Teradata is adding a generative AI assistant, dubbed ask.ai, to its VantageCloud multicloud analytics platform to help employees analyze and visualize data and metadata, map tables for joining, and generate code, among other functions.

VantageCloud Lake, which was introduced by the company in August last year, is a self-service, cloud-based platform especially suited for ad-hoc, exploratory, and departmental workloads. It combines low-cost object storage with an expanded ClearScape Analytics suite that supports in-database analytics for artificial intelligence operations.

To access and analyze data faster, enterprise users can use ask.ai to ask questions in natural language from within the VantageCloud Lake interface to get instant responses, eliminating the need for manual queries, a company spokesperson said, adding that it  can also help generate code for queries based on user input.

This capability is expected to allow even non-technical users in an enterprise to analyze data, the company said, adding that technical users, such as data scientists, will also benefit from the assistant as it can generate code in proper syntax and increase code consistency, which in turn will increase developer productivity.

Ask.ai, according to Teradata, also makes it easy to retrieve system information related to VantageCloud Lake, such as environment and compute groups.

“An administrator can log in and simply ask questions about the system (such as, “What is the state?” or “What is the current consumption?”) as if speaking to an informed colleague,” the company said in a statement. 

The assistant can help with metadata analysis as well by providing information on table design, the company said, adding that this will make it easy for users to explore data sets and schemas, helping users to understand the nuances in data attributes and existing relationships between data sets.

The assistant also includes a help function for users that provides general documentation and information on Teradata functions in a particular database, detailed descriptions for a particular function, and SQL generation for that function.

Ask.ai is currently available for select VantageCloud Lake on Azure customers, Teradata said, adding that expanded access, via private preview, to VantageCloud Lake on AWS is forthcoming and general availability for all VantageCloud Lake customers is expected in the first half of 2024.