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Where AI Moves from Experiment to Operation

The Drupal AI Summit NYC, taking place on May 14, 2026

Photo by Gryffindor , CC BY-SA 3.0 Wikimedia

The conversation around AI is changing.

Not long ago, most discussions focused on what AI could do. That phase is largely behind us. Organisations are now dealing with a more difficult and more important question: how do you operate AI systems in a way that holds up over time, under real conditions, and with real consequences?

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is designed to address that shift directly. This is not a standalone Drupal event. It is co-located with apidays New York and Generation AI, placing Drupal into a broader ecosystem of technology leaders, platform owners, and organisations actively working through the realities of AI adoption at scale.

This is a different kind of conversation

This Summit is not structured as a traditional developer track, and it is not focused on early-stage experimentation. The intent is to create space for people who are already responsible for delivery and are dealing with the complexity that comes with it.

The audience includes CTOs, digital leaders, and platform owners who are navigating challenges such as governance, compliance, data ownership, and long-term operational stability. These are not theoretical concerns. They emerge quickly once AI is integrated into production systems and begin to affect real users, real data, and real outcomes.

We're In the Storm, This is the Way Through

AI is already embedded in how organisations operate, whether they realise it or not. It is present in content workflows, search systems, personalisation engines, and automation pipelines. In many cases, it has been introduced incrementally, often without a clear understanding of how data is being handled or where control ultimately resides.

This creates a gap between perceived responsibility and actual control.

The Drupal AI Initiative has been working to close that gap by focusing on approaches that are open, inspectable, and governable. This is not an abstract position. It is a practical requirement for organisations that need to understand how their systems behave, where their data is processed, and how decisions can be audited over time.

What the Summit will focus on

The programme is centred on real implementation work. The goal is to surface the decisions, trade-offs, and operational realities that teams encounter when AI moves beyond pilot projects and into production environments.

Sessions will focus on areas such as:

• AI implementations currently running in production within Drupal
• Architectural decisions and integration patterns that support long-term use
• Governance and compliance considerations in regulated environments
• Operational lessons learned from scaling AI systems
• Practical insights from projects that required course correction

The emphasis is on experience rather than theory. Attendees should expect to hear what actually happens when systems are deployed, maintained, and evolved over time.

This builds on the foundation established by the first Drupal AI Summit in Paris, which brought together global contributors to focus on practical architecture, governance, and real-world application of open source AI systems.

Why is Drupal part of this conversation?

Drupal is not approaching AI as an external add-on. The work being done through the Drupal AI Initiative is focused on integrating AI directly into the platform in a way that preserves control, flexibility, and transparency.

That includes the ability to choose where models run, how data is processed, and how AI capabilities are embedded into content and workflow systems. It also reflects Drupal's long-standing strengths as an open source platform built around extensibility, governance, and long-term ownership.

For organisations that need to operate AI responsibly, those characteristics are not optional. They are foundational.

Who should attend?

This Summit is intended for organisations and individuals who are already engaged in applying AI in meaningful ways and are now working through the implications of doing so at scale. In short, YOU SHOULD ATTEND.

It is particularly relevant for those who are responsible for platform decisions, architectural direction, or operational oversight, and who need to ensure that AI systems remain reliable, governable, and aligned with organisational requirements.

Join us in New York City

Early bird tickets are currently available for $150 until April 13. For an event of this scale, and with access to a much larger federated conference environment, that price is difficult to justify passing up.

The Drupal AI Summit NYC is an opportunity to engage directly with practitioners who are doing this work today, in environments where the stakes are real and the outcomes matter.