Jinfo: April 2025 update

April 2025 update
Jinfo Blog

1st April 2025

By Stephen Phillips

Abstract

Product review of Ask FT
Using third-party data with enterprise AI
Upskilling for AI
Are you managing expert-network vendors?

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Product review of Ask FT

You tell us how much you have valued Jinfo product reviews in the past...

So, our colleague, Anja Thygesen has put a pre-release, beta-test version of Ask FT through its paces.

Ask FT is the AI-driven summary tool being developed by the Financial Times.

In her brand new Jinfo report, "Product Review of Ask FT", Anja covers many aspects of the application, including:

the intended audience
ease of use
AI safeguards and guardrails
terms of use and copyright
the risks associated with using the product.

Ask FT is scheduled to be released to all FT Professional clients in Q2 2025.

We are very grateful to the FT for allowing us to participate in the beta-test, and for their willingness to listen to, and act on, our feedback and suggestions.

Access the product review now.

Using third-party data with enterprise AI

Our new blog "Can you use third-party data on enterprise AI?" discusses this emerging and somewhat vexing issue:

It is apparent that an increasingly common practice is to use enterprise AI tools, like Microsoft Copilot, to summarise and synthesise information sources from third parties.
This use-case may not be covered in existing contracts (at best), and is specifically outlawed in others.
Some vendors are attempting to redraft their agreements to limit their liability in the event this use-case comes to light.

So, whilst your workforce probably regards this as an innocuous use case, there is a long-standing contractual distinction between "human reading" and "machine reading" which is now applied to AI.

Our free-to-read blog "Can you use third-party data on enterprise AI?" reflects on this issue, and offers some recent insights from vendors when we discussed it with them.

Upskilling for AI

New thinking and new training is needed to equip your workforce with the skills to use AI, including prompting, critical evaluation, specific use cases, as well as domain and source knowledge.

This session follows on from our successful February Community session "The impact of AI - educating colleagues", and complements the results of our recent survey into end-user education.

We will discuss the skills needed by the workforce to use AI, and look at the opportunities for information managers.

Are you managing expert-network vendors?

Our latest article "Why information managers should manage expert-network vendors" offers some practical actions for information managers to take responsibility for their organisations' expert-network vendors.

Expert-network vendors can be an awkward category of vendors to manage. But, their products are becoming an increasingly valuable source of bespoke third-party information and strategic advantage.

Many organisations are turning to expert networks for unique perspectives that differentiate them from their competitors. As a result, the number of networks has exploded, and their engagement has proliferated.

Information managers have great processes and systems for managing qualitative vendor engagements, as well as offering financial transparency and accountability.

Expert networks are just like legacy information vendors, and recent moves to make call-transcripts available to all their clients moves them closer to those legacy vendors.

Read the four practical steps in our article "Why information managers should manage expert-network vendors" to start taking responsibility for these vendors.

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Information manager in professional services

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