DAM News Round-Up – 14th August 2023


A selection of DAM-related articles from around the web, sourced by the DAM News editorial team.

Canto Acquires MerlinOne

Digital Asset Management solutions provider Canto have recently announced the acquisition of DAM software outfit MerlinOne.  Stating MerlinOne’s AI capabilities as a key attraction and the focus for ongoing development and expansion, the existing CEO David Tenenbaum will be continuing as Canto’s Chief AI scientist and strategist.  MerlinOne was founded in 1988, and have recently made the headlines with their NOMAD (no metadata) AI-assisted search technology.  For an opinion piece about the recent trend in DAM acquisitions, you can check out Ralph Windor’s article on the topic entitled ‘The DAM Software Market’s Customer Acquisition Problem‘.

What Are Large Language Models (LLMs)? Definition, Types & Uses

Senior Editor at CMS Wire, Michelle Hawley, takes a look under the bonnet of AI and provides a detailed introduction to Large Language Models (LLMs), and how they’ve transformed the digital landscape in the last few years.  The article provides a description of LLMs, a brief history of their evolution, and how OpenAI’s GPT-3’s ability to churn out seemingly human-like results is little more than pattern-based mimicry based on a training set of 300 billion words.  The recent spate of AI ‘hallucinations’ is also mentioned, along with other notable downsides.  An engaging and worthwhile read.

Best Practices for Equipping New DAM Users for Success

The analogy of DAM-as-adventure-movie is acted out in this recent article on user adoption and training from the Stacks team.  Parallels are drawn between DAM user training and the so-called ‘exposition dump’ – the scene in a film where the audience is introduced to the rules of the world.  Additional tips and insights to prevent your users becoming lost in their own Indiana Jones type adventure cover personalised training materials and courses, providing ongoing support, and hosting webinars and feedback sessions to ensure your users don’t go off-script or lose the DAM plot altogether.

If metadata for DAM was a summer vacation

Continuing with metaphor, digital content operations and metadata specialist Kristin Burns provides a whimsical take on a number of metadata themes.  The article covers the importance of metadata and how it’s pivotal in bringing order and harmony to your digital assets by providing the underlying structure and context and improving discoverability, collaboration and consistency.  Thoughts on the future of DAM and metadata in relation to artificial intelligence are also provided.

Media Asset Management: All You Should Know

This recent post from omnichannel content management platform provider Censhare explores the topic of Media Asset Management (MAM) – a form of DAM that specialises in audio, video and multimedia digital assets.  This detailed and concise article covers a good range of MAM features, components and characteristics, including its definition and evolution, the advantages of having a dedicated media management platform, and numerous tips and insights for devising a strategy to select, implement, integrate and measure the success of a MAM initiative.

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