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AI Applications lets developers, even those with limited machine learning
skills, tap into the power of Google's foundation models, search expertise, and
conversational AI technologies to create enterprise-grade generative AI
applications for search, recommendations, and conversation agents.
The product AI Applications essentially packages the following aspects
together:
Vertex AI Search: Search and recommendation apps, used for
AI-enabled search, browse, grounded answer generation, and recommendations.
See Vertex AI Search.
Dialogflow conversational agents: Conversational Agents, used for
creating AI-driven conversational user interfaces, was originally available as
part of AI Applications. In early 2025, these products have become distinct
offerings. See the Conversational Agents documentation.
This user guide talks about Vertex AI Search and all its offerings in
detail.
Vertex AI Search
Vertex AI Search is a fully-managed platform, powered by large
language models, that lets you build AI-enabled search and recommendation
experiences for your public or private websites or mobile applications.
Information retrieval using AI and LLMs
Vertex AI Search brings together the power of deep information
retrieval, state-of-the-art natural language processing, and the latest in large
language model (LLM) processing to understand user intent and return the most
relevant results for the user.
With Vertex AI Search, you can build a Google-quality search app
on data you control. You also have the option to use the search results that you
retrieve to ground generative AI LLM responses. For more information, see the
blog post
Your RAG powered by Google Search.
With recommendations, you can build a recommendations app across your data
that suggests content similar to the content that the user is viewing.
An easy experience to get started
Vertex AI Search makes it easy to get started with high-quality search
or recommendations based on data that you provide. As part of the setup
experience, you can:
Use your existing Google Account or sign up for one.
Use your existing Google Cloud project or create one.
Create an app and attach a data store to it. Provide data to search or
recommend by entering the URLs for your website content, importing your data
from BigQuery or Cloud Storage, or importing FHIR R4 data
from Cloud Healthcare API, or uploading through RESTful CRUD APIs. Syncing data
from third-party data sources is available in Preview with allowlist.
For more information, see About apps and data stores
Embed JavaScript widgets and API samples to integrate search or
recommendations into your website or applications.
Search apps
With Vertex AI Search, you can quickly build a Google-quality search
app on your own data and embed a search bar in your web pages or app.
You can create the following different types of search apps:
Custom search. Apply custom search to websites
or to data stores containing your
proprietary data, giving your customers Google-quality search experiences on
the content that you want them to see. For more information, see
Introduction to custom search
and Get started with custom search.
Media search. This is a search capability
specially designed for media content such as movies, videos, and music. With
media search, audiences can efficiently find the media content that they
want to view or listen to. For more information, see
Introduction to media search and recommendations
and Get started with media search.
Healthcare search. This is a search capability that lets you query
healthcare records stored in FHIR data stores. You can import FHIR resources
that contain clinical data from your Cloud Healthcare API FHIR store. You can
also search unstructured data, such as images, PDF files, and RTF files,
referenced by the FHIR resources.
Recommendation apps
You can quickly build a state-of-the-art recommendations app on your own data
that can suggest content similar to the content that the user is viewing.
You can create the following two different types of recommendations
apps:
Media recommendations. Get recommendations for media content such as
videos, news, and music. With media recommendations, audiences can discover
more personalized content, like what to watch or read next, with
Google-quality results customized using optimization objectives.
For more information, see
Get started with media recommendations.
Out-of-the-box natural language understanding and semantic search.
Get a high-quality search experience without needing to implement
and maintain systems that perform keyword searches or pattern matching.
Out-of-the-box capabilities to understand synonyms, correct spellings, and
auto-suggest searches. Improve the user's search experience without the
need to implement complex natural language processing techniques.
Generative AI. Get generative AI-powered summarization and
conversational search for unstructured documents.
Out-of-the-box recommendations. Get state-of-the art, ML-based content
and metadata understanding that lets your users quickly find content
that is similar to the content that they're viewing.
AI Applications console and APIs. Use the
AI Applications page of the
console or Google's APIs to set up a search app
for your public websites or for your structured or
unstructured data.
Self learning. Get self-learning ranking models and advanced analytics.
This requires the user's clickstream.
Optimization for media. Create recommendation and search apps
optimized for media content.
Natural language querying of healthcare data. Search FHIR resources without
prior knowledge of any query language.
Context-aware healthcare searches. Find search results with semantic
relevance that a structured FHIR search might miss.
