2023 was the year of AI. The arrival of capable, readily available consumer technology, powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) changed our popular understanding of what AI can do. 

From code generation to copywriting, illustration to meal planning, and almost everything in between, AI has been applied with impressive results. These successes have created a flurry of activity across all types of companies trying to find ways to incorporate AI into their product. 

The story has played out similarly in the CMS world: with LLMs ability to generate compelling text, adding AI-powered capabilities to a content management system seems like an obvious choice. But the ways that various companies have gone about doing so has led to some striking differences. 

The native AI approach 

In a rush to bring their AI-powered products to market, many companies went the quick and easy route: building a plugin for ChatGPT. This often takes the form of a simple box where users can enter their prompt to an LLM and it will spit out the results into the CMS. An advantage of this approach is that users have a lot of flexibility when it comes to creating their prompts. But that’s also a drawback: prompt creation isn’t always easy, and it takes a lot of experimentation to get the results a user wants. 

There are other disadvantages to the plugin approach. 

• Users need to have an account with the provider of the AI service 
• Privacy and data security are not up to enterprise standards – companies can’t be sure where their data is going, who has access to it, or how it will be used and stored in the future 
• The CMS provider is not in control of the AI provider, which means an additional vendor for companies to manage 
• Setting up the plugin can be difficult and may require some technical know-how 
• If the AI provider changes, maintenance of the plugin is not guaranteed 

At Kontent.ai, we have taken a different approach. Instead of offering a plugin, Kontent.ai has incorporated AI capabilities directly into the platform. There is no need to log in to an external provider, and there are no security and privacy concerns that come from using a 3^rd party AI provider since user data is sandboxed and never used for further AI training. Instead, AI capabilities are seamlessly integrated into the workflows you already use in Kontent.ai. 

This saves users from having to worry about details like prompt engineering and how to get an LLM to behave in a beneficial way. It also totally removes the need for developer support: there’s no setup, no integration; simply get to work in Kontent.ai, and achieve results faster with AI working in the background. 

It's all about the content supply chain 

This difference is more than just a matter of convenience. It’s a fundamentally unique approach to AI in a CMS. For Kontent.ai, AI is not just an extra feature or a new product. Nor is it a one-trick pony to be tried once and never used again. While other solutions focus primarily on using AI for content generation, Kontent.ai takes a more holistic approach that applies AI across the whole range of work done in the platform. 

This is the very core of what the Kontent.ai platform is all about. By building AI-assisted capabilities directly into the platform, users don’t have to worry about “how do we incorporate AI into our work?” The focus shifts back to where it should be: “how do we continue to create the best content for our needs and our audiences?” 

The introduction of AI doesn’t change the content supply chain. It acts as a powerful force multiplier along every step of the journey, bringing radical automation to every part of the process to drive an unparalleled return on content. 

With the start of the new year, we’re very excited to introduce some of the ways we’re powering up every step of the content supply chain with the help of AI. 

Control over everything content 

A key benefit of headless CMS is the fact that it deals in structured content. It’s this structure that enables content reuse, easy publishing across multiple channels, and content discoverability.  

Structured content is at its best with well-organized content: strong content models, clear taxonomies, organized asset libraries, and so on. But organization is something that many people find difficult. It’s hard to enforce good content tagging policies. Large content libraries, without proper stewardship, can quickly become overwhelming. And building good content models can be a tricky job, something that’s often underestimated by companies trying to bring a more structured approach to their content.  

Content Assist brings all the organizational advantages of AI to bear to content. By bringing order to complex content operations, Content Assist helps organizations keep content quality consistent at scale and helps teams with large projects more easily. 

Kontent.ai users can get a taste of Content Assist right now via the Early Access Program by enabling Categorize content items with AI. This will automatically suggest relevant taxonomy terms for content items, significantly increasing the discoverability and reusability of all content that is created.  

