Why WoodWing
Why WoodWing

How we help

icon-woodwing-enterprise-information-management-eim

Enterprise Information Management

Take charge of your content and information with Enterprise Information Management

icon-woodwing-unlock-your-potential

Unlock your potential

Unlock your potential with WoodWing's innovative solutions

icon-woodwing-content-orchestration

Content Orchestration

Managing content at scale has never been easier or more profitable

Solutions
Solutions

Content Creation

icon-woodwing-content-creation

Content Creation

Collaborate and create high-quality channel-neutral content

icon-woodwing-dam

Digital Asset Management

Manage and distribute digital assets for streamlined content

icon-woodwing-multichannel-publishing

Multichannel Publishing

Maximize reach with seamless multi-channel content publishing


Content Management

icon-logo-woodwing-document-management

Document Management

Centralize and control your documents, ensuring secure access

icon-woodwing-information-management

Information Management

Become more agile, reduce risks and benefit from available data

icon-woodwing-knowledge-management

Knowledge Management

Share knowledge for better collaboration and productivity

icon-woodwing-process-management

Process Management

Document and optimize business processes for greater efficiency

icon-logo-woodwing-quality-management

Quality Management

Ensure consistent and compliant quality standards for your organization


Content Services

icon-woodwing-creative-workflow-services

Creative Workflow Services

Unleash creative potential with tailored support from experts

icon-woodwing-digital-publishing-service

Digital Publishing Services

Enhance digital publishing strategy with expert services

icon-woodwing-integrations

App Integrations

Integrate WoodWing seamlessly into your existing tech stack

icon-woodwing-cloud

WoodWing Cloud

Experience stress-free hosting, software maintenance, and more


FEATURED CONTENT PIECE

Der Spiegel

How one of Germany’s largest news publications increased editorial and production workflow efficiency using WoodWing’s publishing software.

Read this case
Products
Products

Take charge of your content

WoodWing Studio

Streamlined content creation and multichannel publishing solution

Assets Logo (base)

Enterprise-grade digital asset management for streamlined workflows

WoodWing Swivle

Cloud-based DAM for seamless file management and collaboration

WoodWing Scienta

Simplified quality and process management for regulated industries

WoodWing Xtendis

Secure digital archiving and document management system

Connect Logo (base)

Powerful integration suite for seamless connectivity and automation

WoodWing Smart Styles

Efficient plugin for enhanced Adobe InDesign design workflows

Industries
Industries

We know your challenges

icon-woodwing-agencies

Agencies

Optimized workflow, improved collaboration, and brand consistency

icon-woodwing-finance

Finance

Modern document and quality management helps you manage risks and improve processes

icon-woodwing-franchise

Franchise

Ensure unity with document, quality, and knowledge management

icon-woodwing-healthcare

Healthcare

Always access the latest version of each process, protocol, guideline, or agreement

icon-logo-woodwing-housing-corporations

Housing Corporations

Document management from context, always up-to-date, complete and accurate documents

icon-woodwing-manufacturing

Manufacturing

Consistent branding, accelerated launches, and integrated content management

icon-woodwing-publishing

Publishing

Efficient content creation, collaboration, and multichannel publishing

icon-woodwing-retail-ecommerce

Retail & eCommerce

Streamlined catalog and marketing content production for faster time-to-market

icon-woodwing-transport-logistic

Trade & Logistics

Increase efficiency with process, document, and quality management


Featured content piece

Bavaria

How Bavaria significantly improved its global brand management.

Read this case
Inspiration
Inspiration

Learning centre

icon-woodwing-success-stories

Success Stories

Read success stories from trusted organizations that rely on WoodWing's solutions

icon-woodwing-ebooks-whitepapers

eBooks & Whitepapers

Dive into in-depth knowledge with our comprehensive digital publications

icon-logo-woodwing-videos

Videos

Lean back and enjoy one of our educational videos

icon-woodwing-events-and-webinars

Events & Webinars

Meet us in person or virtually at one of our events or webinars


Latest articles

'Zero Defects' Manufacturing: how the manufacturing industry aims for perfection

'Zero Defects' Manufacturing: how the manufacturing industry aims for perfection

What is document management? And why is it so important?

What is document management? And why is it so important?

Enhance team collaboration with WoodWing Studio Cloud's Commenting feature

Enhance team collaboration with WoodWing Studio Cloud's Commenting feature

View all blog articles

Featured content piece

Medium Rare

How Content Agency Medium Rare delivers better client experiences and outcomes with WoodWing.

