Elasticsearch and Vald are two prominent databases with vector search capabilities that play a crucial role in AI applications such as recommendation engines, image retrieval, and semantic search. While Elasticsearch is an open-source search engine built on Apache Lucene with vector search as an add-on, Vald is a purpose-built vector database. The choice between the two depends on specific requirements, with Elasticsearch being best for combined search needs and Vald being suitable for pure vector search at scale.