Build chatbot to respond from the content of a document

Short Course Q&A ChatGPT Prompt Engineering for Developers
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Can we pass on an entire word document/multiple word documents as a context for the assistance model to respond based on user queries related to the documents?

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Hello @Seemanta_Basak,
We are glad to have you here. The answer to your question is “YES” we can but you have to consider the side effects of passing entire document/multiple documents as context which includes:

1- Input Size Limitation:Language models have a fixed-size input limitation. Passing large documents directly could exceed this limit, leading to incomplete processing of the content.

2- Preprocessing Required: To use the model effectively, you should preprocess the documents and extract relevant content or segments. This may involve identifying key passages, summarizing, or concatenating multiple documents into a manageable context string.

3- Context Retention Limitation : While the model can process context, its ability to retain long-term context is limited. If you present context as part of a conversation, it may lose track of information from earlier parts of the conversation.

So now after you knew the side effects from doing that let’s now go to best practices for using a language model with context from documents.

  1. Extract Relevant Content : Preprocess the documents and extract relevant information, passages, or sections to provide as context. This ensures that the context stays within the model’s input limits.

  2. Segment and Concatenate : If you have multiple documents, process them individually, and then concatenate the relevant parts into a single context string.

  3. Use in Conversational Format : Present context in a conversational format, asking questions related to the content, to utilize the model’s conversational abilities effectively.

  4. Consider Specialized Tools : For handling larger texts and documents more efficiently, consider using dedicated NLP tools or document management systems.

I hope now you have a good overview about how to effectively use language model with context from documents.

Best Regards,
Jamal

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There are a lot of interesting uses in this area. Here, you can check out some tools/plugins that aim to expand chatbot functionality to cover file inputs like documents for some ideas about what’s possible: Plugins (makeuseof.com)