has been accepted for presentation at the 29th European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2021).