This qualification was developed to address industry demand for developers with skills that encompass machine learning, computer vision and natural language processing and speech recognition.

The specialised topics in AI are a branch of artificial intelligence based on the idea that systems can learn from data to identify patterns and make decisions with minimal human intervention. AI is used as a confluence in Natural Language Processing (with linguistics), speech recognition (also linguistics), computer vision (graphics & image processing), data mining and visualisation (graphics & image processing).

The course also embeds ethics, social responsibility and cognitive psychology, adding desired skills to the profession of  software engineering, which are increasingly a mainstay in the profession.