You.com Launches Search APIs Giving Generative AI Chatbots Real-Time Web Access
Search engine developer You.com has introduced a set of APIs that will connect large language models (LLMs) and generative AI chatbots to the internet. The APIs are designed to retrieve up-to-date information with an eye toward reducing outdated responses and hallucinations.
You API
The You APIs essentially serve to answer queries to ChatGPT-style chatbots with online information rather than relying on static databases. There are three styles of API in the initial rollout. LLMs deploying the You web search API will collate text from websites, texts significantly longer than the snippets visible when searching with Google or Bing. The AI can then quote and summarize the long-form text from a more recent web search. The news API is centered on results tagged as news, while the retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) API provides a stricter filter for the LLM-produced description of You.com’s search results to really cut down on hallucinations and factual errors. The APIs support multilingual search, rights to cite data, and varying pricing plans for enterprise teams of different sizes.
“Since You.com introduced the first consumer-facing LLM with internet access, providing up-to-date answers complete with citations, we received many requests for an API with these capabilities,” said You.com CEO Richard Socher. “Our response is the YOU API, a comprehensive solution that equips every chatbot and LLM with the means to retrieve real-time information through web search.”
The launch comes months after You.com unveiled its YouChat for more recent generative AI-fueled answers to web searches. But, demand continues to rise for chatbots with constantly updated world knowledge, as evidenced by ChatGPT’s internet search option starting to appear a few months ago. Most such chatbots rely on static training data. By allowing any conversational AI to pull current data, the You API provides an increasingly crucial element for generative AI assistants. Integration nuances and content moderation at scale remain challenges, however. Still, the company claims benchmark testing shows the You API outperforming alternatives from Google and Bing when paired with major LLMs.
“We’re not resting on assumptions; we’ve rigorously benchmarked our technology,” said You.com CTO Bryan McCann. “The results reveal that the YOU API outperforms the capabilities of search providers like Google and Bing when paired with a variety of LLMs. By using the YOU API, developers ensure that their LLMs leverage the most recent web information and receive data verified by testing protocols.”
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