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Labs experiment launch: stackoverflow.ai

UPDATE - July 9, 2025

This week we’ve updated stackoverflow.ai with the following new functionality and fixes:

  • Related content suggestions are more relevant and dynamically re-ranked during conversational chat
  • Related content suggestions can now come from the Stack Exchange network, in addition to Stack Overflow
  • UX updates, improvements and fixes
  • All users now see the link on the left navigation menu, which is now “AI Assist”

Still pending release later this week:

  • Import chat history option allows for content from other LLM conversations to be imported via summary
  • Improved mobile accessibility for the chat experience
  • Built-in feedback mechanism

Many thanks to those who’ve provided feedback and shared thoughts on this post. Since the experiment now has a built-in feedback mechanism, if you are engaging with the experiment you can use that to provide feedback about your experience. General feedback remains welcome here.

Some of you asked very valid questions about who this experiment is targeting and whether this concept can be a new on-ramp into the community. The reason for this experiment is to explore the potential audience and entry path.

This experiment exists in the broader evolving landscape around LLM attribution. We acknowledge the concerns around attribution of the chat responses, and we are working to address this in the best way for the community and users.

mockup image of stackoverflow.ai

Continuing experimentation around themes of reaching and supporting technologists and smarter discovery, today (June 25, 2025), we're announcing a limited experiment on stackoverflow.ai, a new AI-powered search and discovery tool.

What is stackoverflow.ai?

We’ve experimented with AI-powered search and discovery before, so what’s different this time? Past concepts were RAG-based (Retrieval-Augmented Generation) and simply surfaced answers from Stack Overflow. The stackoverflow.ai experiment offers a model-agnostic generative AI tool, trained on knowledge from the broader web (including the Stack Exchange Network). As the user interacts with the tool, related content from Stack Overflow is displayed in the sidebar. This human-authored content from Stack Overflow is available as an entry point into the community and can help the user validate output from the genAI conversation.

The goal is to provide users with:

  • A new way to get started on Stack Overflow. The tool can help developers get unblocked instantly with answers to their technical problems, while helping them learn along the way and providing a path into the community.
  • A familiar, natural language experience that anyone who has interacted with genAI chatbots would expect, but further enriched with clear connections to trusted and verified Stack Overflow knowledge.
  • A user-friendly interface with conversational search and discovery.
  • A path, when the genAI tool isn’t providing the solution they need, to bring their question to the Stack Overflow community via the latest question asking experience, including Staging Ground.

This limited release is a first iteration to understand infrastructure viability, identify and fix bugs, assess core functionality, and gather initial feedback before considering opening it up to more testing and adding more functionality.

Additionally, this limited release will help us ensure our tools effectively detect and manage unrelated, inappropriate, or harmful content. It is important that we get this right, so if you get responses from this feature that are incorrect, harmful, or otherwise, inappropriate, please contact our team by using the "Contact" link here, selecting Trust and Safety under “What can we help you with?”, and selecting I have a concern with StackOverflow.ai.

Contact Support Dropdown Menu

What comes next?

Over the next few weeks, we will assess core functionality and gather initial feedback from the community and the randomly selected users and visitors using the feature.

Provided this early testing phase goes well, in July, we expect to add the following features and capabilities:

  • Import chat history - Developers can pick up right where they left off in another AI tool to get unstuck on stackoverflow.ai.
  • Related content suggestions from the Stack Exchange network, as well as Stack Overflow.
  • Dynamic re-ranking of the related content based on the ongoing genAI conversation.
  • The path to post a question directly to the relevant Stack Exchange site.
  • Additional ways to provide feedback and flag content on the genAI response.

This post is for bug reports and suggestions from users who have tried out the new interface, as well as for general feedback from the Meta community — how might this evolve to do more for developers, or for you?

