What is LLM Answers?

LLM Answers are responses generated by a large language model to a user prompt, sometimes grounded in retrieved sources and sometimes generated from model parameters. LLM Answers can include citations or source attribution when the system supports it.

Quick definition

LLM Answers are AI-generated responses written by a large language model.

How LLM Answers works

• LLM Answers are produced by predicting tokens based on the prompt and model parameters.
• LLM Answers may use retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to incorporate external sources.
• LLM Answers can vary between runs due to sampling settings and changing source availability.
• LLM Answers may include citation in AI answers when the interface exposes sources.

Why LLM Answers matters

LLM Answers matters because the answer itself can replace a traditional click to a webpage.

LLM Answers impacts:

• how users discover products and information in conversational search
• which sources receive source attribution (AI)
• the risk of hallucinations (AI) when the answer is not grounded

Example use cases

• Testing whether a product is mentioned in LLM answers for high-intent prompts.
• Checking if a specific URL is cited when citations are enabled.
• Measuring answer ranking changes for the same query intent over time.

Related terms

• Large Language Models (LLMs)
• Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)
• Hallucinations (AI)
• Citation in AI Answers
• Answer Ranking
• Temperature (LLM)