Dropbox introduces generative AI-powered products to facilitate knowledge work

Cloud storage provider Drop box today unveiled a range of AI-powered products designed to facilitate knowledge work. The company’s latest offerings, Dropbox Dash and Dropbox AI, aim to boost productivity and streamline workflows, giving users a more personalized work experience.

According to the company, these products are just the beginning of a series of personalized AI experiences that Dropbox plans to release. The goal is to provide customers with ways to discover, organize and manage their work on the Dropbox platform.

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“In the cloud world, an organizational layer was missing everywhere, and we believe Dropbox is fit to be that self-organizing digital container,” Sateesh Srinivasan, VP and GM at Dropbox, told VentureBeat. “We’ve long been investing in AI and ML to improve our products, and our new offering will deliver personalized AI/ML experiences to improve our customers’ work lives and help them get more out of their content in Dropbox.”

The company’s latest AI-powered universal search tool, Dash, allows users to quickly find information across all of their tools, content, and apps using a single search bar.

With integration capabilities for major platforms such as Google Workspace, Microsoft Outlook, Salesforce, and Notion, Dash provides a personalized experience by organizing all content on a single platform. A key feature is Universal Search, which allows users to search all apps and tabs in one place.

In addition, Dropbox AI provides quick access to the information in file previews. It can generate concise document summaries and video previews. In addition, the ask questions feature allows users to extract information from lengthy Dropbox documents and videos simply by asking questions.

While Dropbox AI will initially be available for documents and video previews, the company plans to expand its capabilities to include folders and full Dropbox accounts in the near future.

Similar to the AI ​​announcement of Dropbox, cloud-based content management company Box also recently introduced Box AI, a feature that allows users to perform generic searches for specific keywords in documents and ask questions about the content.

These developments highlight the industry’s current collective efforts to improve search capabilities and enable more meaningful interactions with document-based insights.

Content organization and retrieval through generative AI

Dropbox’s Srinivasan said that as the organization’s work processes have changed in recent years, the company now delivers products that meet the challenges customers face in today’s modern work environment.

He emphasized that Dropbox Dash and Dropbox AI represent the first wave of AI-powered offerings designed to address this challenge.

“We want to reduce that feeling of being overwhelmed and digital decision fatigue that comes from managing a growing number of content and cloud tools and apps,” Srinivasan told VentureBeat. “We’re applying AI that’s more personalized to our customers so they can quickly find what they need, understand their content, or ask questions about their content or their company’s information.”

As users today need to manage massive amounts of content scattered across apps, files, and URLs, they need more adaptability in organizing and locating their cloud content.

Dash connects to popular tools and apps to meet this demand, making it easy for users to find and access their content regardless of location or format. Using machine learning, the tool identifies, organizes and presents relevant content that is critical to a client’s work, such as unfinished documents or material related to upcoming meetings.

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Dash is constantly learning, evolving and improving as a customer uses it for content search and organization. The company plans to further expand Dash’s integrations.

A new feature called Stacks provides intelligent collections for storing, organizing, and retrieving URLs, providing a convenient organizational layer for cloud content. The home page serves as a central dashboard, providing users with easy access to Dash Universal Search, Stacks, and shortcuts to recent work, along with the ability to initiate meetings.

Similarly, Dropbox’s AI allows customers to condense large documents or videos, such as contracts and meeting recordings, into an explanation in the Previews view on the web by clicking the “Ask” button. It also helps customers extract the information they need from their content without manually searching through large files.

“We will be expanding this functionality to Dropbox folders and, eventually, a customer’s entire Dropbox account in the coming months,” said Srinivasan. “We want to advance the AI ​​ecosystem and support the next generation of startups that are leading the way in shaping the modern work experience through the power of AI.”

What’s next for Dropbox?

The company emphasized that security and privacy remain an integral part of Dropbox and will continue to prioritize them in the age of AI. Srinivasan also pointed to Dropbox’s recognition of the importance of responsible development of AI products and the plan to publish it AI principles to guide users as part of this commitment.

He said customers are looking for a personalized AI experience and the company is working to improve the existing user experience and introduce more intelligence into their content and workflows.

“We have believed for many years in the potential of AI to completely transform knowledge work,” said Srinivasan. “Over the past few months, recent advances in AI and ML have opened up a new world of possibilities that we believe will help us accelerate our roadmap and, ultimately, our mission to design a more enlightened way of working.”