Big Red announced the new name along with the database's general availability, which, we should note, only applies in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure on Oracle Exadata Database Service, Oracle Exadata Cloud@Customer and Oracle Base Database Service, as well as on Oracle Database@Azure. Commentators expect thatOracle emphasizes that the new release earned the AI moniker owing to its new features clustered around the vector search features.
In a cozy scripted presentation, Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison said the vector search features would help specialize foundational large language models with an organization's own data."A foundational model is trained, but it doesn't have your banking records … it doesn't have your personal email: that's not public data that these large language models are trained on. But you can specialize these large language models with your personal data .
Carl Olofson, research vice president at IDC, said isolated databases can become yet another data resource to manage and keep synchronized. In a statement, he said Oracle Database 23ai aimed to solve the problem by enabling the coordination of vectors with customer's data using AI Vector Search.
The Oracle Database 19c – the precursor to 23ai on the main upgrade path – will be supported by Oracle under Extended Support until April 2026, giving users around two years to consider their options. Third-party support is available for many older Oracle products.