How is AI Changing the LMS?

EPISODE 108: How is AI Changing the LMS?

Enthusiasm about artificial intelligence continues to capture the imagination of nearly everyone in the learning community. But among top LMS innovators, AI is much more than a promising dream. Docebo is one of those companies.

Several years have passed since Docebo CEO, Alessio Artuffo, last compared notes with me on this podcast. A lot has changed since then. That’s why I’m excited to hear his latest thoughts about how AI is shaping learning platforms — and the Docebo LMS, in particular.

There’s plenty of room to join us. So, grab a front row seat as we talk about new opportunities AI is bringing to Docebo and the enterprise learning world, at large.

HOW IS AI CHANGING THE LMS? — KEY TAKEAWAYS

• AI continues to upend all aspects of the digital business world, including LMS platforms. Systems that once focused on administrative functions are being redefined in ways that dramatically improve the learning experience. And vendors like Docebo are leading the way.

• With AI as an enabling foundation, LMS companies are expanding into adjacent domains. For example, AI-powered content creation tools play an increasingly central role in Docebo’s strategy. And its recent acquisition of 365 Talents paves the way for a more holistic approach to employee skills development.

• As with all AI-powered solutions, data is the lifeblood of next-generation LMS platforms. This is why Docebo is investing heavily to help customers leverage and protect data that drives hyper-personalized learning at scale.

HOW IS AI CHANGING THE LMS? — Q&A HIGHLIGHTS

Welcome back, Alessio. First, why don’t you start with a company update?

Nice to be on the show again, John. Docebo has been thriving and we continue to see remarkable growth.

We now have nearly 1000 employees. And last month we made a significant business acquisition with 365 Talents, an AI-first skills intelligence company.

Of course, we also continue to evolve the core Docebo LMS. And compared with three years ago, AI is much more of a daily reality for the platform. Now, AI is applied to every use case.

So, we’ve been building, building, building, building.

Mmhmm…

It has been an incredible journey. And the market is shaping up in a very exciting way.

We all hear about how agents could replace humans and how this impacts L&D. So, we’ve been thinking about this a lot at Docebo and building our technology around it.

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Three years ago, you were touting one of the first versions of your Shape authoring tool. What’s the latest with that?

Content creation is an important foundational topic as a prerequisite to AI agents. Shape was our first take on creation technology that primarily lets SMEs create content within the Docebo platform. This reduced the need to rely on third-party platforms for authoring.

Since then, we’ve evolved Shape into what became Docebo Creator. And we continue investing significantly to accelerate Creator functionality.

But the real question is why?

Why is this so important? Do we want to produce another tool that replaces other authoring tools in the market?

No. That is not the ultimate goal.

The authoring tools market is incredibly crowded with companies that have commoditized that capability. However, modern learning platform buyers expect it.

For us, creation capability is significant because it’s an engine that enables agentic AI actions — including editing, importing, or creation — in a seamless way.

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So, how do AI agents work in your LMS?

The platform of the future is not far away. It’s a platform that understands context. Context is where you work, who you are, who you want to be, or where the organization wants to take you in terms of skills and capabilities.

The LMS supports you on that journey. And within that support, it helps you master capabilities you don’t possess. As an autonomous platform, it creates content based upon certain variables, adapting to your skill level or what you need to learn at any point in time.

So now, Creator is less about creating a piece of learning content within the platform, as we’ve done for many years. It’s more for AI to consume and create immersive experiences.

I see…

Whether it’s a single PDF page or other material transformed by AI into a podcast or into a virtual coaching scenario, there are various possibilities. So, creation has moved well beyond the static SCORM package.

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So, let’s clarify. Soon, organizations won’t need to generate SCORM packages with standalone and intra-LMS authoring tools. That’s because AI will autonomously create highly personalized courses based on each person’s needs?

100%, John. There are use cases where agents designated for the creation side of the house will develop content that adapts to an individual’s specific needs at any point in time.

I’m skeptical about agents doing the entire job for highly regulated, high-stakes compliance scenarios. That remains to be seen.

But think of how much content we produce from available sources when we know what specific personas need to learn. This happens, even in customer education. And it presents a tremendous opportunity for automation.

No doubt…

Now, does this mean the course developer or instructional designer job goes away? I don’t think so.

I think it changes. It becomes a partner of the AI agent, just like engineers are co-coding with Claude Code. We’ll have co-course developers with creator agents. And there’s no shame in that.

We’ll gain productivity and speed. And maybe we’ll remove those tedious tasks of copy-and-paste, storyboarding, and course outlining.

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Right…

And we can keep our eyes on the creativity, the impact, and the multi-channel delivery. That’s what excites me the most. The ability for the system to transform a nugget of knowledge into a two-person podcast interview.

Here’s an example from my life. I’m not a PowerPoint guy. So lately, I’m consuming a lot of PowerPoint content in podcast mode while I’m in my car. I’ll transform a deck into a NotebookLM-type resource because my brain prefers that method of consumption.

Cool. Do you use your platform to convert that content?

We’ve been inspired by available technology like NotebookLM. Because those services are becoming more open, we’re building them into the Creator platform. So, you can feed it information and repurpose it in an AI coaching tool with whom you can have a video conversation or podcast.

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So, what does an agent look like to a learner?

First, we need to ask where we believe the front-end experience will happen in organizations. Across multiple use cases, will that experience live inside the LMS? In some instances, this may be true.

But we have evidence that organizations want to consume critical data from the LMS in a different experience. It could be an LLM using some MCP protocol to retrieve data. Or, it could be within their own platform, using a headless approach.

Our point of view is we need to meet the learner where they are. So, our job is to enable the smart distribution of content in various ways. And we’re acting accordingly.

That’s why we’ve built a lightweight, headless system that follows you wherever you go. It operates in full compliance with security and privacy standards, so there is hyper-control and governance.

And we are bringing this to market soon.

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Nice. Data governance and AI risk are serious enterprise concerns right now. How do you help customers stay at the forefront of AI monitoring and data security?

Some organizations are constrained and therefore very conservative about AI adoption. This tends to happen in certain sectors and industries.

Meanwhile, others are extremely bullish, progressive, and demanding about AI advances that accelerate business speed. Not surprisingly, tech companies are often included, here.

We work with some of the largest tech and SaaS companies in the world. Their learning and development vision requires deep sophistication. For instance, common requirements include MCP usage as well as the need to search across multiple external data sources. This means AI governance and privacy management are very critical.

So, we built an AI control panel to give observability, auditability, and control to every AI action Docebo takes. So, you can go into the system and turn it on, turn it off, or limit it to any extent you wish.

Wow.

We don’t really have an option. Otherwise, large enterprises that work with us wouldn’t be able to use these services.

How long have you offered this control panel?

A couple of years. And we keep on evolving it. As we build things, we feed it more configurations.

That’s great. Now, let’s talk about your recent acquisition of 365 Talents. How does that fit into your AI strategy?

… For complete answers to this and other questions about how AI is redefining the LMS, listen to this full episode on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Amazon, or right here on our site.

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TALENTED LEARNING ARTICLE
One on One with Alessio Artuffo — LMS Trends Q&A by John Leh

TALENTED LEARNING SHOW PODCASTS
EPISODE 104: Why Manage Customer Education as a Product? — with Docebo Sr. Director of Learning, Melissa Kruminas
EPISODE 72: Can One LMS Really Drive Internal and External Training? — with Docebo Customer, Patty Costley
EPISODE 61: How is AI Adding Value to Learning Systems? — with Docebo CEO, Alessio Artuffo

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