Deprecation of InterSystems IRIS NLP, formerly known as iKnow

InterSystems has decided to stop further development of the InterSystems IRIS Natural Language Processing, formerly known as iKnow, technology and label it as deprecated as of the 2023.3 release of InterSystems IRIS. InterSystems will continue to support existing customers using the technology, but does not recommend starting new development projects outside of the core text exploration use cases it was originally designed for. Other use cases involving natural language are increasingly well-served using novel techniques based on Large Language Models, an area InterSystems is also investigating in the context of specific applications.

Customers with questions on their current or planned use of InterSystems IRIS NLP are invited to reach out to their account team, or get in touch with @Benjamin De Boe 

The open-source version of the core iKnow engine, packaged as a Python module, can be used independently of InterSystems IRIS and will continue to be available.

Please note the InterSystems IRIS SQL Search feature, also known as iFind, is only partially affected. Only the Semantic and Analytic index types make use of the iKnow engine and therefore are deprecated. All other functionality and index types are not affected by this decision, and continue to be the recommended choice for applications requiring a flexible and high-performance full text search capability.