Embedding

A numerical representation of text, images, or other data as a dense vector in high-dimensional space. Embeddings allow AI systems to measure semantic similarity — two pieces of text with similar meaning will have similar embeddings, even if the words differ. Embeddings are widely used in search, recommendation systems, and RAG architectures. From a governance perspective, embedding databases may contain encoded representations of sensitive data (customer records, private documents) and should be treated as data stores requiring the same access controls as the original data.