Data integration is one of the more promising uses for generative AI, although it doesn’t get as a much attention as search or content creation. SnapLogic is staking its claim by opening a waitlist for SnapGPT, which will integrate and automate business processes using natural language prompts. Removing that bottleneck could all sorts of floodgates, including some that might best remain shut.
I can’t bring myself to lead with yet another generative AI story, so we’ll start instead with this Forrester report for Airtable, which found that organizations have lots of software applications. The average is 367 in use at large organizations, with teams using an average of 45 daily and individuals using an average of 52 weekly. No surprise here but a good reminder of why data integration is so important.
When it comes to bad ideas, letting ChatGPT loose to read the entire Internet could rank with the worst. OpenAI has so far avoided that one, but they are offering controlled extensions of the system’s knowledge base by adding third-party plugins for data from selected partners. Initial sources include Expedia, FiscalNote, Instacart, KAYAK, Klarna, Milo, OpenTable, Shopify, Slack, Speak, Wolfram, and Zapier, which all sound pretty benign although Zapier could be a gateway to pretty much anything.
Salesforce kicked off its big Connections conference yesterday, and if you’re surprised the focus was on generative AI, you haven’t been paying attention. Still, the focus this time was on marketing applications that draw on Salesforce CDP data, so it’s right up our alley. They also announced direct access to Google BigQuery data, ticking the “zero-copy” box as well.