How Data Catalogs Will Benefit From and Accelerate Generative AI

Executive Summary

The potential of generative artificial intelligence (gen AI) is taking the world by storm. Leading organizations and fast followers are developing gen AI strategies and, in some cases, launching initial capabilities. Success will depend on having accurate, well-understood, and well-governed data. Yet data increasingly resides partially or entirely in one or more clouds. The ability to find and access data, to govern that data, and to adhere to strict security and privacy controls and compliant usage policies has never been more challenging.

This report explains how organizations can use metadata management and data catalog platforms—also known as data intelligence platforms—to quickly provide self-service access to information for both business users and technical users. These platforms are proliferating because they provide awareness of available data and related assets—including technical, business, and usage context—all within the guardrails of access controls, usage policies, and privacy and regulatory compliance constraints. 

It’s important to consider enterprise-grade platforms that span all data sources and related assets as well as hybrid and multicloud deployments. The most complete platforms will be a boon to gen AI initiatives, because they will help support training of accurate and trustworthy models using appropriate data. Finally, leading-edge platforms will also benefit from the incorporation of gen AI capabilities that will help to automate and improve the accuracy of data identification, search, exploration, enrichment, sensitivity tagging, and governance and compliance capabilities.