Answer*

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14
  • 3
    I just tried it out (didn't actually post a question) but it seems to simply prompt the user to submit a new question from scratch. Nothing is populated from the AI that I can tell, and it just dumps you on the ask page. So nothing AI generated is being added to the question from what I can tell. Commented Jun 25 at 17:55
  • 2
    @DanielBlack thanks, that's helpful to know. Although, I am looking for a commitment from the company that it stays that way. Commented Jun 25 at 18:18
  • 9
    @M-- I agree with everything you said. I too am excited to have a dedicated space for AI-powered tools and experiments that is separate from the Q&A sites. What Daniel Black is describing is the intended behavior and goal. If someone using stackoverflow.ai isn’t finding an answer to their question, we’re guiding them to StackOverflow so they can ask the question there. It is not posting any AI generated questions to the QA site. Commented Jun 25 at 18:23
  • 12
    Agreed that AI experiments should be kept separate from the main Q&A. I acknowledge that an increasing number of users have turned to AI tools for programming information, (as can be easily seen by users with access to SO Analytics). I don't mind Stack Overflow experimenting with AI. However, Stack Overflow still has great value as a human-verified source of information, and I don't want to see that degraded. Commented Jun 25 at 18:36
  • 3
    @Stevoisiak we’re thinking the same thing re: Stack Overflow’s value and not degrading it. Commented Jun 25 at 19:59
  • 2
    Thank you, @Stevoisiak. Agree 100%! Commented Jun 25 at 20:05
  • 11
    We care so much about not degrading SO's value that we're taking this tool that has degraded SO's value over the last 4 years and launched it as a new solution with SO's name on it! Commented Jun 25 at 20:07
  • 1
    @KevinB I agree that AI tools have taken away traffic from Stack Overflow. Since ChatGPT 3.5 launched in November 2022, the number of weekly questions on Stack Overflow has dropped 89% (via analytics page). However, users will keep using AI for coding questions regardless of whether SO launches it's own AI tools or not. Commented Jun 25 at 20:16
  • 7
    @Stevoisiak How does rereleasing the same solution in a limited format that isn't accessible within the tools developers use every day do anything to address the problem? it's just another iteration of phoning in an existing service with less functionality than what it's trying to complete with and slapping our name on it. this is such a joke. Commented Jun 25 at 20:18
  • 2
    @KevinB I have no idea if Stack Overflow's AI tools will sway users who are already using other AI tools, nor am I arguing that this tool will be successful. The only points I'm making are that AI tools have pulled a large amount of traffic away from Stack Overflow, so it makes sense SO has been developing its own AI tools in response, and that I'm glad the tool described in this post is being kept separate from the main Q&A pages. Commented Jun 25 at 20:22
  • 1
    "It is also positive that you are not simply regurgitating existing Stack Overflow answers, but instead showing related answers as an authoritative source." - that would be positive if it was great at a) finding SO posts related to the question and b) creating a correct answer from these posts instead of "regurgitating" them. As the other answers here show, it is currently pretty bad at both of these things. So at the moment, it would be preferable if it was simply search on steroids and spit out an existing answer, instead of spitting out BS and listing posts unrelated to that BS. Commented Jun 27 at 8:21
  • @l4mpi you are correct. Assuming they're working on improving it (as pointed out by Ash under other answers), I'd still count it as positive. However, since then, I have seen signs that made me think they won't fix the issue, just will improve the search a bit and will call it quits. Then it isn't positive and will stay that way :( Commented Jun 27 at 13:28
  • 4
    @M-- yeah, I have seen exactly zero information that makes me think SE has a realistic path to improve this until it is at an acceptable level. According to the various staff comments they're using an off the shelf OpenAI model for the response, then extact keywords from that response and throw them into SO search to find the "related" posts. That approach is DOA and will never lead to actual attribution for the response itself. To do it properly they'd have to train a model with attribution baked in; not sure if that's even possible but I'm sure it's beyond the means of SE. Commented Jun 27 at 13:38
  • 1
    I love to know that we (the community) still have a space for collaborating with each other, and thanks to M-- for verifying this with the company's staff. However, regarding the first comment by @Stevoisiak, I totally agree with him/her. Commented Jul 10 at 0:44