Artificial intelligence is no longer a future possibility – it’s reshaping how decisions are made, services are delivered, and problems are understood. The development and humanitarian sectors are beginning to respond, but much of the activity remains surface-level. For data initiatives, this moment offers a clear opportunity: to lead by doing, and to help show what responsible, effective use of AI looks like in practice.
This report explores how AI is already being applied across humanitarian and development work – from anticipating disasters to improving internal operations, making sense of unstructured data, and reaching people faster. These real-world use cases offer early signals of what’s possible. They also point to the importance of near real-time, open, and well-documented data, something the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI) is uniquely positioned to support.
Drawing on early experiments by the IATI Secretariat and wider community – from smarter portfolio summaries to AI-assisted translation and semantic search – this report shares lessons and examples that may be useful to other data initiatives. These early efforts demonstrate value not just for data specialists, but for implementers, funders and governments who need insight they can act on. But there’s more to do.
To stay relevant and useful, data and transparency initiatives should embed AI more intentionally across strategy, services, and partnerships. That means improving how data is published and interpreted, expanding access for non-technical users, and collaborating with others building public-interest AI tools.
These are practical, achievable steps that will help data initiatives stay relevant, and deliver on their public promise.
Drawing on early experiments by the IATI Secretariat and wider community, this report shares lessons and examples that may be useful to other data initiatives.