Akeneo and AI: The Engine of the New Product Experience

Summarize this article

Let’s take a closer look at AI in Akeneo. Is it just a marketing pitch, or a real transformation of the tool? At Synolia, after analyzing Akeneo’s roadmap and its latest announcements, our conviction is clear: Akeneo isn’t treating AI as a gimmick but as the new engine of its vision, which is to become the leading “Product Experience (PX) Company.”

The underlying problem: exploding complexity

Akeneo’s strategy starts from one observation: manual methods for managing product data are no longer enough. Faced with what the vendor calls “the explosion of complexity” (multichannel, internationalization, personalization…), the workload has become unsustainable.

That is the main trigger behind Akeneo’s interest in artificial intelligence: it is the only viable way to automate tasks that teams can no longer handle manually without sacrificing quality or time-to-market.

AI as a strategic solution, not an experiment

Rather than experimenting, Akeneo is rolling out AI along a roadmap built around specific use cases. The goal is not to replace people, but to finally let them focus on strategy.

The 3-5 year vision is to transform the PIM: from a passive data repository, it becomes a proactive, self-driving system. AI will no longer just create data; it will analyze how that data performs on sales channels and suggest optimizations.

This approach is tightly controlled, leaving business experts (data architects, marketing managers) to validate and govern the AI’s suggestions.

The pillars of Akeneo’s AI strategy

Akeneo isn’t starting from scratch to build this vision. It relies on two strategic pillars:

In-house technology (acquisition): acquiring Unifai was a major strategic move. Akeneo brought cutting-edge expertise in-house to develop its own AI models and agents, trained specifically to manage supplier product data. And the results speak for themselves: the new SDM (Supplier Data Management) platform is a real process accelerator.

Strategic partnership (Google Cloud): Akeneo relies on the power of Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform for all of its R&D and for scaling its services. This deep technology partnership ensures the solution’s scalability.

Reassuring governance: “reliable AI requires reliable data”

What we particularly appreciate about Akeneo’s approach is that governance remains its core value. The vendor keeps driving the point home: “reliable AI requires reliable data.” AI isn’t magic; it is presented as an assistant that augments teams, not a replacement.

As the “single source of truth,” the PIM becomes the essential prerequisite for making sure AI doesn’t “hallucinate” and delivers relevant, controlled results.

AI in action: the Data Architect Agent

The most emblematic feature of this strategy is arguably the Data Architect Agent.

At Synolia, we know that data modeling (structuring the catalog) is the most critical and complex stage of a PIM project. It is a task that used to keep a data architect busy for weeks. Akeneo’s AI agent promises to cut that to just a few days by proposing a precise, governable data model based on the analysis of millions of products.

And since it keeps evolving, there is little doubt that the Data Architect Agent will soon be leading the modeling of your catalogs.

From Asset Manager to Akeneo DAM

Asset Manager, Akeneo’s long-standing media manager, is taking on a new dimension with AI and now positions itself as a true DAM (Digital Asset Management) solution.

With AI, media management is more than ever a new growth lever. In just a few clicks, you can now tap into the full potential of your assets:

Smart asset categorization: the asset analysis engine automatically tags your visuals and documents with consistent keywords.
Information extraction: automatic extraction of key information from your media (images, manuals, or technical data sheets) makes enriching your products child’s play.
Smart Edit: use AI to retouch your visuals without photo-editing expertise or software.

Other game-changing features

Content generation & translation: AI generates product descriptions and translations from your own prompts or from those provided by Akeneo (e.g., Amazon), freeing marketing teams from their most time-consuming writing and adaptation tasks.
Supplier Data Management (SDM): AI is at the core of this module, automating the “mapping” and standardization of data received from suppliers.
PX Insights: this module analyzes how data performs in the field (e.g., Google Shopping) to suggest optimizations.

Our conclusion (and our advice)

Our analysis of Akeneo’s strategy confirms a conviction we have shared with our customers for years: the main obstacle to AI adoption is poor data quality. So our advice to every decision-maker is simple: before launching generative AI projects, start with your foundations.

As an integrator, our recommendation is straightforward: make sure you have a clean, centralized, governed single source of truth (a PIM like Akeneo, an MDM, an ERP). Without that foundation, your AI initiatives will struggle to prove their ROI.

If you’d like to discuss your data maturity and see how Akeneo’s AI can fit into your ecosystem, our expert consultants are here to help.

Contact us