Episode 23
The DAM AI Gap Is Real. Here’s How to Close It.
In this episode, host Chris Lacinak unpacks a growing tension inside the DAM world: what he calls The DAM AI Gap.
AI roadmaps promise intelligence, automation, agents, and massive productivity gains. But inside organizations, DAM leaders are experiencing something very different: rising expectations, reduced teams, fragmented metadata, unclear governance, and inconsistent operational foundations.
Chris explores the widening distance between AI’s theoretical promise and organizations’ structural readiness to operationalize it. In this episode he explores:
- Why AI is acting as a stress test for DAM maturity
- The difference between AI enablement and AI operationalization
- Why AI amplifies your DAM foundation rather than fixing it
- How weak metadata, unclear governance, and fragmented processes undermine AI initiatives
- What it actually takes to close the DAM AI Gap and unlock real value
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- The DAM AI Gap piece - https://weareavp.com/damaigap
- AVP Free DAM Resources – https://www.weareavp.com/free-resources
- AVP Insights – https://www.weareavp.com/insights
- Contact AVP – https://www.weareavp.com/contact
Engage:
🔗 Follow Chris on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clacinak
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Transcript
About six months ago, I started working on a piece to try to get my head around something that I was seeing with increasing frequency and effect.
Chris Lacinak:I ended up publishing the piece at the beginning of this year.
Chris Lacinak:The label that I put on what I was seeing, which was also incorporated into the title, was The DAM AI Gap.
Chris Lacinak:When I was a kid, I don't remember exactly what age I was, but let's just say I was five years old, when one day my dad announced to me and my brother that we were going to go with him to buy a new car.
Chris Lacinak:I remember hearing the name of the car and getting excited because of how close it sounded to Corvette.
Chris Lacinak:Corvette meant speed, performance, power.
Chris Lacinak:So when my brother and I were on our way with my dad to the dealership, I had this image in my head of a red, sleek, fast car.
Chris Lacinak:As we excitedly followed our dad and the salesman through the lot my enthusiasm turned into drastic disappointment as we arrived at a lackluster black box with four wheels and a roof rack.
Chris Lacinak:The "vette" was doing a lot of the heavy lifting in my imagination.
Chris Lacinak:This, we found out, was what a Chevette looked like.
Chris Lacinak:Same "vette, completely different, everything else.
Chris Lacinak:I think about that moment when I listen to certain people talk about AI at this point in time.
Chris Lacinak:There's this Corvette dream, intelligence, speed, automation, agents doing work autonomously, massive productivity gains.
Chris Lacinak:And then there is all too frequently the Chevette reality, chatbot search that doesn't deliver the search results you want, flat-footed AI agents tripping over each other, assets being made available to the wrong people at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Chris Lacinak:Persistent version control issues.
Chris Lacinak:But let's continue with the analogy and imagine that some compassionate wish-granting being saw the look on my face that day and said, Fine, I will give you part of what you want.
Chris Lacinak:I will put a Corvette engine in that Chevette.
Chris Lacinak:Would I have taken them up on it?
Chris Lacinak:Absolutely in a second.
Chris Lacinak:And it would have been a total disaster.
Chris Lacinak:The boxy body would have done no justice to the powerful engine.
Chris Lacinak:The brakes weren't designed for that level of speed.
Chris Lacinak:The results would have been disappointing at best and dangerous at worst.
Chris Lacinak:And this brings me to where we are with AI right now, once again.
Chris Lacinak:If you look at vendor roadmaps, conference keynotes, product demos, you would think that we have already entered deep into this new era, every DAM platform
Chris Lacinak:Is now an AI platform.
Chris Lacinak:Every roadmap is AI first.
Chris Lacinak:Every new feature is intelligent, automated, generative, agent-driven.
Chris Lacinak:And yet, when I talk to DAM leaders and practitioners inside organizations, the conversations sound completely different.
Chris Lacinak:They're being asked to do more with less.
Chris Lacinak:In some cases, teams are already being cut in anticipation of productivity gains from AI.
Chris Lacinak:Executives are frustrated by the lack of results
Chris Lacinak:Teams feel the weight of rising expectations, but without the structural support to meet them.
Chris Lacinak:That disconnect, that tension
Chris Lacinak:is what I'm calling the DAM AI gap.
Chris Lacinak:It is the distance between what AI can theoretically unlock inside a DAM and what organizations are structurally and operationally prepared to operationalize.
Chris Lacinak:AI promises intelligence, but intelligence depends on high quality metadata.
Chris Lacinak:AI promises agents that can act, but agents require rules, permissions, and governance.
Chris Lacinak:AI promises content creation and publishing at scale.
Chris Lacinak:But scaling well depends on strong rights and brand management.
Chris Lacinak:And here's the important part.
Chris Lacinak:The promises are real.
Chris Lacinak:This is not vaporware.
Chris Lacinak:AI is not failing to deliver on the promises because it lacks capability.
Chris Lacinak:The gaps are not because of AI.
Chris Lacinak:AI simply puts them under a microscope.
Chris Lacinak:It exposed and exposes in very practical ways where organizations are in their DAM maturity path.
Chris Lacinak:AI is acting as a stress test for DAM operations today.
Chris Lacinak:And this is not unique to DAM.
Chris Lacinak:McKenzie's writing about the divide between AI agents and ERP systems.
Chris Lacinak:Deloitte's research shows that while AI investment is very widespread,
Chris Lacinak:enterprise level impact remains limited.
Chris Lacinak:Across industries, organizations are piloting AI aggressively, but very few are scaling it deeply into core operations.
Chris Lacinak:AI capability is accelerating exponentially.
