Dropbox users get Dash generative AI video, image search
Dropbox search extends to other apps such as Slack, Canva and Teams.
Dropbox users can now search through videos, images and audio files in addition to text -- in some cases, even when they're not on Dropbox.
Features unveiled today include Dropbox Dash's generative AI-powered multimedia search and hooks into other apps such as Microsoft Outlook, Adobe's app suite, Canva and Slack. Dash uses a combination of open-source APIs, including Mistral's Pixtral, and public APIs, such as OpenAI large language models (LLMs), to power its search.
File-sharing and content platforms such as Dropbox, Box and Egnyte have all carved out separate markets for themselves, although they compete for some common customers, said Alan Pelz-Sharpe, founder of Deep Analysis, an independent research firm.
Box chases enterprise customers, as does Egnyte, which has something of a "cult following" among architects and engineers because of its ability to handle large files, Pelz-Sharpe said. Dropbox is well-known as a platform for consumers and the smallest of businesses.
That said, Dropbox's new search capabilities bring it somewhat up to speed with its competition. Egnyte and Box also have empowered search outside of their applications and cloud borders, what Pelz-Sharpe termed a "significant shift" away from vendor thinking of previous years that made content a walled garden. Now, in Dropbox for example, users can interrogate Zoom transcripts to find out what decisions were made in a meeting or the status of a project in Jira.
Going forward, Pelz-Sharpe believes that organizations understand that every bit of content is not going to be in one place.
"Some of it's going to be on-premises, some of it's going to be hybrid cloud and on-prem, and some of it's going to be in the cloud," he said. "It's all over the place. That's not going to change."
Dropbox targets businesses with latest features
The first round of Dropbox Dash GenAI search features launched last year. Dash was first popular with the most advanced power users who wanted to search not only Dropbox but also Microsoft OneDrive, Google Drive and other content repositories simultaneously.
"The ethos behind building Dash was connecting apps, connecting information and really being the glue that brings this very fragmented, splintered reality back together," said Morgan Brown, vice president of product and growth, AI products at Dropbox.
It was a little onerous, though, for the average consumer to connect all those platforms, Brown said. But for business users and power users, the time spent was worth it.
"When you are able to do that for a team or a company, you only have to connect those sources once," Brown said. "Then everyone in the company gets access to that unlocked productivity and that unlocked search and collaboration opportunity."
This round of upgrades targets business use, adding more connected collaboration apps and security admin controls to control access to sensitive content. Also included in the latest round of Dropbox Dash features are writing tools that can draft reports, summaries and plans from existing documents and content in connected apps.
Dropbox Dash is free but requires a paid Dropbox plan ($10 to $24 per month) to use.
Don Fluckinger is a senior news writer for Informa TechTarget. He covers customer experience, digital experience management and end-user computing. Got a tip? Email him.
