Retriever citations for verifying grounded responses
Key Takeaway
To show citations in a prompt template, turn on citations for the retriever and also in the template's "Response" section. Each response then shows inline numbers and a Sources section.
A citation links an AI-generated response back to the source content used to create it, such as a knowledge article, a PDF page or a web page. Citations let users compare the answer with the original data, so they can check it and spot inaccuracies or hallucinations. For Data 360 retrievers, you turn on citations at the individual retriever level. The prompt templates and agents that call that retriever can then show them.
Why citations matter
Citations serve three purposes:
- Verifiability: users can check the accuracy and origin of an agent's answer.
- Trust: the citations show that the response is based on data.
- Deeper insight: users can open the source material for more detail.
Supported sources include knowledge articles, data from PDF files and external web pages.