Google Cloud console or the API?
You can implement Vertex AI Search in any of the following ways:
Use the Google Cloud console. Use the
AI Applications page of the console for a
quick-start experience using a web interface. From the
console, you can create your search app, import your data,
test the user experience, and view analytics.
Use the AI Applications API. Use the AI Applications API when you're ready
to integrate search or recommendations into your website or applications.
Use both the Google Cloud console and the API. You can set up your app
and import your data using the console, for example, and then
use the API to test the user experience and integrate it into your website
or application.
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-25 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eVertex AI Agent Builder empowers developers to create enterprise-grade generative AI applications using Google's foundation models, search capabilities, and conversational AI, even with limited ML expertise.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eVertex AI Agents, a natural language understanding platform, enables the design and integration of conversational user interfaces across various platforms, such as mobile apps, websites, and interactive voice response systems.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eVertex AI Search allows users to build AI-powered search and recommendation experiences for public or private websites and applications, including generic, media, and healthcare-specific search options.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eVertex AI Agent Builder provides features like out-of-the-box natural language understanding, semantic search, synonym recognition, spelling correction, auto-suggestions, generative AI capabilities for summarization and conversational search, and more.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eVertex AI Search also has the capability to build state-of-the-art recommendations on your data, with media and generic options, for content that users would appreciate.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,["# What is AI Applications?\n\nAI Applications lets developers, even those with limited machine learning\nskills, tap into the power of Google's foundation models, search expertise, and\nconversational AI technologies to create enterprise-grade generative AI\napplications for search, recommendations, and conversation agents.\n\nThe product AI Applications essentially packages the following aspects\ntogether:\n\n- Vertex AI Search: Search and recommendation apps, used for AI-enabled search, browse, grounded answer generation, and recommendations. See [Vertex AI Search](#es-and-personalize).\n- Dialogflow conversational agents: Conversational Agents, used for creating AI-driven conversational user interfaces, was originally available as part of AI Applications. In early 2025, these products have become distinct offerings. See the [Conversational Agents documentation](/dialogflow/cx/docs).\n\nThis user guide talks about Vertex AI Search and all its offerings in\ndetail.\n\n\n| **Product rebrand** : This product has been renamed since its introduction. Some of the former names include *Agent Builder* , *Vertex AI Search* (an existing subset of AI Applications), *Enterprise\n| Search* , and *Generative AI App Builder*. Regardless of the rebrand, the product's functionalities, such as search, recommendations, generative AI answers, and browse, remain true to the Google quality.\n\n\u003cbr /\u003e\n\nVertex AI Search\n----------------\n\nVertex AI Search is a fully-managed platform, powered by large\nlanguage models, that lets you build AI-enabled search and recommendation\nexperiences for your public or private websites or mobile applications. \n\n### Information retrieval using AI and LLMs\n\nVertex AI Search brings together the power of deep information\nretrieval, state-of-the-art natural language processing, and the latest in large\nlanguage model (LLM) processing to understand user intent and return the most\nrelevant results for the user.\n\nWith Vertex AI Search, you can build a Google-quality search app\non data you control. You also have the option to use the search results that you\nretrieve to ground generative AI LLM responses. For more information, see the\nblog post\n[Your RAG powered by Google Search](https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/ai-machine-learning/rags-powered-by-google-search-technology-part-1).\n\nWith recommendations, you can build a recommendations app across your data\nthat suggests content similar to the content that the user is viewing.\n\n### An easy experience to get started\n\nVertex AI Search makes it easy to get started with high-quality search\nor recommendations based on data that you provide. As part of the setup\nexperience, you can:\n\n- Use your existing Google Account or sign up for one.\n- Use your existing Google Cloud project or create one.\n- Create an app and attach a data store to it. Provide data to search or recommend by entering the URLs for your website content, importing your data from BigQuery or Cloud Storage, or importing FHIR R4 data from Cloud Healthcare API, or uploading through RESTful CRUD APIs. Syncing data from third-party data sources is available in Preview with allowlist. For more information, see [About apps and data stores](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/create-datastore-ingest)\n- Embed JavaScript widgets and API samples to integrate search or recommendations into your website or applications.\n\n### Search apps\n\nWith Vertex AI Search, you can quickly build a Google-quality search\napp on your own data and embed a search bar in your web pages or app.