Generative AI Features in Major Databases & Platforms

CAS SciFinder-n has incorporated AI into the basic search box on the CAS SciFinder-n homepage, which now allows for natural language queries and offers AI-enhanced search results, including an AI-generated summary. These AI features are known as SearchSense. The Advanced Search in CAS SciFinder-n does not use AI, so if you would prefer to search without AI, please use Advanced Search.

CAS's AI-powered search only searches and returns answers from CAS data. After running your query, it evaluates the results for relevance and only shows the results it deems relevant to your query. Your answer set will be smaller than the result set that would have been retrieved without AI, but it should be more focused. CAS advises choosing your search terms carefully and not adding unnecessary words, as words in your query will be used to evaluate relevance. To get started, enter your search terms in the homepage search box: 

After running a search, if your query has 5 or more results, at the top of your results, you will see an AI Summary based on the results retrieved by your search:

You may select View All to expand the summary. When you expand the summary, you will see citations with links to the CAS SciFinder content that was used by AI to generate the summary. You should check these citations to make sure that AI summarized the content accurately:

To the upper left of your results, you will see a Query Interpretation button:

Select this button to open a side panel showing which search terms AI extracted from your query. It also gives you the opportunity to re-run the search without AI using the Search Original Query button:

Search Original Query will likely obtain more results than the AI-powered search, as it does not calculate relevance like the AI-powered search, but your results may be less focused. 

The Results screen groups the results into the categories of All, Substances, Reactions, References, Suppliers, and Patent Markush. The tab that CAS's AI deems most relevant will open by default, but you may view the other tabs' results too.

CAS SciFinder-n does not use user interactions to train LLMs. CAS staff train the AI using curated data, not user inputs. See CAS's webinar recording, Learn about AI-enabled search in CAS SciFinder, and the CAS SciFinder What's New page for more information.

In CAS SciFinder-n, CAS has introduced Prior Art Discovery, an AI-powered tool to find similar patents and non-patent literature results. To access this tool, select Prior Art Discovery below the search box on the CAS Sci-Finder-n homepage:

To use this tool, enter at least 200 characters of natural English text (e.g., claims or abstract text) relating to the novelty of the invention or topic of research. 

You may edit the Priority Date, which is compared against the non-patent literature's publication date. If you want to see anything that has been published, leave the priority date as the current date (the default). If you only want to see results that were published before a certain date, change the priority date to that date. You may also add a structure by selecting the Draw button. This boosts the relevance of documents that involve your substance and/or substances that are structurally similar to your structure.

On the results page, patent results and non-patent literature results are available in separate tabs:

CAS SciFinder-n does not use user interactions to train LLMs. CAS staff train the AI using curated data, not user inputs. 

See CAS's Prior Art Discovery documentation for more information.