Read this case
Company
Company

About us

icon-woodwing-about-woodwing

About WoodWing

Discover our company's vision, mission, and innovative solutions

icon-woodwing-management-team

Management Team

Meet the leaders driving WoodWing's success and growth

icon-woodwing-contact

Contact

Reach out to us for inquiries, support, and collaboration


Jobs & Press

icon-woodwing-job-opportunities

Job opportunities

Explore exciting career opportunities and join our team

icon-woodwing-press-release

Press releases

Stay updated with our latest company news and announcements


Partners

icon-woodwing-partners

Partners

Explore our partners for local support and expanded capabilities

icon-woodwing-become-a-partner

Become a partner

Join our global partner network and grow with us


Want to work for us?

Developer

Would you like to further develop your development skills? As our developer you will learn all about new techniques and innovations.

Join our team
English
Select language
Support Support Support Contact sales Contact sales Contact sales Login Login Login
Login

Choose a product

icon-woodwing-login-scienta

WoodWing Scienta

icon-woodwing-login-swivle

WoodWing Swivle


Contact us
Search Support Support Support Contact sales Contact sales Contact sales Login Login Login

Choose a product

icon-woodwing-login-scienta

WoodWing Scienta

icon-woodwing-login-swivle

WoodWing Swivle

English English

Nederlands

Why WoodWing

How we help

icon-woodwing-enterprise-information-management-eim

Enterprise Information Management

Take charge of your content and information with Enterprise Information Management

icon-woodwing-unlock-your-potential

Unlock your potential

Unlock your potential with WoodWing's innovative solutions

icon-woodwing-content-orchestration

Content Orchestration

Managing content at scale has never been easier or more profitable

Solutions

Content Creation

icon-woodwing-content-creation

Content Creation

Collaborate and create high-quality channel-neutral content

icon-woodwing-dam

Digital Asset Management

Manage and distribute digital assets for streamlined content

icon-woodwing-multichannel-publishing

Multichannel Publishing

Maximize reach with seamless multi-channel content publishing


Content Management

icon-logo-woodwing-document-management

Document Management

Centralize and control your documents, ensuring secure access

icon-woodwing-information-management

Information Management

Become more agile, reduce risks and benefit from available data

icon-woodwing-knowledge-management

Knowledge Management

Share knowledge for better collaboration and productivity

icon-woodwing-process-management

Process Management

Document and optimize business processes for greater efficiency

icon-logo-woodwing-quality-management

Quality Management

Ensure consistent and compliant quality standards for your organization


Content Services

icon-woodwing-creative-workflow-services

Creative Workflow Services

Unleash creative potential with tailored support from experts

icon-woodwing-digital-publishing-service

Digital Publishing Services

Enhance digital publishing strategy with expert services

icon-woodwing-integrations

App Integrations

Integrate WoodWing seamlessly into your existing tech stack

icon-woodwing-cloud

WoodWing Cloud

Experience stress-free hosting, software maintenance, and more


FEATURED CONTENT PIECE

Der Spiegel

How one of Germany’s largest news publications increased editorial and production workflow efficiency using WoodWing’s publishing software.

Read this case
Products

Take charge of your content

WoodWing Studio

Streamlined content creation and multichannel publishing solution

WoodWing Studio

Collaborative content creation and multichannel publishing solution that simplifies workflows and streamlines production processes.

Assets Logo (base)

Enterprise-grade digital asset management for streamlined workflows

WoodWing Assets

Enterprise-grade digital asset management solution that streamlines your creative workflow and simplifies collaboration among team members.

WoodWing Swivle

Cloud-based DAM for seamless file management and collaboration

WoodWing Swivle

Cloud-based DAM solution for managing, sharing, and collaborating on digital files from anywhere and on any device.

WoodWing Scienta

Simplified quality and process management for regulated industries

WoodWing Scienta

Quality management platform for regulated industries that simplifies compliance, knowledge sharing, and collaboration.

WoodWing Xtendis

Secure digital archiving and document management system

WoodWing Xtendis

Digital archiving and document management system that allows organizations to store, manage, and access their digital assets securely.

Connect Logo (base)

Powerful integration suite for seamless connectivity and automation

WoodWing Connect

Powerful integration suite, including APIs, webhooks, plugins, and the best-in-class iPaaS solution (powered by Workato).