In-the-moment help for all authors 

While a headless CMS is still an incredible tool for organizing content, writing that content remains one of the core tasks a CMS needs to enable authors to do well. At Kontent.ai, we’ve always been focused on providing a best-in-class authoring experience, with an intuitive user interface and a full set of collaborative features. 

AI, specifically generative AI enabled by LLMs, is well suited to the work that writers do every day in a CMS. It excels at summarizing content, changing the tone, improving the writing, and more. The difficulty lies in making sure AI behaves in the intended way, with minimal hallucinations. 

Author Assist in Kontent.ai surfaces all these tasks and more to writers working in the platform, without requiring any prompt engineering or back-and-forth with an LLM. Author Assist provides in-the-moment help to writers as they’re working, with capabilities available through a familiar in-app menu. These capabilities are as easy to use as simpler operations like “copy” or “paste”: just a click away, directly in the place where writers are doing their work. 

But Author Assist goes beyond helping with simpler tasks, like creating summaries. Author Assist can also help writers with the difficult work of going from 0 to 1, from a blank slate to a first draft. Writers can now write their very own set of instructions directly in the text field and have them carried out immediately. These can be simple instructions, like “summarize the three paragraphs above.” But they can also be significantly more complex, like “write a blog post about the most important safety equipment for kids when biking. Use a friendly tone, include bulleted lists in the paragraphs. Follow SEO best practices.”  Author Assist will carry out the request and put the result in the same text field.  

Author Assist greatly increases the speed at which writers can create and improve their content, while still leaving control in the hands of the writers.   

Amplifying the reach of content 

One reason brands turn to headless CMS is for its ability to easily publish to multiple channels. Headless CMS is a great way to expand the reach of content, opening up doors to a greater audience. But it’s not just about more channels: it’s also about making the most of the channels that are already used. 

That means ensuring content is audience appropriate, compliant with applicable legislation and regulations, and localized for different regions. Doing these things right helps make sure that content resonates with audiences and improves the customer experience. Publish Assist helps make these goals easier to achieve with the help of AI. 

There’s a lot in store for Publish Assist. Kontent.ai customers can get a first look at some of the capabilities now through the Early Access Program by enabling Translate with AI.  

With this functionality enabled, content can be quickly translated to a target language with the help of AI. With just a click, brands can start expanding their reach and amplifying their content by translating it to new languages. This significantly reduces the barrier and cost of translating content, while also speeding up the process of localizing content. On the customer side, it’s a huge improvement to the customer experience, since customers can get content in their own language. 

The smart engine powering it all 

Content Assist, Author Assist, and Publish Assist offer new ways to simplify and streamline the lives of Kontent.ai users. These new capabilities all make use of Kontent.ai’s smart assistant: Kopilot. 

Kopilot acts as the engine for these capabilities, carrying out tasks for Kontent.ai users as needed. It currently works in the background, providing assistance whenever and wherever it’s needed. Kontent.ai users can expect more and more from Kopilot in the future, but can see it in action right now when using any AI-powered capabilities in Kontent.ai. 

This is just the beginning 

At the beginning of last year, no one knew how AI would change the way we all work. But we knew that change was coming. Now, at the start of this year, we’re seeing many of the ways that AI is changing our ways of working. 

When it comes to complex content supply chains, it’s becoming clear that many of the core challenges remain the same. The key is applying AI intelligently, using it to amplify the efforts of teams and to increase content velocity.  

That’s exactly what we have set out to do with Content Assist, Author Assist, and Publish Assist. At Kontent.ai, we have big plans for how to continue to expand these functionalities in the near future. But as they continue to evolve, the core goal stays the same: providing the best way to deal with the challenges of the complex content supply chain, so companies can achieve an unparalleled return on content. 

The best way to make use of these new capabilities is through the Kontent.ai Early Access Program, which enables customers to activate these functionalities themselves. If you are not yet a Kontent.ai customer, get in touch with us to discuss how we can help your business address your content needs.