Ocean shipping has always faced a fundamental challenge: diverse stakeholders using a patchwork of technologies, formats and standards. Carriers, forwarders, shippers and technology providers all exchange critical data, yet the lack of alignment often turns simple information flows into complex, costly integration projects.
This is where AI delivers meaningful impact. AI is not a futuristic promise but a practical tool to solve today’s connectivity pain. Integration platforms can use AI-driven mapping to reconcile data formats and protocols in real time. Whether a partner relies on EDI, APIs, or legacy systems, AI can interpret and harmonize messages on the fly. This eliminates the heavy work and resource investments traditionally required to build and maintain one-off integrations. It also makes carrier APIs, which are not always fully aligned with industry standards, digestible and usable for customers and partners, reducing friction in day-to-day operations.
What AI cannot do, however, is overcome the challenges that are rooted in governance and collaboration. For example, it cannot resolve the “we are irreplaceable, so play by our rules” mindset that still exists among some market players, nor can it accelerate the slow adoption of common data standards across the sector. But this is not a dead end. With AI-powered solutions, stakeholders don’t need to wait for perfect alignment: they can overcome fragmentation and gain reliable connectivity at a fraction of the time and cost of traditional methods.