# semantic search Projects at AI Tinkerers

> Canonical HTML: https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/semantic-search
> Markdown URL: https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/semantic-search.md
> Technology record last updated: 2026-03-05T18:22:23Z
> Generated: 2026-10-23T00:52:51Z

Semantic Search is an AI-driven retrieval method: It uses vector embeddings to map user queries and documents into a conceptual space, identifying results based on true intent and meaning, not just exact keyword matches.

This technology moves beyond lexical search by leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and vector databases. The core process involves a Transformer model (e.g., BERT) converting both the query and the document corpus into high-dimensional vectors, or embeddings. The system then calculates the geometric distance between the query vector and all document vectors, using metrics like cosine similarity to rank relevance. This approach ensures that a query like “affordable notebooks under $500” successfully retrieves documents containing “cheap laptops,” a result traditional keyword indexing would often miss. It delivers a 95%+ precision boost over older methods: It finds *meaning* first, then retrieves the most semantically similar content.

- Official technology site: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/semantic-ranking
- Public AI Tinkerers demos and talks: 5
- Result page: 1 of 1

## Recent Public Talks and Demos

### [Covariate Search](https://hong-kong.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_bHTSKW0CfRo)

- Event context: AI Tinkerers - Hong Kong Meetup (December) - Inauguration — 2024-12-19 — Hong Kong
- Public talk page: https://hong-kong.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_bHTSKW0CfRo

### [Faster Vector Search With Centroid Clustering](https://boston.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_Xs3CCMNXWXI)

- Event context: AI Tinkerers October Meetup at Microsoft NERD AI — 2024-10-21 — Boston
- Public talk page: https://boston.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_Xs3CCMNXWXI

### [Living Museum](https://toronto.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_EFLikAFW2Z4)

- Event context: AI Tinkerers - Toronto - September 2024 Meetup — 2024-09-20 — Toronto
- Public talk page: https://toronto.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_EFLikAFW2Z4

### [Semanticards](https://zurich.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_fG0sWkGTeMc)

- Event context: AI Tinkerers Zurich - May 8 — 2024-05-08 — Zürich
- Public talk page: https://zurich.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_fG0sWkGTeMc

### [How to fix vector search for long documents](https://munich.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_mV7upH2iftY)

- Event context: AI Tinkerers Munich - January 18 — 2024-01-18 — Munich
- Public talk page: https://munich.aitinkerers.org/talks/rsvp_mV7upH2iftY

## Related Technologies

- [Embeddings](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/embeddings) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/embeddings.md)) — 22 public demos
- [Vector Search](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/vector-search) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/vector-search.md)) — 12 public demos
- [BERT](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bert) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bert.md)) — 179 public demos
- [FAISS](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/faiss) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/faiss.md)) — 17 public demos
- [GPT-3](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/gpt-3) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/gpt-3.md)) — 191 public demos
- [GPT-4](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/gpt-4) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/gpt-4.md)) — 529 public demos
- [Apache Lucene](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/apache-lucene) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/apache-lucene.md)) — 2 public demos
- [BLOOM](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bloom) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bloom.md)) — 115 public demos
- [BM25](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bm25) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/bm25.md)) — 5 public demos
- [centroid clustering](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/centroid-clustering) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/centroid-clustering.md)) — 1 public demo
- [Covariate search](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/covariate-search) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/covariate-search.md)) — 1 public demo
- [Database](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/database) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/database.md)) — 8 public demos
- [Elasticsearch](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/elasticsearch) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/elasticsearch.md)) — 5 public demos
- [HNSW](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/hnsw) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/hnsw.md)) — 7 public demos
- [Keras](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/keras) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/keras.md)) — 74 public demos
- [k-means clustering](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/k-means-clustering) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/k-means-clustering.md)) — 2 public demos
- [Llama-2](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/llama-2) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/llama-2.md)) — 227 public demos
- [Mobile UI](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/mobile-ui) ([Markdown](https://aitinkerers.org/technologies/mobile-ui.md)) — 1 public demo