While the application of artificial intelligence (Ai) to 5G networks has raised strong interest, standard solutions to bring Ai into 5G systems are still in their infancy and have a long way to go before they can be used to build an operational system. in this article, we contribute to bridging the gap between standards and a working solution by defining a framework that brings together the relevant standard specifications and complements them with additional building blocks. We populate this framework with concrete Ai-based algorithms that serve different purposes toward developing a fully operational system. We evaluate the performance resulting from applying our framework to control, management, and orchestration functions, showing the benefits that Ai can bring to 5G systems.