WoodWing Smart Styles

Efficient plugin for enhanced Adobe InDesign design workflows

WoodWing Smart Styles

Plugin for Adobe InDesign that streamlines design workflows by allowing designers to apply predefined styles quickly.

Industries

We know your challenges

icon-woodwing-agencies

Agencies

Optimized workflow, improved collaboration, and brand consistency

icon-woodwing-finance

Finance

Modern document and quality management helps you manage risks and improve processes

icon-woodwing-franchise

Franchise

Ensure unity with document, quality, and knowledge management

icon-woodwing-healthcare

Healthcare

Always access the latest version of each process, protocol, guideline, or agreement

icon-logo-woodwing-housing-corporations

Housing Corporations

Document management from context, always up-to-date, complete and accurate documents

icon-woodwing-manufacturing

Manufacturing

Consistent branding, accelerated launches, and integrated content management

icon-woodwing-publishing

Publishing

Efficient content creation, collaboration, and multichannel publishing

icon-woodwing-retail-ecommerce

Retail & eCommerce

Streamlined catalog and marketing content production for faster time-to-market

icon-woodwing-transport-logistic

Trade & Logistics

Increase efficiency with process, document, and quality management

Featured content piece

Bavaria

How Bavaria significantly improved its global brand management.

Read this case
Inspiration

Learning centre

icon-woodwing-success-stories

Success Stories

Read success stories from trusted organizations that rely on WoodWing's solutions

icon-woodwing-ebooks-whitepapers

eBooks & Whitepapers

Dive into in-depth knowledge with our comprehensive digital publications

icon-logo-woodwing-videos

Videos

Lean back and enjoy one of our educational videos

icon-woodwing-events-and-webinars

Events & Webinars

Meet us in person or virtually at one of our events or webinars


Latest articles

'Zero Defects' Manufacturing: how the manufacturing industry aims for perfection

'Zero Defects' Manufacturing: how the manufacturing industry aims for perfection

What is document management? And why is it so important?

What is document management? And why is it so important?

Enhance team collaboration with WoodWing Studio Cloud's Commenting feature

Enhance team collaboration with WoodWing Studio Cloud's Commenting feature

View all blog articles

Featured content piece

Medium Rare

How Content Agency Medium Rare delivers better client experiences and outcomes with WoodWing.

Read this case
Company

About us

icon-woodwing-about-woodwing

About WoodWing

Discover our company's vision, mission, and innovative solutions

icon-woodwing-management-team

Management Team

Meet the leaders driving WoodWing's success and growth

icon-woodwing-contact

Contact

Reach out to us for inquiries, support, and collaboration


Jobs & Press

icon-woodwing-job-opportunities

Job opportunities

Explore exciting career opportunities and join our team

icon-woodwing-press-release

Press releases

Stay updated with our latest company news and announcements


Partners

icon-woodwing-partners

Partners

Explore our partners for local support and expanded capabilities

icon-woodwing-become-a-partner

Become a partner

Join our global partner network and grow with us


Want to work for us?

Developer

Would you like to further develop your development skills? As our developer you will learn all about new techniques and innovations.

Join our team
Contact us
Home Inspiration Blog | WoodWing

AI

Digital Asset Management

Integrations

7 minutes of reading

Artificial Intelligence in Digital Asset Management: Pros and cons

Artificial Intelligence is heralded as the next advance in Digital Asset Management - promising faster ingest and more meaningful metadata among the many benefits.

Shape

AI is big news in all sectors. IBM’s Global AI Adoption Index 2022 finds the global AI adoption rate has risen to 35% - a four-point increase from 2021 - and generative AI is one of Gartner's top strategic technology trends for 2022.

Artificial Intelligence is being built into DAM systems and widely offered through third-party plug-ins like Google Vision, Amazon Image Rekognition, and Clarifai. But with the technology still relatively new, is now the time to invest in adding AI to your DAM?

We’ve pulled together some of the main benefits - and barriers - to the use of Artificial Intelligence in Digital Asset Management in 2022.

(This is the second part of our series "Artificial Intelligence in Digital Asset Management". To read the first part, click here.)

AI in DAM: the benefits

If you’re not familiar with how AI works in Digital Asset Management, you’ll find it helpful to read the first article in this series Artificial Intelligence in Digital Asset Management: How does it work and do I need it?

That will explain what AI in DAM can do - such as auto-tagging, subject recognition, intelligent cropping, compliance monitoring, and more.  

What are the main benefits of AI in DAM?

The main benefits of Artificial intelligence in DAM typically fall into the following categories.

