Artificial intelligence (AI) is making its way out of the lab and into the mainstream market, industry experts have reported.

According to analyst group Frost & Sullivan some technologies, such as case-based reasoning applications, have already created a buzz in fields including drug discovery, medical diagnosis, fraud detection, data mining and knowledge discovery.

Frost & Sullivan research analyst Amreetha Vijayakumar said in a statement: "In future, AI is likely to be incorporated in several products to make users' lives easier. However, it cannot be depended on to replace human intelligence and can serve only as an enabling technology."

One promising commercial avenue for AI is in enabling radiation-based food and water sterilisation technologies with sensing systems, the analyst firm predicted.

Data mining powered by AI algorithms is also proving to be a "great tool" for exploring new avenues to automatically examine, visualise and uncover patterns in data.

And AI vendors have ventured into the customer relationship management (CRM) market to help users recognise client-related opportunities and give them the means to utilise them effectively.

"Better customer management and improved product cross-selling are the objectives that AI-based CRM is moving toward," added Vijayakumar.

AI vendors should try to develop a standardised approach to market their products, Frost & Sullivan advised.