When I looked at one of my projects.

Currently I’m adding to some worker tasks a feature that certain data should not only be saved in the database. Also in the vector store as embedding (for future ai use).

This works good and all but this also makes me wonder of the current filter systems which have been with us for a long time. This one is a perfect candidate of remove this completely and add a prompt box, right ?

The user just prompts what he is looking for. The engagement should be to create a prompt like

“I’m looking for a green jacket in Size L for under 200$”

Our search uses now the vector embeddings finds the id’s look it up in the database and returns the items which found a match.

Whats actually amazing about this in my opinion is that with this refactoring we have a total new user experience and just also provides a way of gaining clearly information about what the users want in your house.

What can be the downside?

besides the costs, and a small risk of unexpected results. I think the risk can be that you do not don’t present the available choices upfront. Some users want to see the options. “What are my options?” how I currently perceive the general mindset. Many want to explore and this means they want to click something. Not to type something.

So the first part is to figure out what type of customer you have, If you are a telecommunication, usually a user enters a website and knows directly what to look for no filters needed. Give me the offer or where can I find this.

On a ecommerce you might want to create an impression and recommendation. The shop controls in the first glance what they want to sell. On second priority it’s more like : okay do you look for somethign specific ? Tell me..

So to find the optimal use case would be something where a lot of products,services exists and the typical user is someone who already knows what he’s looking for.

The hybrid approach would be something interesting that on category view you have a filter system which is there to lead to user to the right product. While on home or search view you will present the prompt search bar where the user creates a prompt

Right now I implemented this kind of search only on internal systems. This is where it belongs right now in my opinion. Why? Because you have a much more predictable cost calculation. You know how many users you gonna have how active your tool is and can calculate it against the benefits. We literally making sales people very powerful by giving them access to a tool where they can find exactly documents data and sources of what they need. This is very interesting if you have a data warehouse, access to many information and want to deliver it to the right people. Here it becomes very powerful. Also lead generations and lead manipulations with AI can be unbelievable powerful. Right now in the current economics I got to understand that this market is deformed and for some reasons the most business who look for help or reaching out to the AI Eierlegene Wollmichsau is when they need more busines and want to cut costs.