Foundations of GenIR

TL;DR

This paper explores how modern generative AI models revolutionize information access systems through information generation and synthesis, enabling tailored content creation and improved integration of existing data, with discussions on architecture, applications, and future challenges.

Contribution

It introduces two new paradigms—information generation and synthesis—in IA systems enabled by generative AI, and discusses their foundational aspects and applications.

Findings

Generative AI enables tailored content creation for users.

Information synthesis improves response grounding and reduces hallucinations.

Generative models enhance multi-modal information access.

Abstract

The chapter discusses the foundational impact of modern generative AI models on information access (IA) systems. In contrast to traditional AI, the large-scale training and superior data modeling of generative AI models enable them to produce high-quality, human-like responses, which brings brand new opportunities for the development of IA paradigms. In this chapter, we identify and introduce two of them in details, i.e., information generation and information synthesis. Information generation allows AI to create tailored content addressing user needs directly, enhancing user experience with immediate, relevant outputs. Information synthesis leverages the ability of generative AI to integrate and reorganize existing information, providing grounded responses and mitigating issues like model hallucination, which is particularly valuable in scenarios requiring precision and external knowledge. This chapter delves into the foundational aspects of generative models, including architecture, scaling, and training, and discusses their applications in multi-modal scenarios. Additionally, it examines the retrieval-augmented generation paradigm and other methods for corpus modeling and understanding, demonstrating how generative AI can enhance information access systems. It also summarizes potential challenges and fruitful directions for future studies.