Good news - once Airtable’s AI extracts the date from your PDF, it’s locked in. I’ve used similar setups for document processing at work and it’s consistent every time.
The AI only runs when you upload the file or change the source data. After that, it treats the extracted value like regular data. No random re-processing.
One gotcha I learned - if you modify the original PDF (even slightly), the AI detects the change and re-extracts. Keep that in mind if you’re updating documents.
This video covers the AI functionality well if you want to dig deeper:
The stability is actually one of the better parts of their AI columns. Makes it solid for production workflows where you need consistent data.