Improvements to:

  • Operational, processes and workflow efficiency - by accelerating and automating workflows - from asset ingest to creative processes
  • DAM user experience - by making your DAM system easier and more productive to use
  • ROI - by making assets more discoverable and supporting re-use

All of which are advantageous to organizations where Digital Asset Management is a business-critical process. Let’s look at a few in more detail.  

Scalability

The primary benefit of using AI in DAM is that it can make your Digital Asset Management processes more scalable. When you’re processing - potentially - millions of images and video, it simply isn’t possible to get human eyes on every digital asset.

Manual processes can choke your digital asset management systems, causing major bottlenecks to upload, approval and use. AI can eliminate the need for congestion-causing manual processes like

  • Selecting and tagging digital assets with keywords
  • Checking uploads to check quality and compliance
  • Editing and cropping digital assets

For example, manual application of metadata can be slow, and prone to human error and inconsistencies. AI doesn’t have this problem. AI can ingest and tag your uploads accurately 24/7. This doesn’t just accelerate processes, it makes them scalable. By removing the human element, you can go from processing hundreds to millions of assets in the same amount of time.

Being able to trust AI - to do things like apply appropriate tags, crop images intelligently, and filter out non-compliant uploads - lets you scale up with confidence. It also frees your team from time-sinks, so they can reclaim time for more creative and strategic work.

blog-body-dam-ai-autotagging

Discoverability

There are lots of use cases where using DAM isn’t just efficient, it’s essential; where the ability to access and leverage digital assets can be the difference between failure and success.

Ecommerce, marketers, publishers, and agencies all rely on fast and accurate digital asset management to deliver their services. And that’s the crux of the AI opportunity in DAM - improving and accelerating the processes that DAM is designed for.

Take designers. They can lose hours every week, playing hide-and-seek with digital assets. Are they on someone’s desktop? Attached to an email? Hidden in a subfolder with an unguessable file name?

Simply having a DAM system helps alleviate that by centralizing digital assets and attaching metadata that makes them easier to find.

But adding AI to your DAM improves things further by:

  • Adding MORE metadata than
  • a human could - so assets are more discoverable than ever
  • Automatically creating searchable transcriptions of video uploads - so you can find the exact excerpt you need - in an instant
  • Adding visual search ability - so you can upload an image and see if your DAM has something similar

Ultimately, AI makes your digital assets more discoverable. This makes it easier for users to surface assets that meet their needs - speeding up content creation processes and increasing the ROI on your commissioned assets.

Usability

Another - often overlooked - benefit of augmenting your DAM system with AI is that it makes your DAM easier and more productive to use. Even without AI, DAM is a workflow game-changer. But with AI, things get even quicker and more convenient - which means your time-poor team will love it even more.

For example:

  • Making assets instantly accessible from a much wider range of search terms, so you’re more likely to find what you need first time
  • Weeding out duplicates and old assets automatically, so people aren’t wading through lookalike assets to find what they want
  • Surfacing existing content as a fast track to creating new assets more efficiently
  • Accelerating and automating workflows, so your team is more productive and less stressed

These improvements to user experience help maintain high adoption and usage rates - which means you’re more likely to reap the system ROI you’re banking on.

AI in DAM example: e-commerce image automation

A growing e-commerce brand sells fashion products from a range of suppliers. In a highly visual market, their sales depend on high-quality product imagery and video. Cross-selling drives higher revenue by letting shoppers ‘buy the look’ instead of single items. Here’s how deploying AI in their DAM could help them scale.

The brand has commissioned a photoshoot for its Fall season highlights. In each photo, a model wears a range of clothing items, jewelry, and footwear. They’ve trained their AI to recognize each of those items and add the SKU to the image metadata in their DAM.

The DAM is synced to their PIM system. Adding the SKU in the DAM triggers a process to access all of the related information about that SKU from the PIM - and add it as metadata to the image.

Information such as the product name, range, collection, availability, sizes, fabric, price, etc.

Every image from that photoshoot is now tagged with meaningful metadata, making those images infinitely more discoverable and usable.

So if a designer looking for images to illustrate ‘dresses below $40’, they could search for photos showing the items from the current collection under $40. They don’t need to cross-reference to other databases or ask colleagues - they know they can rely on the information that’s been synced across from the PIM.

Or, imagine you’ve published a photo on a product page. Let’s say it’s for a leather jacket. Your CMS can use the metadata available in the images to pull in ‘related items’ that link through to other clothing within the photo - like the shirt, shoes, and belt - creating cross-selling opportunities.

