SharePoint Content AI is more than just another Microsoft rebrand — it’s your gateway to smarter document management, better Copilot experiences, and solving real-world content problems.
In this first episode of the Ultimate SharePoint Content AI Deep Dive Series, I’m joined by fellow MVPs Gokan Ozcifci and Drew Madelung to kick off the series and unpack what SharePoint Content AI is, how it evolved from Cortex and Syntex, and why it’s worth paying attention to in 2025.
We cover:
✔️The 3 pillars of Content AI: AI, Solutions, and Advanced Administration
✔️Why Content AI is critical to getting value from Microsoft 365 Copilot
✔️What’s changed (and what hasn’t) since the days of Project Cortex
The real-world benefits of automating metadata, image tagging, translation, and more
📘 Free SharePoint Content AI eBook
🎬 Watch the full SharePoint Content AI playlist
Video Summary
- AI in SharePoint goes way beyond Copilot. Sure, Copilot gets all the spotlight, but SharePoint Content AI brings powerful tools like metadata extraction, OCR, document translation, and smarter search—all with just a few clicks.
- We launched a new series to break it all down. It’s called The Ultimate SharePoint Content AI Series, and I’m joined by MVPs Drew Madelung and Gokan Ozcifci to walk you through how actually to use these features in your day-to-day work.
- We simplified the complexity into three pillars. Content Solutions (where you consume AI), Content AI (where you build experiences), and Advanced Administration (where you manage it all). This series focuses on the middle one—Content AI.
- No more confusing licensing—pay for what you use. SharePoint Content AI now runs on a pay-as-you-go model. No more $30/user/month commitments. Some features are even free just by enabling them.
- Better content = better Copilot. The more structured and enriched your SharePoint content is, the better Copilot performs. AI now handles the boring stuff like tagging and metadata, so you can focus on using your content, not managing it.
For more information, read the transcript blog below, or watch the video above!
Transcript
AI in the enterprise is one of the hottest topics right now. When it comes to companies in the Microsoft ecosystem, the first thing that comes to mind is Microsoft Copilot. Let’s be honest—Copilot and Azure AI are mentioned dozens, if not hundreds, of times in every Microsoft keynote. But AI in the Microsoft ecosystem goes far beyond just Copilot. Copilot is a massive project for enterprises, and deploying it, securing it, and driving adoption can be quite the undertaking.
Fortunately, there are many other ways to enable AI more easily. Imagine using AI in SharePoint with just a few clicks—to extract metadata from documents, make images or scanned documents searchable, or surface them in compliance portals. Imagine translating documents, making videos multilingual, or simply getting better search results. What if I told you there’s a tool—or rather, a suite of tools—that makes all of this possible? And it’s right at the heart of Microsoft 365: SharePoint. That’s where all your content lives.
That’s why I’m launching a new series called The Ultimate SharePoint Content AI Series. It includes over 15 episodes that will show you how to use Content AI on top of SharePoint. Because there are so many features and so much to learn, I’m not doing this alone. I’m joined by two amazing MVPs who’ve been on the channel before: Drew Madelung and Gokan Ozcifci.
Drew introduced himself as a longtime SharePoint consultant who started working with SharePoint back in 2007. His background is in IT and infrastructure, and he’s helped customers of all sizes deploy and use Content AI. Gokan, who’s from Belgium, is also a Microsoft MVP and Regional Director. He’s been working with SharePoint since 2010 and is the author of four books, including one on SharePoint Content AI, co-written with nine other MVPs.
When we talk about SharePoint Content AI, it can be a bit complex. Microsoft’s messaging around it isn’t always clear, and documentation hasn’t always kept up. That’s why we’ve broken it down into three pillars—our own interpretation, not necessarily Microsoft’s official view. These pillars are: Content Solutions, Content AI, and Advanced Administration.
Content Solutions are where you consume features and artifacts. Content AI is where you build experiences using tools like OCR, image tagging, and taxonomy tagging. Advanced Administration is about managing and governing all this content—something Drew specializes in. As your SharePoint content grows, you need tools to manage sprawl, archive old content, and ensure compliance.
This series will focus on the middle pillar: SharePoint Content AI. We’ll dive deep into how it works, how each function supports discoverability and automation, and how it enhances your overall experience. These features not only make content management easier, they also improve your Copilot experience. The better your data is, the more useful Copilot becomes. Clean, well-tagged data improves findability and searchability, and SharePoint is the engine behind it all.
We’re now in a pay-as-you-go model for SharePoint Content AI. No more $30 per user per month with a one-year commitment. You only pay for what you use. If you activate a feature and don’t use it, it’s free. And just activating some features unlocks a bunch of free capabilities—we’ll cover those in the series.
Gokan shared a great visual showing the evolution of this technology. It started with Project Cortex, which was a big leap when AI wasn’t yet mainstream. Then came SharePoint Syntex, followed by Microsoft Syntex, which gained a lot of traction. Eventually, it became SharePoint Premium, but now we’re moving away from that extra branding. It’s just SharePoint Content AI—part of SharePoint itself.
There are two perspectives here: Microsoft’s internal view, where everything is a pay-as-you-go service (like document translation, OCR, and backup), and the customer view, which is often confused by all the naming changes. Terms like SharePoint Premium, SharePoint Advanced Management (SAM), and others can be overwhelming. We even joked that calling it SharePoint Premium Advanced Management would spell “SPAM.”
This series aims to clear up that confusion. We’ll explain what SharePoint Content AI is, how it relates to Syntex, Cortex, and Premium, and how the underlying technology has evolved. Despite the rebranding, the core functionality has remained consistent for nearly six years. If you’ve worked with columns, content types, or Syntex in the past, you’ll find familiar ground here.
Ultimately, we’re solving problems that have existed in SharePoint for over a decade. Nobody liked manually tagging documents or adding metadata. Now, AI does the boring work, and we get to enjoy the benefits. These features also enhance your Copilot experience. The more structured your data is, the more accurate and helpful Copilot becomes, whether it’s finding the right document or suggesting the perfect image for your PowerPoint.
So, make sure to follow VladTalksTech on YouTube, subscribe to the channel, and hit the notification bell. We’ll be releasing two episodes a week until the series is complete. Each week, you’ll learn about a new feature. Click on the playlist and start watching the next video—see you there!