\n\nYou can create the following different types of search apps:\n\n- **Custom search.** Apply custom search to websites\n or to data stores containing your\n proprietary data, giving your customers Google-quality search experiences on\n the content that you want them to see. For more information, see\n [Introduction to custom search](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/about-generic-search)\n and [Get started with custom search](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/try-enterprise-search).\n\n- **Media search.** This is a search capability\n specially designed for media content such as movies, videos, and music. With\n media search, audiences can efficiently find the media content that they\n want to view or listen to. For more information, see\n [Introduction to media search and recommendations](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/about-media)\n and [Get started with media search](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/try-media-search).\n\n- **Healthcare search.** This is a search capability that lets you query\n healthcare records stored in FHIR data stores. You can import FHIR resources\n that contain clinical data from your Cloud Healthcare API FHIR store. You can\n also search unstructured data, such as images, PDF files, and RTF files,\n referenced by the FHIR resources.\n\n### Recommendation apps\n\nYou can quickly build a state-of-the-art recommendations app on your own data\nthat can suggest content similar to the content that the user is viewing.\n\nYou can create the following two different types of recommendations\napps:\n\n- **Media recommendations.** Get recommendations for media content such as\n videos, news, and music. With media recommendations, audiences can discover\n more personalized content, like what to watch or read next, with\n Google-quality results customized using optimization objectives.\n For more information, see\n [Get started with media recommendations](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/try-media-recommendations).\n\n- **Custom recommendations (Preview).** Get recommendations for non-media\n content. For more information, see\n [Get started with custom recommendations](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/try-generic-recommendations).\n\n | **Note:** This feature is a Preview offering, subject to the \"Pre-GA Offerings Terms\" of the [GCP Service Specific Terms](https://cloud.google.com/terms/service-terms). Pre-GA products and features may have limited support, and changes to pre-GA products and features may not be compatible with other pre-GA versions. For more information, see the [launch stage descriptions](https://cloud.google.com/products#product-launch-stages). Further, by using this feature, you agree to the [Generative AI Preview terms and conditions](https://cloud.google.com/trustedtester/aitos) (\"Preview Terms\"). For this feature, you can process personal data as outlined in the [Cloud Data Processing Addendum](https://cloud.google.com/terms/data-processing-terms), subject to applicable restrictions and obligations in the Agreement (as defined in the Preview Terms).\n |\n | \u003cbr /\u003e\n |\n### Key features\n\n- **Out-of-the-box natural language understanding and semantic search.** Get a high-quality search experience without needing to implement and maintain systems that perform keyword searches or pattern matching.\n- **Out-of-the-box capabilities to understand synonyms, correct spellings, and\n auto-suggest searches.** Improve the user's search experience without the need to implement complex natural language processing techniques.\n- **Generative AI.** Get generative AI-powered summarization and conversational search for unstructured documents.\n- **Out-of-the-box recommendations.** Get state-of-the art, ML-based content and metadata understanding that lets your users quickly find content that is similar to the content that they're viewing.\n- **AI Applications console and APIs.** Use the [AI Applications](https://console.cloud.google.com/gen-app-builder/engines) page of the console or Google's APIs to set up a search app for your public websites or for your structured or unstructured data.\n- **Out-of-the-box widget.** Integrate search into your website. For more information, see [Add the search widget to a web page](/generative-ai-app-builder/docs/add-widget).\n- **Self learning.** Get self-learning ranking models and advanced analytics. This requires the user's clickstream.\n- **Optimization for media.** Create recommendation and search apps optimized for media content.\n- **Natural language querying of healthcare data.** Search FHIR resources without prior knowledge of any query language.\n- **Context-aware healthcare searches.** Find search results with semantic relevance that a structured FHIR search might miss.\n\n### Google Cloud console or the API?\n\nYou can implement Vertex AI Search in any of the following ways:\n\n- **Use the Google Cloud console.** Use the [AI Applications](https://console.cloud.google.com/gen-app-builder/engines) page of the console for a quick-start experience using a web interface. From the console, you can create your search app, import your data, test the user experience, and view analytics.\n- **Use the AI Applications API.** Use the AI Applications API when you're ready to integrate search or recommendations into your website or applications.\n- **Use both the Google Cloud console and the API.** You can set up your app and import your data using the console, for example, and then use the API to test the user experience and integrate it into your website or application."]]
