AI provenance is here. We’ve never had easier access to something that convincingly looks like information.
Published Jul 27, 2026
Author Steve Berry
AI provenance is here. We’ve never had easier access to something that convincingly looks like information.
Ask the robot a question and it: searches, summarizes, synthesizes, and hands back an answer. The whole thing feels magical. So naturally, everyone is ingesting the obvious, grabbing the first plausible result, jamming it into the product. Problem solved!
But magic commoditizes quickly…
Soon, everyone will be able to produce a plausible answer. The important question moves upstream: Where did it come from?
How was the data collected? What kind of data is it? What was omitted? Can the source be checked? Can it be defended? Is the source trustworthy?
AI products don’t have satisfying answers yet. For the moment, they don’t need them. There is so much obvious information waiting to be ingested that access itself is valuable.
Eventually the obvious gets exhausted. The models converge. Everyone has the same magic trick. That’s when differentiation moves to the ingredients: proprietary research, trusted relationships, unusual archives, carefully maintained datasets, real expertise, and information gathered with permission and context.
Welcome to artisanal, free-range, organic data.