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Web Access

Models with function calling capability or built-in web search capability can access the web and do web searches.

When web access is available for a model, ChatKit will show a button next to the model name. Clicking the button will toggle the web access on or off:

How to use

Enabling web access means the model will do web searches when your query requires latest information or context from the web. For example, if you ask the model "What is the weather in New York?", the model will do a web search to find the latest weather information in New York:

web search

How does it work

We use model's function calling capability to access the web. The model will use a search engine to do web searches and add the search results to the conversation. ChatKit will fetch the page content of each search result and include the content in the conversation, but only the first 3000 characters of the content will be used.

For models with built-in web search capability, like Cohere or Perplexity models, they works in a similar way but all actions are done within the model itself.

Search Engines

DuckDuckGo

This is the default search engine used by ChatKit.

Google

ChatKit can use Google search via its API, you need to create a Custom Search Engine (CSE) and get an API key. You can find more information about how to do this here: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#prerequisites

preview steps

  1. Create a Custom Search Engine

Create and get the search engine ID here: https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#search_engine_id

custom search engine

  1. Get an API key

https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview#api_key

  1. Enter your API key and search engine ID

In App Settings -> General:

Notes

  • Toggling web access for a chat will also toggle it for future chats. i.e. if you enable web access for a chat, and then start a new chat it will also have web access enabled.