An AI assistant can confidently answer from a document that no longer applies. A file date alone is insufficient: metadata must cover validity, ownership and review rules.
Distinguish creation, updates and validity
Record when the material was written, when it was last reviewed and until when it is considered valid. These three dates answer different questions.
Assign a knowledge owner
Every critical collection needs a team that approves changes and resolves doubts. Without an owner, expiry becomes a warning with no action behind it.
Set rules by category
Prices, policies and technical instructions age at different rates. Use different review intervals and triggers.
Filter expired content
Retrieval should downweight, exclude or flag documents that have passed their validity period. An answer should disclose when it relies on old material.
Measure stale-answer incidents
Record cases in which freshness affected an outcome and update the rule. Actual mistakes show which categories need more frequent review.
This framework is an original editorial methodology developed by DigitalNow.