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.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Salesforce announced a set of new integrations, including sales of Salesforce products on the AWS Marketplace and easier data sharing between Salesforce Data Cloud and AWS data services. Most of the changes are fairly technical but the general lesson is that even mighty Salesforce is ultimately a guest on turf controlled by AWS.