What's new and changed in Watson OpenScale
Watson OpenScale updates can include new features and fixes. Releases are listed in reverse chronological order so that the latest release is at the beginning of the topic.
You can see a list of the new features for the platform and all of the services at What's new in IBM Software Hub.
IBM Cloud Pak for Data Version 5.4.0
A new version of Watson OpenScale was released in June 2026.
This release includes the following changes:
- New features from 5.3.1 patches
- This release of Watson
OpenScale includes the following
features that were introduced in IBM® Software
Hub
Version 5.3.1 patches:
- Evaluate custom metrics for prompt templates by using LLM as a judge
- You can now evaluate custom metrics for prompt templates and detached prompt templates by using
the LLM as a judge (LLMaaJ) evaluator. With this capability, you can define domain-specific
evaluation criteria beyond the built-in generative AI quality metrics. A large language model (LLM)
acts as an evaluator (judge) to assess the quality of AI-generated responses based on customizable
grading logic.
You can use the LLMaaJ evaluator in the user interface or by using the Python SDK.
- Updates
- The following updates were introduced in this release:
- Batch processing with watsonx.data™ Spark
- You can now use watsonx.data Spark for batch processing.
You can also continue to use IBM Analytics Engine Powered by Apache Spark.
- Customer-reported issues fixed in this release
- For a list of customer-reported issues that were fixed in this release, see the Fix List for IBM Cloud Pak for Data on the IBM Support website.