Vector Databases for Vector Search Use Cases:
- Typically used to power vector search use cases like visual, semantic, and multimodal search.
- Increasingly paired with generative artificial intelligence (AI) text models for conversational search experiences.
Pairing with Generative AI Text Models:
- Vector databases are now paired with generative AI text models to create intelligent agents.
Development Process:
- Starts with building an embedding model designed to encode a corpus (e.g., product images) into vectors.
- Data import process is referred to as data hydration.
Application Usage:
- Application developers use the database to search for similar products by encoding a product image.
- The vector is then used to query for similar images.
k-Nearest Neighbor (k-NN) Indexes:
- Within the model, k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) indexes provide efficient retrieval of vectors.
- A distance function like cosine is applied to rank results by similarity.
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