[Read more about the benefits of linking your DAM and PIM systems]

AI in DAM: the challenges

Of course, it isn’t all plain sailing. AI is in its infancy and the technology isn’t perfect yet. Here are some of the challenges you might encounter with AI-powered Digital Asset Management.

AI in DAM is still learning

Your DAM AI plug-in can only tag subjects it’s already learned about. This means it’s great on common subjects - like landmarks, famous faces, flora and fauna, weather, and colors. But it might struggle with more subtle or abstract subjects. This is especially true if an image is particularly complex and includes a lot of detail/different objects.

AI in DAM is generic

AI is trained to recognize generic subjects that are common to all experiences, cultures, and businesses. But it doesn’t know anything about your specific business - yet. You’ll need to train it. And that takes time and expertise.

For example, imagine you sell pottery. Your AI might recognize several different products as ‘plates’ but lack the nuance to tag them as side plates, dinner plates, porcelain, or stoneware… In the context of your DAM system, having lots of different products tagged as ‘plates’ - when you want to find images of a porcelain side plate - isn’t very helpful.

AI and DAM master lists don’t always mix

If your DAM uses a master keyword list, you may struggle to get it to accept the auto-tags generated by your AI. If you’ve locked down a controlled vocabulary for keywords - and your AI is suggesting tags that aren’t on the list - this can prevent them from being added. One way around this is to have two separate keyword fields, one for manual entry from your master list and one for keywords generated by your AI.

AI in DAM gets it wrong

AI and human image recognition are very different. Whereas humans understand the content of an image, AI just recognizes patterns in the pixels. That means it can make a strong guesstimate as to the content - but it won’t always get it right.

To prevent your search results from getting cluttered with irrelevant assets, you may need to edit and remove auto-tag errors. In a larger enterprise, this could require an additional team member to quality-check the AI tagging.

blog-body-artificial-intelligence-robot

Sometimes VERY wrong

Sometimes, AI tagging doesn’t just result in mislabelled digital assets and the inconvenience they cause. Sometimes AI tagging can reflect biases and errors found in real life which, if admitted into your DAM unquestioned, may cause deeper issues.

For example, when this writer used a stock photo library to find images of breastfeeding, it was evident that AI tagging was in play. As well as appropriate keywords - such as motherhood, feeding, and infant - the images had been erroneously tagged with sexual keywords as well. In this case, we can assume the AI had correctly identified the anatomy but failed to understand the context.

More worryingly, some AI has been found to perpetuate racist and sexist prejudice. Not something any Digital Asset Manager wants to introduce into their business.

Is AI-powered DAM worth it?

Weighing up the benefits and challenges of AI in DAM, you may not be convinced that you need it yet.

As you’ll have gathered from the challenges above, AI isn’t always a plug-and-go product. Depending on your use case, you may need to invest time and resources to train it to work effectively for your organization.

With the technology still in its infancy, there are certainly still glitches to iron out. But we believe - overwhelmingly - that AI and DAM combined will be a powerful force in the future.

As AI technology and machine learning improve, they have the potential to transform how businesses manage their digital assets - allowing for infinitely scalable processes that let you grow your business without growing staff overheads.

AI-powered DAM will become a key lever of operational efficiency in any digital asset-heavy business model - such as publishing, e-commerce, entertainment, and more. The question is: where will your business be on the adoption curve - an innovator, early adopter, or laggard?

You’ll discover a wealth of AI tools built into WoodWing’s two Digital Asset Management systems - WoodWing Assets and WoodWing Swivle. To talk about the benefits of AI-assisted DAM for your use case, book a call back now.

Shape

Published on October 28, 2022

Tom Pijsel

Tom loves to solve complex software challenges. Working together with the WoodWing Studio and Assets product teams, he creates solutions that support publishers, agencies and marketers in their daily work. Tom loves to spend time outdoors with his family. And when he needs to clear his head to make room for new ideas, he’ll put on his running shoes.

Back to the overview

Next-gen DAM integrations

Integrating DAM using iPaaS and more…

From the back-office benefits of automating previously repetitive manual processes to customer-facing innovation like atomic personalization of content experiences. The days of DAM being standalone software - with limited functionality - are long gone.

But how exactly do you build software integrations between your Digital Asset Management system and other tech in your stack?

Get your copy

20 pages of quality content

Placeholder