Relativity revealed at its London user conference today (16 May) that it is undertaking two generative AI pilots to assess opportunities going forward, as it also announced the appointment of a new EMEA leader.
The US-headquartered company said that it is actively piloting GPT-4, collaborating with select customers to evaluate the performance of these models in investigation and litigation use cases.
The first pilot is testing GPT4’s ability to identify data related to litigation responsiveness for specific legal issues, and the second to build new classification models tied to investigative signals.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Relativity’s director of AI experience and Priv IQ, Elise Tropiano, said: “We’re focused on learning and working with customers to see how GPT-4 works with real data. What we’re really focused on trying to understand is the classification accuracy, and where it gets things right or wrong.”
Relativity is using Azure’s OpenAI Service and Tropiano added: “We’re not connecting directly to OpenAI and we’re also working closely with Microsoft to co-develop pilots. We’re sharing our needs from an infrastructure and API perspective.”
One of the considerations is naturally the cost of using GPT-4 and Tropiano said: “We’re doing the pilots to understand what is the true value of these services in order that we all of the information we need should there be a product that we sell.
“These pilots are not a commitment to releasing a product, although we are hopeful. It’s about learning about the return on investment and use cases, and if the results are amazing, we’ll move to where we go from here and the potential costs.”
The integration with Azure OpenAI Service complies with Relativity’s contract obligations and no data is retained.
Meanwhile, Relativity also announced today that Georgia Foster is taking on an expanded role as managing director and vice president of sales, international, while current managing director and VP of sales for EMEA, Steve Couling, is relocating to head sales in North America, where around 80% of Relativity’s business is.
Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Couling said: “I’ve been here 11 years and I know the eDiscovery space and community really well. I’ve been to Chicago seventy five times in the last few years. There is an amazing leadership team and it doesn’t need someone to come in and revolutionise it, I’m there to support [chief sales officer] Peter Kim and for me it’s a new challenge after 11 years without having to go outside of the Relativity family.”
Foster, who has recently held senior roles at Uber and LinkedIn, is relocating to London from Australia and will head the EMEA and APAC region. Speaking to Legal IT Insider, Foster said that she hopes that having one international head will help accelerate change, commenting: “We’re working out how we create a bigger voice from the international market for the things we need to do as a business to move faster. That might be a feature for the product roadmap that both APAC and EMEA customers are asking for. There will be some areas that will continue to benefit from their uniqueness. But we can start to consolidate the structure a little and focus on the areas that really make a difference.”
In a statement out today Chris Brown, chief product officer at Relativity, said: “As a leader in legal technology, we appreciate the role AI plays in data discovery, and the vital role our products play in supporting justice systems. We will proceed thoughtfully and with intention as we imagine, build, and deploy technologies that foster trust and meet the needs of our customers and partners.”