Artificial Intelligence is a trending tech topic at the tip of everyone’s tongue. Content Manager customers frequently ask about what place artificial intelligence holds in our product’s strategy.

Defining Artificial Intelligence

It’s important to start by clearly defining Artificial Intelligence (AI). Large Language Models (such as those used by ChatGPT) have recently placed AI on the map, and in some conversations, AI is synonymous with LLMs. However, the dictionary definition of AI is  (Oxford Languages Dictionary) rather broader, referring to any computer system “able to perform tasks normally requiring human intelligence”.

AI is thus often requested by customers, without them always having a clear sense of what is meant by the term. Some are thinking in their minds of a chatbot similar to ChatGPT, that would leverage large language models to have a conversation with the user and help perform tasks. Others are simply envisioning generic “cutting edge technology” and put everything under the blanket of “AI”. Certainly, when it comes to outside messaging, I can say that everything and anything in the tech world has had the AI label stuck to it by an ambitious marketing team.

This vague definition is why, as a product manager with 12 years tech industry experience, I’m not a fan of the blanket term “AI”. I’ve seen the term mis-used for 12 years, and this new trend is no exception. I’d rather discuss specific technology and the benefits it will provide, with the term “AI” better belonging in research labs or marketing departments. However, with the explosion of LLMs, customers are asking with increasing frequency “Where does Artificial Intelligence fit in Content Manager’s long-term strategy or roadmap”?

Recent AI Advances in Content Manager

Once we have agreed that “AI” is a dangerous blanket term, the useful thing to do is to list what aspects of AI are relevant to the Content Management vertical. This is something I’ve written about in the article “What can artificial intelligence do for Content Management?”, found on page 44 of this month’s RIMPA issue.

An important thing to consider that is expressed in the article, is that AI for the sake of AI is not a good strategy. AI (in the strict sense of LLMs) has an astronomical large cost, both economic and environmental (electricity, water, and in general energy usage), as well as architectural and infrastructure (when integrated within a specific product for example). Not to mention the obvious that any effort spent on one feature is not spent developing another.

As detailed in the RIMPA article, most relevant “AI” features have been present in the Content Management space for a while, such as auto-classification, data enrichment, finding similar content, or automated workflows. The answer then to those customers asking about AI in our roadmap is “we’ve had it in our roadmap for years and will continue to have it”.

Most notably amongst recent releases, we can highlight the “auto-redaction” feature of 23.4 which has the capability of auto-identifying personal information within a document and then automatically redacting it. For example, a user could automate locating any financial information within a document and then having that document redacted before passing it on to a customer-facing rep in a support call-center. Another big AI related item was our two-way integration with IDOL Enterprise in 24.2, which allows the leveraging of the IDOL Enterprise auto-classification module within Content Manager.

AI as a long-term Strategy for Content Manager

One of our six strategic (and thus long-term) themes for Content Manager is “automation and machine learning”, and all the initiatives under that strategy (auto-classification, natural language processing, auto-fill reports) fall under the dictionary definition of AI.

If you wish to learn more about Content Manager strategic themes, I invite you to re-watch our latest release webinar, where our strategic themes are reviewed roughly 10 minutes in.

AI Roadmap Items for Content Manager

Moving beyond the long-term to look at the short term, the release webinar mentioned above also explains what particular features to expect in the scope of the next year. Here’s a summary of the AI themed features in our roadmap for end 2024/ start 2025:

• Auto-Classification

In my opinion, the most relevant “AI” themed feature to Content Management is auto-classification. This year has planned improvements in the areas of Accuracy and Category Training, and Documentation.

• Smart Reporting

This year’s roadmap holds plans for reporting templates that would be word-based and allow for autofill of the template values based on record metadata. A separate element in this theme is also a configurable analytical dashboard that is planned for the WEB UI.

• Search

This is also one of the top themes that comes to mind when one thinks AI and content management. This year’s roadmap has some searching improvements, most notably the ability to search across all metadata fields at once.

AI in Content Manager

To summarize: Whether in our existing features, recent releases, short-term roadmap or long-term strategy, AI is heavily present within Content Manager. As a customer, I encourage avoiding “AI for the sake of AI” or the use of blanket terms, and instead I recommend focusing on what features would provide the most benefit for your end-users and your organisation. You are likely to find most of those features will probably fall under the general definition of AI, as they will help to automate the work of your end-users and thus increase efficiency and accuracy across your organization.

About the author:

Gwendoline Huret, Product Manager, OpenText

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