Deere is making a bet that AI can help farmers make better decisions-and eventually revive sliding sales of farm equipment.

The Illinois-based equipment maker is rolling out a conversational AI assistant in the vein of ChatGPT or Anthropic's Claude. It is meant to provide quick answers to queries about the best time to plant or harvest crops and other business decisions, backed up with years of data from a farmer's own fields.

The debut of the chatbot, known as JD, comes as Deere invests billions of dollars into smart farm equipment infused with AI-enabled software. A key selling point for that equipment is that the software is able to capture loads of information that the company says can help farmers increase crop production and lower their costs.

But a slumping farm economy in recent years has dragged down farmers' spending on equipment and automation software, which typically comes with annual user fees. Deere had been aiming to generate 10% of its annual revenue from software subscriptions by 2030, but last year left the time to reach 10% open-ended.

Deere executives hope farmers will realize the benefits of more automation after using the AI assistant, then be inclined to purchase additional software for their harvesters, crop sprayers, planters and other equipment. Deere is offering farmers access to JD free of charge.

"The more that customers invest in John Deere equipment and technology, use it and see the value in it, the more likely they are to want to continue to do that," said Than Hartsock, the company's vice president of precision upgrades and AI data.

JD users have to enroll in a John Deere operations center that collects farmers' data and stores it in individual accounts. That account is free of charge, and the company says it will accept data collected by other equipment brands or separate data companies.

Meanwhile, Deere says it won't share any JD data with other parties without farmers' permission and is requiring its dealers to abide by the same requirement.

That pledge comes as the equipment maker attempts to head off distrust in its repair practices. For years, some farmer organizations and consumer-advocacy groups have accused Deere of using proprietary software on its equipment to restrict repair work to Deere's own dealers, which farmers said raises their costs and sometimes leaves equipment out of service for weeks waiting for repairs. Deere earlier this year settled a "right-to-repair" lawsuit brought by farmers for $99 million.

As part of its tech push, Deere's fee-based software allows herbicide sprayers to distinguish weeds from crops. Variable-rate planters can plant more seeds in parts of a field with a history of high crop yields and fewer seeds in less productive ground.

Kelly Garrett, who farms 9,000 acres in western Iowa, said his corn-seed usage with a variable-rate planter dropped to 29,000 seeds an acre from 34,000 seeds. Garrett said he is also using about 40% less fertilizer an acre since he is planting fewer seeds. As a result, his input costs have decreased.

"From the amount of seeds we saved in the first year, we returned two pallets of seeds," he said.

Deere helped make satellite-guided tractors and harvesters ubiquitous on farms over the past 20 years. Its AutoTrac guidance system is now a standard feature on Deere's large farm machinery and rivals' equipment comes with similar autopilots as well. Deere has 1.2 million machines globally connected to its operations center and has a goal of reaching 1.5 million by the end of the year.

Farmers have mostly had to do their own work turning data from Deere's operations center into actionable information for harvesting, fertilizing or equipment use. Now, JD's large-language AI model can do that work, giving farmers quick answers to their questions. The more data stored in a farmer's operations-center account, the better the responses, the company says.

"If a farmer has decades' worth of data, the AI is going to be able to look through the breadth and depth of that data and give a very powerful answer, " said Kevin Seidl, Deere's director of product and digital solutions.

Kelley Kokemiller, who has a 6,500-acre farm in central Iowa, said he saves about $75,000 a year on herbicides even after paying the software fee for Deere's smart sprayer. It uses high-speed cameras connected to an AI database of weed images to identify the weeds in Kokemiller's fields. As the sprayer drives through a field, it intermittently sprays the weeds while passing over the crops.

Farmer Jason Berg recently bought a Deere crop sprayer, but said he put off getting the smart-technology gear until his farm business improves.

Most of the equipment Berg uses on his 1,800-acre farm in southwest Iowa is from Deere, but he relies on Iowa-based Ag Leader Technology for his farm's data. For now, he said, he is satisfied with what he is getting, but would consider moving his data to Deere if he adds smart-software technology to his sprayer.

"That's where everything is going," Berg said.