Artificial intelligence (AI) is unquestionably the legal technology buzzword of the year, but the technology that makes up an AI tool is still relatively confusing for most legal practitioners. AI can mean anything from automated workflows all the way to predictive insight, depending on who you ask.

E-discovery company DISCO has just launched its own AI tool, DISCO AI, offering an opportune moment to review some of the jargon that will likely follow attorneys into the AI-enabled world. Neil Etheridge, DISCO's vice president of marketing, explained how the company is using the following pieces in its new AI offering:

Automation: Automation, in the simplest terms, is just a program that tells a computer or software to do a rote task you'd otherwise have to do by hand, like clicking through a set of menus, or inputting data. Though it's sometimes pitched as such, automation isn't an AI process; it's just something your computer is designed to do.