ETL (Extract, Transform, Load)

ETL is a bit like packing for a move. First you gather items scattered across different rooms into one place (extract), sort them and fit them into boxes (transform), and then put them in their designated spots in the new house (load). Data piled up across a company or service works the same way: it's scattered across many systems and comes in all sorts of formats, so before anyone can analyze it or train an AI model on it, it first has to be gathered, cleaned, and moved through this process.

When this process is done well, AI models and analysis tools get to work with clean, consistent data. When it's a mess, even the best model will produce weak results. So while it doesn't look flashy from the outside, ETL is considered the plumbing work that's essential to actually running an AI service.