Govern your content, and the AI acting on it

Make your content usable and trustworthy for AI, with governance built in

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Overview

Ready to put your content to work?

Most business content is dark. It is unclassified, untrusted, and invisible to the agents that need it, so AI projects stall. IBM Content Cortex makes it usable, governs it when AI acts, and lets people and agents work under one set of controls.
Time back, cost down, risk contained. Up to 30%*

increase in user productivity

 Up to 95%*

time saved on high-volume content operations

 Up to 50%*

reduction in storage and operating costs

Features

From documents to decisions

Hours back for your document teams.

Teams lose time searching, opening, and reading documents before they can act. Smart search lets them ask in plain language and receive answers with supporting documents, combining keyword, metadata, and meaning in one query.

Includes:

  • Smart search
  • Document question and answer
  • Document summarization
  • Review-ready tables and exports
Screenshot of the IBM Content Navigator interface displaying a personalized greeting to a user named Cassie. The main view shows a central search assistant panel with a query field labeled 'Find documents'. Below the field, suggested queries reference 'Non-Disclosure Agreement', 'indemnification clause', and documents in the Policies subfolder. The interface has a clean, modern layout with light colors and subtle gradients. Navigation elements and agent selection controls appear around the central workspace.

AI projects that reach production

Thinly described content is hard for AI to find and trust. Agents analyze documents, recommend classes and metadata, show their confidence, and route changes for review, making the estate AI-ready without a manual cleanup project.

Includes:

  • Classification and extraction
  • Metadata recommendations
  • Expanded content extraction
  • Semantic representation
Screenshot of the IBM Content Navigator interface showing an AI agents panel over a document workspace. The overlay lists specialized personas including Legal Hold Agent, Redaction Agent, and Navigator Core Agent, with the Navigator Core Agent option selected. In the background, a workspace table displays a file named EarthquakeCoverage.pdf along with columns for size, modified by, and modified on. The interface uses a clean, modern UI with light gray tones and blue accents.

Manual document work moves to agents

Manual redaction, holds, and filing slow teams when work is most urgent. Governed agents find sensitive information, apply redaction, retain originals, and place holds from simple instructions.

Includes:

  • Redaction agent
  • Legal hold agent
  • Classification agent
  • Filing and folder operations
  • Human approval on every action
Composite image showing an AI redaction agent interface alongside redacted employee financial and medical records. The left panel displays a chat-style workflow where the agent confirms redaction of personally identifiable information in four selected documents. The right panels show an Employee Financial & Benefits Record and a Medical Report with visible headings and multiple blacked-out fields. The overall design uses a clean, professional layout with blue accents and grey redaction bars to emphasize privacy and data protection.

Audit readiness that holds up later

AI indexes and embeddings can outlive source records. Content Cortex extends retention, deletion, and permissions to derived data, and records agent interactions so teams can explain decisions.

Includes:

  • Records, retention, and disposal
  • Fine-grained access control
  • Agent interaction history
  • AI-representation lineage
  • Audit-ready evidence
A desktop user interface shows an admin console workspace with several PDF documents listed in a content navigator. The screen highlights audit log features, including an admin console view and persistent records. Blue callout boxes explain that every agent action is recorded, persisted forever, and that admins can always retrieve the record. The layout emphasizes document management, file details, and audit history within a digital workspace.

A smaller estate, at a lower cost

Content split across active systems and archives raises cost. One governance model, compression that lowers storage, immediate retrieval, and FileNet entitlements carried forward, with no rewrite.

Includes:

  • Intelligent archiving
  • High-ratio compression
  • Archive viewing and search
  • Hybrid deployment
  • MCP for any agent runtime
Digital diagram of IBM Content Cortex

See IBM Content Cortex in action

Advantages no competitor can match

Agents built into the content lifecycle, not bolted on

Specialized agents for redaction, legal hold, classification, and search execute inside the content lifecycle rather than around it, and they appear where people already work, in folders, in search results, and in the document view.
Your policy, and a person in the loop

Enterprise policy resources define what sensitive means in your organization, which redaction to apply, and how output is returned. Agents propose what they would do and show their confidence. A person approves before anything changes.
MCP-native for any agent runtime

Built with production-ready MCP servers rather than retrofitted. IBM watsonx Orchestrate, Microsoft Copilot, Claude, and ChatGPT can execute content operations, among others, with security enforced on every request.
Zero data leakage by architecture

Security is enforced at every layer, across storage, semantic representations, agent interactions, and search results. When a document is deleted, the embeddings derived from it are deleted too.
Hybrid without compromise

Full platform capability on premises, in private cloud, or in public cloud. No separate SKUs and no capability degradation, so regulated organizations that cannot move fully to the cloud still get everything.
Governance at enterprise scale, proven over decades

IBM content services solutions have managed the world’s most sensitive content for more than 30 years. Content Cortex manages 16 billion documents and 33 PB in a single repository, at 600 million API calls a month, with full audit trails throughout.

