An overview of Snorkel AI: What it is and who it’s for

Getting AI to work reliably is tough. It’s not just about a fancy algorithm; it’s about feeding that algorithm really, really good data. That’s the problem Snorkel AI is built to solve. They’re a big name in the AI world, known for their "data-centric" approach to building powerful, custom models.

But what does that actually mean for you? In this article, we’ll give you a clear, no-fluff overview of what Snorkel AI is, what they offer, and who it’s actually for. We’ll look at the good and the not-so-good to help you decide if their foundational approach is what you need, or if a tool designed for day-to-day business problems makes more sense.

What is Snorkel AI?

Snorkel AI is a data development platform that helps companies build and evaluate their own custom AI models. They’re not new to the scene; the company actually spun out of the Stanford AI Lab back in 2019 with a very specific idea: data-centric AI.

The whole idea behind data-centric AI is surprisingly simple. It suggests that the quality of your AI depends more on the quality of your training data than on endlessly tweaking the model itself. Think of it like cooking: you can have the best oven in the world, but if your ingredients are terrible, you’re not making a five-star meal. Snorkel AI focuses on perfecting the ingredients.

They do this with a technique called programmatic labeling. Instead of paying thousands of people to manually label every single piece of data (which is slow, expensive, and full of human error), Snorkel lets subject matter experts write rules that label huge datasets automatically. This helps companies build the highly specialized datasets needed for advanced models in tricky fields like law, medicine, and finance, where a generic, off-the-shelf AI just won’t do the job.

A breakdown of Snorkel AI’s core services

Snorkel AI isn’t just one single product; it’s a platform and a set of services for serious, large-scale AI development. Here’s a look at what they offer.

Snorkel AI expert data-as-a-service

Think of this as their "call in the pros" service. Snorkel brings in its network of subject matter experts, PhDs, lawyers, doctors, to create and label incredibly high-quality datasets for you. For instance, they’ve worked with top AI labs to create PhD-level benchmarks that push the limits of language models and have built datasets to test complex mathematical reasoning. This service is for companies that need hyper-specialized data but don’t have those niche experts on staff.

The Snorkel AI data development platform

This is their main software. It’s a platform that enterprise AI and machine learning teams can use to handle the entire data development process themselves. It’s the toolbox that lets a company’s own experts use programmatic labeling to refine their internal data. The whole point is to take a company’s unique knowledge and turn it into high-octane fuel for custom AI models.

Custom models and evaluations with Snorkel AI

This is more of a hands-on consulting gig. Snorkel’s own engineers work directly with a client’s team to prep data and use it to build specialized models or solid evaluation systems. A Forbes article mentioned a case where they helped a major U.S. bank boost an AI system’s accuracy from a terrible 25% all the way to 93%. How? By training it on better data. It’s a pretty clear example of their data-first philosophy in action.

Snorkel AI's CEO provides an overview of how the company empowers businesses to leverage AI for their specific needs.

The Snorkel AI approach: Strengths and limitations

The Snorkel AI method is really effective for the right audience, but you need to be clear about its specific focus to know if it matches your team’s goals.

Strengths of the Snorkel AI model

• Top-tier quality: In high-stakes fields like medicine or finance, "good enough" just doesn’t fly. Snorkel’s focus on expert-driven data is key for building models where accuracy is everything.

• Scales up nicely: If you’re dealing with millions of data points, labeling everything by hand is out of the question. Programmatic labeling is way faster and more scalable, letting teams prep huge datasets in a fraction of the time.

• Solid research background: Coming out of the Stanford AI Lab gives Snorkel a lot of credibility. They’re on the cutting edge of AI research, and you can see that expertise in their work.

Limitations and things to consider

• A steep climb to get started: This is not a self-serve, plug-and-play tool. Snorkel AI is built for big companies with dedicated AI teams, a lot of technical know-how, and a healthy budget. The process involves deep collaboration with their experts or a lot of training on their platform.

• A long wait for results: Building custom datasets, fine-tuning models, and checking performance is a long, involved process that can easily take months. Snorkel’s approach is about making the underlying model better, not about solving a business problem you have today.

• Focus on the engine, not the car: This is probably the most important thing to understand. Snorkel AI helps you build a more powerful engine, but it doesn’t give you a car that’s ready to drive. After all the data work is done, you still have to build, launch, and maintain the actual application (like a support chatbot or an internal Q&A tool) that uses the new-and-improved model.

• The alternative for getting things done now: For teams that need to solve immediate problems, like automating customer support or giving employees instant answers, a fully integrated, application-first platform is a much better bet. Tools like eesel AI, for example, connect right to your existing help desk (like Zendesk or Freshdesk) and knowledge bases (like Confluence or Google Docs). This lets you get a working AI agent up and running in minutes, not months.

eesel AI connects to your existing tools and knowledge bases to get an AI agent running in minutes, a key alternative to the lengthy Snorkel AI process.

Understanding Snorkel AI pricing

You won’t find a pricing page on the Snorkel AI website. To get any cost info, you have to get in touch with their sales team and go through a whole discovery process.

This is pretty typical for enterprise software that’s built for custom, large-scale projects. The final price tag probably depends on the scope of your project, how much data you have, the number of experts needed, and which services you want.

But not being up-front about pricing has a real impact. It makes it impossible to budget without jumping into a long sales cycle, and it’s a pretty clear signal that the solution isn’t meant for small or medium-sized businesses.

A more transparent approach

This is a big contrast to application-focused platforms that offer clear, predictable pricing. For example, eesel AI has transparent, tiered plans so teams can start small and scale up as they need to. This self-serve model with predictable monthly costs gets rid of the guesswork and long sales calls, letting you get started right away.

eesel AI pricing example

Is Snorkel AI right for you?

So, let’s bring it all together. Snorkel AI is a seriously powerful platform in the data-centric AI world. It’s the right choice for cutting-edge model developers and big companies with dedicated AI teams that need to build or sharpen highly specialized models with expert-level data.

The main difference is this: Snorkel AI is for building and evaluating the AI model itself. It is not a ready-to-use application for solving your day-to-day business problems.

If your main goal is foundational AI research and development, then Snorkel AI should definitely be on your radar. But if you’re looking to quickly and easily apply AI to your customer support, IT, or internal operations, you’re going to need a different kind of tool.

The bottom line on Snorkel AI

For most leaders in support, IT, and ops, the real priority is getting a solution that works with their existing tools and shows its value quickly. Instead of spending months and a huge chunk of your budget on data labeling and model training, an application-first platform lets you start using the power of AI right now.

That’s where a tool like eesel AI fits in. It’s designed to be simple to integrate and to make an impact right away. It learns from your existing help desk tickets, documents, and help centers to automate support, help out your agents, and power internal Q&A, all without needing a team of data scientists.

You can set up and test an eesel AI agent on your own in just a few minutes. Why not start a free trial and see for yourself how quickly you can put AI to work?