How artificial intelligence is redefining digital asset management and why companies need to act now

In particular, the Magic Quadrant for Digital Asset Management Platforms 2025 shows that DAM is no longer just a storage location, but increasingly an intelligent content control center that systematically strengthens brands, products, and campaigns. AI, automation, and integration form the foundation for this.

AI as a driver of efficiency, governance, and brand management

With the spread of generative AI (GenAI), the role of DAM is changing radically. It is evolving from an administrative tool into an active content intelligence platform. AI now takes on tasks that used to be time-consuming manual work, while also improving quality and governance throughout the company.

Modern AI functions enable:

Automatic tagging and categorization

AI identifies content, objects, people, or scenes and provides assets with high-quality metadata.

We are seeing increasing improvements among our customers and in specific projects, both in terms of how users interact with AI functions and, in particular, in terms of the results that AI can deliver. Several years ago, we integrated AI tagging functions for a shipbuilder in the context of CELUM. The results without training the AI were rather unsatisfactory: the AI recognized ships and water, but not specific ship types or categories. The training process was still difficult for the customer to organize, as it could not be carried out independently but required the support of an external service provider.

Today, we are already able to automatically recognize and read specific product details from images as soon as assets are uploaded.

Generation of text and design proposals

AI enriches processes by suggesting headlines, SEO texts, or visual variants.

Important here is the company's own knowledge management as the basis for AI generation and prompting. Although a simple connection to Chat-GPT already yields good results, these are often too general and still need to be adapted to the company's specific needs.

That is why communicode uses openwebui in projects to build customer-specific models and a solid knowledge base. Communicode also uses openwebui internally to continuously develop its own model and central knowledge management. This results in more precise AI results, while significantly reducing the effort required for manual rework.

Transparency through content provenance

The origin, editing, and usage history of an asset are automatically documented—essential for regulated industries.

Strong content governance

Rights, terms of use, and brand guidelines can be enforced with AI support.

From communicode's perspective, this change is strategically significant: companies that integrate these technologies early on ensure speed, brand consistency, and future viability while streamlining their entire content production. At the same time, they lay the foundation for data-driven decisions and can manage their content resources much more efficiently, transparently, and scalably than their competitors.

From archive to intelligent content platform: DAM as a “single source of truth”

DAM systems have long since evolved into central content hubs where marketing, creative teams, and IT work together. Integration with other systems—such as CRM, ERP, or PIM—creates a data-driven cycle that supports every content decision.

This cross-functional networking makes DAM the single source of truth: all assets are up to date, legally compliant, searchable, and available in the appropriate format.

A key trend here is the expansion of automated workflows:

• automated approval processes
• AI-supported rights and compliance checks
• automated distribution across channels and systems
• consistent versioning and reuse

Our experience with DAM and PIM/MAM/cloud projects shows that such workflows reduce errors, eliminate silos, and create space for strategic tasks. They also increase transparency across all teams involved and ensure that information is reliably available at all times. At the same time, they strengthen the scalability of the entire system landscape and make companies more capable of acting in the long term.

For communicode, AI is also becoming increasingly important in the concrete design and implementation of projects: We use AI in projects, e.g., in the context of architecture and process modeling, in the development of data models, in the migration and cleansing of data, and in the context of documentation. The key to ensuring that AI can provide precise and accurate support here also lies in developing our own models with specific, proprietary knowledge.

Why regulated industries benefit in particular

Companies in regulated environments, such as healthcare, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and financial services, are under increasing pressure to manage content in a secure, compliant, and auditable manner. From a consulting perspective, we at communicode have observed that DAM is evolving from a “nice-to-have” to a key risk and quality factor, particularly in regulated industries. This not only gives companies legal certainty, but also control over complex review, approval, and documentation processes that are virtually impossible to manage reliably without a modern DAM system.

Modern DAM platforms offer the following for this purpose:

• complete audit trails
• automated compliance workflows
• consistent governance rules
• controlled user and role models
• verified and documented content provenance

Market consolidation: Fewer tools, more integrated platforms

Parallel to technological advances, we are seeing clear market consolidation. Many companies are replacing fragmented tool landscapes with integrated platform strategies. DAM systems that combine AI, automation, and cross-system integration in a single ecosystem are becoming the standard for marketing and digital managers.

DAM system providers such as Celum impressively demonstrate how creativity, technology, and data can be combined to form a powerful platform.

At communicode, we firmly believe that only an integrated DAM can provide a scalable foundation for automated content production, omnichannel publishing, and sustainable martech architectures. Only when all relevant systems are connected can processes truly run consistently, efficiently, and with few errors. An integrated DAM ensures that marketing and IT teams no longer work in silos, but make decisions based on a shared, robust database.

Conclusion: AI-supported DAM is a strategic success factor

Today, DAM is much more than technology – it is a competitive advantage.

Companies that adopt AI-powered DAM platforms early on gain:

• efficiency and automation
• consistent brand management
• compliance and transparency
• faster time to market
• future-proofing of their entire content strategy

communicode supports companies in strategically introducing modern DAM systems, aligning communication and IT structures with them, and setting up future-proof content processes. Thanks to our many years of experience in DAM, PIM, MAM, cloud, and integration projects, we understand both the organizational and technological challenges associated with introducing a central content hub. We accompany companies from the analysis of existing content processes to systemic architecture consulting to implementation and optimization – always with the goal of breaking down silos, automating workflows, and creating sustainable structures.

Our interdisciplinary approach is particularly valuable: marketing, IT, creation, and business consulting work hand in hand at communicode, so that our customers receive a DAM that not only works, but actively creates added value. Investing in an intelligent, AI-supported DAM today shapes the future of your brand communication, and with communicode at your side, this transformation is scalable, integrated, and brand-secure in the long term.