15 ways AI influences the data management landscape

AI permeates all areas of technology, including data management. Consider the following areas of data management for AI use, from data quality to classification, governance, security, and even data synthesis and generation.

1. Data quality and cleansing. AI techniques can identify and correct errors, inconsistencies and missing values in data. Machine learning (ML) algorithms can learn from historical data patterns to automatically identify and clean up data anomalies, which ensures higher data quality.
2. Data integration. AI can help automate the process of data integration from multiple sources. ML algorithms can analyze different data sources' structure, content and semantics to provide recommendations or even automate the data integration process.
3. Data governance and compliance. AI can assist data governance policy enforcement and ensure compliance with regulations. Natural language processing (NLP) techniques can analyze data policies, identify sensitive information and classify data accordingly. AI can also help monitor and detect potential data breaches or unauthorized access.
4. Data classification and tagging. AI can automate classifying and tagging data based on its content. ML algorithms can learn from labeled examples to categorize data into predefined classes or assign relevant tags. This makes it easier to search, retrieve and analyze data.
5. Data deduplication. AI can help identify and remove duplicate records from large data sets. ML algorithms can compare data records, identify similarities, and merge or eliminate duplicates to improve data accuracy and reduce storage requirements.
6. Data security and privacy. AI can assist a team in identifying and mitigating security risks in data management. AI techniques can analyze access patterns, detect anomalies and raise alerts for potential security breaches. It can also anonymize or pseudonymize sensitive data to ensure privacy compliance.
7. Data discovery and exploration. AI can automatically explore and discover patterns, trends and insights in large data sets. ML algorithms can uncover hidden relationships, generate data visualizations and assist in data-driven decision-making.
8. Data storage and retrieval optimization. AI techniques can optimize data storage and retrieval processes. AI-powered systems can learn from usage patterns to predict the most frequently accessed data and prioritize storage and indexing accordingly.
9. Data preprocessing. AI can automate data preprocessing tasks such as data cleaning, normalization, feature extraction and transformation. ML algorithms can learn patterns and relationships in data to preprocess it, automatically reducing the manual effort required.
10. Data compression and storage optimization. AI algorithms can compress and optimize data storage. Techniques such as neural network-based compression models or predictive coding can reduce data size without significant loss of information, enabling efficient storage and faster data retrieval.
11. Data migration. AI can facilitate data migration between different systems or platforms. Intelligent algorithms can analyze the structure and format of data in the source and target systems. AI also can automatically transform and map the data to ensure smooth and accurate migration.
12. Data synthesis and generation. AI can generate synthetic data that closely resembles real-world data. Generative models, such as generative adversarial networks (GANs) or variational autoencoders (VAEs), can learn the underlying patterns in data and generate new samples. GANs, VAEs and other models augment existing datasets or generate simulated data for testing and analysis.
13. NLP for text data. AI-powered NLP techniques can help text data management tasks. These include text classification, sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, text summarization and topic modeling. The aim is effective organization and analysis of textual data.
14. Data visualization. AI algorithms can aid in the creation of interactive and meaningful visual representations of data. They can analyze data attributes, identify relevant patterns and automatically generate visualizations. This visual format aids users when they explore and understand complex data sets.
15. Predictive analytics. AI techniques, such as machine learning and predictive modeling, can analyze historical data, identify patterns and predict future trends or events. This can assist in data-driven decision-making, forecasting and optimization of various processes.

Technology vendors across the data management spectrum are implementing AI solutions, including generative AI, to enhance user experiences, create efficiencies and reduce costs. Boardrooms everywhere are accelerating the AI discussion and driving decision-makers who evaluate these data management technology vendors. IT buyers should ask a data management vendor for their AI roadmap as a critical decision criterion.