Understanding Ask AI

What is Ask AI?
- How Ask AI Works
Enabling Ask AI
- Semantic Search Comes with Ask AI
Managing Monthly AI Search Budget
Troubleshooting Ask AI

Our AI-powered search feature Ask AI transforms how your customers interact with your Knowledge Base ✨

This powerful feature helps visitors find exactly what they need, faster and more intuitively than ever before. No more endless scrolling or keyword guesswork.

Ask AI is only available on certain plans and templates. Check your current subscription and settings to access this feature ✋

What is Ask AI?

Ask AI (also known as Generative Search) is an intelligent search solution that scans your entire Knowledge Base and delivers precise, contextual results.

Unlike generic AI tools, Ask AI only pulls information directly from your content. This ensures accuracy, relevance, and citations directly to the source.

AI Answer card within search results showing numbered steps and a cited source

Ask AI is	Ask AI isn't
An advanced search tool	A chatbot or conversational interface
A way to get comprehensive answers from a Knowledge Base	A general AI assistant
A feature that consolidates information from multiple sources	A replacement for your entire Knowledge Base
A tool that understands search intent and context	A tool that generates new content (you can do that with our Draft Article feature)

How Ask AI Works

Ask AI will show above standard search results when the search query is longer than a few keywords. This makes it ideal for complex questions and natural language inquiries.

Ask AI and the underlying AI model won't be trained using your content. Your internal content won't be accessible unless a user has access 🔐

When a visitor searches using natural language, Ask AI:

Searches through all your Knowledge Base articles
Pulls relevant information from matching content
Displays helpful results with source attribution

Each Ask AI search summary costs 1 credit from your monthly budget.

There are daily usage limits to ensure fair resource distribution. You can only use a certain percentage of your monthly limit per day, and there's also a user rate limit in place to prevent spam.

Enabling Ask AI

Head to Settings > AI
Under For your readers, click Ask AI
Under Usage, ensure your Monthly Search Budget is more than 0
Save Changes

If your monthly budget is set to 0 then Ask AI won't appear.

Semantic Search Comes with Ask AI

When Ask AI is on for your plan and switched on in Settings > AI, your Knowledge Base search also gets semantic search. It understands what people mean, not only the words they type. There is no separate setting for it, and it doesn't use AI credits.

When you switch Ask AI on, your articles are rebuilt in the background. This starts within about a minute. Until an article has been rebuilt it is found by its text alone.
When you switch Ask AI off, search stops using semantic search straight away.
While your articles are rebuilt, some may be missing from search for a few seconds at a time.

Ask AI is fully compatible with v5 templates and above. Older custom templates may require modifications, and legacy templates may not be compatible at all. If you're using an older template and want to try out Ask AI, you can do that with .dev.

Managing Monthly AI Search Budget

To prevent unexpected billing, you can easily limit your monthly AI search budget:

Head to Settings > AI
Scroll down to the Usage section
Next to Monthly Search Budget, enter your desired monthly search budget
Once the budget is reached, Ask AI will automatically disable to prevent additional charges

We recommend having at least 100 set as your monthly search budget.

If the Ask AI search fails you generally won't be charged. If it yields no results, you will still be charged.

Troubleshooting Ask AI

If Ask AI isn't appearing on your Knowledge Base:

Check that your monthly budget is set above 0
Ensure you're using a compatible template (v5 or above)
Verify your plan includes Ask AI features