Acquia Introduces New AI-Powered Video and Image Features for Acquia DAM

In the pantheon of DAM solutions, AI has been an undeniable game changer. Along with enhancing search and impacting overall productivity, it’s also proving valuable from a generative content perspective. 

The latest example of AI innovation in the “DAMsphere” is from Acquia, which has been steadily infusing artificial intelligence into its platform, with a keen focus on its Acquia DAM solution.

At last year’s Engage conference in Boston, I saw first-hand how AI was force-multiplying the potential for Acquia DAM and taking its core Widen capabilities – which it purchased in 2021 – to the next level. Since then, there have been continual improvements, reinforcing Acquia’s best-of-breed posture in a competitive market of DAM and PIM products. This includes other DXPs and even headless CMS or PaaS platforms with built-in offerings. 

Acquia’s new AI enhancements, announced just last month, are focused on video and images – and they're pretty slick. By all accounts, they should boost the productivity of creatives and marketers while enabling them to extract greater value from their digital content. 

Here’s a quick breakdown (there's even some video to watch):

Acquia Video Creator

Video is already a full-time resident in the house of the DAMs, particularly as brands increase their reliance on interactive and immersive content. Nearly 90% of consumers say that they want more video, and social platforms like TikTok and Instagram have become the go-to channels for reaching new customers.

Additionally, almost 40% of buyers have cited a preference for product discovery through short-form video. Consequently, brands are ramping up their production, publication, and management resources to serve up video-centric content and campaigns at scale – and looking for platforms that provide greater automation. 

With the new Acquia Video Creator, marketers have a dynamite tool for meeting these demands. Powered by AI, the Video Creator allows users to easily produce professional-quality, brand-compliant videos via a simple drag-and-drop interface. Videos are composed of existing content in a company's digital asset library, and users can access features like customizable templates and a vast cache of graphics, animations, and video clips. 

Here's a quick overview of the features:

It’s worth reinforcing that this isn’t just a video editor. It is, indeed, a creator, giving professional video editors a canvas for generating templates with customizable zones for things like product promos. The UX is fairly robust, delivering a complete video interface with scene layers and timelines. 

The functionality evokes the familiarity of Adobe After Effects, or even some elements of Webflow relative to the granular styling capabilities – but without feeling too overwhelming. Bottom line: it’s enough tooling to assemble a solid experience.  

Composing a video with customizable zones in the Acquia Video Creator

From here, marketing team members (or almost anyone for that matter) can use the simple drag-and-drop editor to add content, transitions, and animations – as well as audio tracks or music from your library or other integrated sources. You can also pop in a transcript with ease. 

Selecting templates in the Acquia Video Creator

One of the big benefits is the presence of “guardrails” to help keep content on brand. We’ve seen this in other CMS and DXP platforms with restricted learning pipelines or knowledge bases that train only on a company’s content or licensed IP. This AI governance helps democratize video creation across an organization while ensuring that large, distributed teams stay on brand.

The other key value is acceleration. In minutes, you can create entirely new projects, edit existing videos, and use the Video Creator’s AI features to generate scripts, voiceovers, subtitles, and even translations. There are also collaboration tools for internal sharing and review, so organizations can rapidly create, approve, and deliver videos across websites, e-commerce channels, social media, events, and more.

Acquia Video Creator is powered by Moovly, and is currently available as an add-on module to both the Acquia DAM and PIM solutions.

AI Video Transcription and Automated Color Filtering

Along with the Video Creator, Acquia also introduced a new AI Video Transcription feature directly within its DAM, making it easier to manage, find, and share video and image assets. 

This is a super-handy resource and one that should complement every DAM. It enables users to add an AI-generated video transcript that is stored on the video’s asset digest page, eliminating the need to send videos to a separate transcription service (this can be a real hassle factor). 

What’s cool is that the transcripts are all time-stamped and available via general and advanced searches within the DAM. They can also be downloaded – another perk that can prove to be invaluable when utilizing transcripts in multiple places.

Acquia’s new Automated Color Filtering is also a new AI-powered boon to productivity. It removes human error that can arise in manual tagging by using AI to analyze an image's color profile. It then provides filtering and search of specific HEX (hexadecimal) color values without any administrator work required.

Why it matters

When it comes to harnessing AI in CMS, DXP, and other digital experience tools, the value quotient has been all over the spectrum. I’ve watched AI features blossom from the end of 2022 as vendors scrambled to remain in parity, and there have been hits and misses. 

In my opinion, DAMs have been a shining example of where AI has paid dividends and brought order to the data chaos. They synthesize AI's tangible benefits, applying them to high-utility services like search and filtering. They also enable automation that delivers a more scalable and uniform experience for marketers. 

Within the landscape of platform choices, Acquia has been pushing the innovation edge – and making Acquia DAM a jewel in its expanding digital crown. It offers an elegant, team-oriented solution that elevates collaboration. Their streamlined approach and drag-and-drop interfaces also enable marketers to be more responsive, productive, and prolific while staying on brand.

Video is a key part of the content ecosystem, and Acquia’s new features are enhancing both creation and access in profound ways. AI has been essential to the amplification, but the DXP has clearly put its ear to the ground and listened to both customers and community – particularly at the enterprise level. This is where the growth of Content Marketing Platforms (CMPs) is accelerating, which assembles the assets and digital tools for managing large-scale integrated campaigns. It’s worth noting that Acquia participated in Gartner’s 2024 Magic Quadrant for CMPs, presenting as a Challenger. 

Of course, there's also the net benefit of having the Acquia Drupal community as part of the testing and feedback loop. As with previous AI ventures within the Acquia DXP, much of the early gains came from Drupal community engagement and nascent plugins for ChatGPT that accelerated the marketable innovation. As Dries Buytaert shared during our Keynote at the CMS Connect Conference last August, Drupal and Acquia were at the forefront of AI in the CMS realm, well before the generative explosion.

According to Jake Athey, Vice President of Go-To-Market and Sales for Acquia DAM & PIM, this is just the beginning of the innovation cycle.

“AI creates new opportunities for creatives, content authors, and marketers to drive efficiency and create immersive digital experiences that drive greater customer engagement,” he said. “Our latest innovations accelerate campaign delivery by empowering teams to create content more easily, organize assets more accurately, and find relevant assets more quickly. They are just the start of a steady stream of forthcoming innovations that distinguish Acquia DAM for its ability to consistently increase business value.”

Looking for guidance on Acquia or Acquia DAM?  Talk to us. 

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