Chris Lacinak:Organizational readiness is not.
Chris Lacinak:That delta creates the gap.
Chris Lacinak:DAM is particularly vulnerable to this dynamic, and there's growing recognition within the DAM community that AI is exposing longstanding structural weaknesses, not creating them.
Chris Lacinak:Since publishing my piece on the DAM AI Gap, I've seen several other organizations and people on the DAMosphere express very similar sentiments.
Chris Lacinak:Digital asset management has always been foundational but underleveraged, in my opinion.
Chris Lacinak:It sits at the center of enterprises and business units and departments, but
Chris Lacinak:it is often funded like a tool rather than treated like a program or operation with clear purpose,
Chris Lacinak:defined roles, and measurable outcomes.
Chris Lacinak:A mature DAM operation is not just technology, it is purpose, people, governance, process.
Chris Lacinak:Yes, technology
Chris Lacinak:measurement and continuous improvement working together to deliver predictable value.
Chris Lacinak:Those components I just listed are actually the components that make up AVP's operational model for DAM success.
Chris Lacinak:It is not a coincidence that those same components are required for AI success.
Chris Lacinak:In many organizations, those elements are not fully operationalized.
Chris Lacinak:Purpose is ambiguous.
Chris Lacinak:KPIs and ROI aren't defined, roles and responsibilities are misaligned, processes are fragmented, metadata is lacking and inconsistent.
Chris Lacinak:And this state becomes the norm, status quo, good enough.
Chris Lacinak:Well, good enough until you go to turn on AI expecting results and returns.
Chris Lacinak:And that's because AI depends on those foundations.
Chris Lacinak:If user-centered metadata and taxonomy are weak, AI-generated metadata and search experiences will disappoint.
Chris Lacinak:If governance is ambiguous, automation becomes very risky.
Chris Lacinak:If rights and brand management are inconsistent, content at scale becomes a liability.
Chris Lacinak:What we are seeing instead is a surge in surface level AI enablement.
Chris Lacinak:Automatic metadata creation, chat interfaces layered over repositories, generative AI variants spun up from existing assets, eager AI agents ready to fulfill tasks.
Chris Lacinak:Many of these capabilities are useful,
Chris Lacinak:but we are often mistaking enablement for readiness.
Chris Lacinak:An AI enabled interface does not mean the system is AI operationalized.
Chris Lacinak:Layering an LLM on top of fragmented data does not produce intelligence.
Chris Lacinak:Deploying agents without documented requirements, policies, and workflows does not produce scale.
Chris Lacinak:AI amplifies whatever foundation already exists.
Chris Lacinak:If your DAM scores low on the DAM operational model, AI amplifies fragmentation and causes frustration and disappointment.
Chris Lacinak:If your DAM scores high,
Chris Lacinak:AI can and will unlock enormous value.
Chris Lacinak:The promise of AI and DAM is real.
Chris Lacinak:But it is unlocked not by chasing features.
Chris Lacinak:It is unlocked by strengthening the system and foundation that AI is meant to amplify.
Chris Lacinak:The DAM AI gap is not an indictment of AI or DAM vendors.
Chris Lacinak:It's not an argument against innovation.
Chris Lacinak:It's a signal, and it's an important one to pay attention to at this particular moment in time.
Chris Lacinak:The encouraging part is this the productivity gains people are frustrated by not seeing yet, they're real.
Chris Lacinak:The acceleration, the leverage, the ability to move faster with fewer manual touch points, the future is not hype.
Chris Lacinak:It is definitely possible, but it is built, not granted.
Chris Lacinak:It's not a flip of a switch.
Chris Lacinak:It's built by solidifying the fundamentals that make DAM work as an operation, clear purpose, defined ownership, documented governance, intentional process, reliable metadata, meaningful measurement,
Chris Lacinak:and continuous improvement.
Chris Lacinak:AI will not create operational maturity for you, but it will reward it.
Chris Lacinak:And the good news is the distance between where many teams are today and where they need to be is not a moonshot.
Chris Lacinak:It's structured, finite, visible work.
Chris Lacinak:It is achievable work when there is clarity around the model you're working toward.
Chris Lacinak:For many organizations, this does not require starting over.
Chris Lacinak:It requires tightening what already exists,
Chris Lacinak:clarifying what has been assumed, strengthening what has been informal, creating coherence where there has been drift.
Chris Lacinak:Sometimes it requires temporary bandwidth, sometimes it requires specialized expertise, often it requires both.
Chris Lacinak:But here's the deeper point If what you have today is a Chevette, calling it a Corvette will not make it one, and dropping a Corvette engine into it will not turn it into one either
Chris Lacinak:If you want Corvette performance, you have to build a Corvette.
Chris Lacinak:You design for performance, purpose and outcomes, and you align everything you do around that goal.
Chris Lacinak:That is what a mature DAM operational model looks like.
Chris Lacinak:It is designed for scale, governance, intelligence, and measurable value from the ground up.
Chris Lacinak:The productivity gains, the acceleration, the scale, it's all possible.
Chris Lacinak:But they are only realized when you build for them.
Chris Lacinak:That is how you close the DAM AI gap.
Chris Lacinak:At AVP, we can help you close that gap and get you over the hump from frustration to realization.
Chris Lacinak:We've got a wealth of free information that you can find at weareavp.com/free-resources
Chris Lacinak:and weareavp.com/insights
Chris Lacinak:If you want to find out more about services we offer to help you close the DAM AI gap
Chris Lacinak:Reach out at weareavp.com/contact
Chris Lacinak:or shoot me an email at chris@weareavp.com
Chris Lacinak:And remember, DAM right, because it's too important to get wrong.
