what is the difference between AI search and contextual search in Virtual Agent chatbot

[Suganya8]

Hi,

I would like to know the below queries.

1. How does AI search works at backend in virtual agent chatbot ?

2. How does contextual search works at backend in virtual agent chatbot?

3. what is the difference between AI search and contextual search in virtual agent chatbot?

Thanks,

[Victor Chen]

Virtual Agent uses the platform AI Search just as it does Contextual Search (Zing), below is a summary of the differences.

[SusanWinKY]

Is there a plan to add an AI Search-based contextual search feature? Use case: In the service portal, someone wants to submit an issue to the help desk. They enter the issue details into a record producer that creates an interaction record. On that form, the contextual search feature returns potential KB articles and catalog requests that could help them solve the issue. Is there a possibility of ServiceNow introducing an option of contextual search using AI Search rather than Zing? Or is there an alternative to contextual search we could implement in a service portal record producer form?

[Chris D]

Great question - you might want to create your own post (and/or Idea) on this just fyi.

I'm not aware of being able to replace this exact functionality with AI Search, but I think Issue Auto Resolution (IAR) is the closest comparable feature. Technically I believe it works after submission though which is why I wouldn't consider it a replacement. The idea is that when a ticket is created, the short description is fed to NLU to check if a VA topic exists - if one does, it'll start that topic, otherwise, you can have it just do the AI Search Fallback.

Here's the docs on it: Using Issue Auto Resolution (servicenow.com)

[SusanWinKY]

Upon your recommendation, I searched Now Support for 'AI Contextual Search' and found AI Search Assist which looks like what we're looking for.

https://docs.servicenow.com/bundle/tokyo-platform-administration/page/administer/ai-search/concept/a...