Use cases

What this looks like in your industry

From audit scramble to defensible record

Records sit across fragmented systems, and missing metadata turns a regulatory request into a manual search. Agents classify and enrich documents on arrival, retention and legal hold are applied by the platform, and every action is recorded.

Answer a regulatory request in hours, not days.

CAD 100,000
saved a year through audit automation
Read the case study
Banking Industry use case

Claims triage without manual sorting

Policy documents, claims files, and vendor forms arrive faster than people can sort them. Agents classify, enrich, route, and retain each document on arrival, and redact what must not leave before a file goes to a third party.

Documents processed end to end without manual handling.

40%
faster read and write performance
10,000+
claim files processed daily
Read the case study
A person in a long-sleeve shirt is seated at a desk, writing on several sheets of paper with a pen.

Share records without exposing PHI

Clinical records, consent forms, and diagnostic documents carry protected information that must not leave with the file. The redaction agent finds it and applies permanent or role-based redaction, keeping the original record complete.

Sensitive information removed before a file leaves.

90%
lower administrative costs, boosting profitability
35%
less time spent analyzing bills, freeing staff to take on more work
Read the case study
Healthcare use case

Information requests answered fast

Agencies ingest millions of pages against strict records mandates and freedom of information deadlines. Classification, retention, and records management run at that volume, with audit trails applied by the platform rather than added later.

Fulfil a request in an hour, not a quarter.

3 months
to 1 hour information request fulfilment
Read the case study
Illustration of a group of women working in office

Always retrieve the version that governs

Engineering drawings, quality reports, and supplier contracts sit across disparate systems, so teams cannot tell which version controls. Centralize and classify documentation under one governance model, and retrieval returns the current record.

Teams find the controlling version in seconds.

20 to 40%
shorter documentation cycle time
Read the case study
Manufacturing use case

Specifications

Choose your edition

Essentials

Get started with the essential IBM Content Cortex capabilities. Ideal for teams that need content governed, findable, and ready for AI before they scale agents on it.

  • Navigator Core Agent: ask about documents, update metadata, reclassify, create folders, and file or unfile, in natural language
  • Agents available in context, from inside a folder or a set of search results
  • Workspace homepage for working with a document set
  • Intelligent archiving, with active and archival content on one platform
  • Enterprise security, fine-grained access control, retention, and disposition
  • Remote MCP servers and the AI model gateway

Already running FileNet Content Manager, Content Manager OnDemand, or Content Manager Enterprise Edition?
FileNet entitlements carry forward. Content Manager OnDemand and Content Manager Enterprise Edition follow a supported, phased path. Talk to someone who can map yours.

Plan your mordernization path

Premium

Unlock specialized agents and policy-aware automation in addition to the Essentials capabilities. Built for organizations moving content operations from people to agents.

  • All Essentials capabilities, plus
  • Smart search: a single query across keyword, metadata, and meaning, so a question can filter and interpret at the same time
  • Redaction agent: finds sensitive information and applies permanent or role-based redaction, keeping the original
  • Legal hold agent: identifies responsive documents and applies the hold without an administrator
  • Classification and extraction agent, working across a document set at once
  • Multiple agent launch points, embedded across folders, search results, and document views
  • Enterprise policy resources that define what sensitive means, which redaction to use, and how output is returned
  • Agent interaction history across every specialized agent
  • Additional remote MCP servers for legal hold, classification and extraction, redaction, and search

Resources

Explore resources

Read the solution brief
The full picture of what Content Cortex does, for sharing with the people who are not on this page.
Self-guided product tour
Walk through the agents and the archiving experience at your own pace.
Product documentation
Architecture, deployment, administration, and the validated model list.
Events and community
Sessions, announcements, and discussion with the people building and running it.
Take the next step

Walk through IBM Content Cortex yourself, or bring a content set you would not want an ungoverned agent near, and we will show you what governed action looks like on it.

  1. Try IBM Content Cortex
  2. Book a live demo
Footnote

*Based on IBM internal modeling. Actual results will vary based on client configurations and conditions, so generally expected results cannot be provided.