Struggling with Logos AI Search: Not Finding Relevant Results in My Library

Robert le Clus
Robert le Clus Member Posts: 78 ✭✭
edited November 21 in English Forum

Hi everyone,

I recently subscribed to the Logos Bible Software’s new subscription service. It came with a free first month, so I’ve been exploring its features without any immediate financial commitment. One of the new highlights I was excited to try out was the AI-assisted search function. According to their marketing, it offers “Search results you can trust directly from your library,” which seemed like a promising way to quickly access relevant material from my 10,500+ resources, including the Gold package and even higher packages from previous versions.

However, I’m feeling a bit disheartened after my first search attempt. The topic I searched for was the role of prayer in dealing with grief—something I imagine many of my resources could speak to. Unfortunately, almost all of the top 50 search results, except for two, were for books that I don’t own, meaning I would have to purchase additional resources to access the content. This feels misaligned with the promise that the AI would be drawing from my existing library, and I find it hard to believe that within such a large collection, only two articles were relevant to my query.

I understand that AI is a developing technology, and I’m open to the possibility that this could just be a hiccup. But since this was my very first search, I can’t help but feel a little uneasy about the accuracy of future results and whether I can truly “trust” the search as promised. I’m curious if anyone else has had a similar experience or if there’s something I might be missing. I’d appreciate any insights or suggestions on how to get the most out of this feature, as I was really looking forward to using it.

Thank you in advance!

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Comments

  • Graham Criddle
    Graham Criddle Member, MVP Posts: 32,427 ✭✭✭

    Hi Robert

    The AI-assisted All search does search all the books in the Logos catalog but if you do the same search in a Books Search tab (ensuring you have selected the smart search option from the precise / smart toggle at the top right of the panel) it will only return results from books you own. And you can also constrain it to a subset of those books - such as a collection - if you like

    Hopefully that will improve the experience you are having.

    (There have been a number of requests to be able to configure the All search to just use books we own but I don’t know whether the Logos team will choose to do that)

  • Robert le Clus
    Robert le Clus Member Posts: 78 ✭✭
    https://community.logos.com/discussion/comment/1318115#Comment_1318115

    Thank you, Graham. Your suggestion is helpful.

    I would suggest Logos be more careful with search results since if I am encountering an issue, people with smaller libraries will have trouble seeing useful results. If I do an All Search in Logos 10 it gets results primarily from my library. That is the expectation. Hence I would expect the same here. 

    But that's not your fault :D And thank you again for the suggestion!

  • Dave Hooton
    Dave Hooton Member, MVP Posts: 35,670 ✭✭✭

    However, I’m feeling a bit disheartened after my first search attempt. The topic I searched for was the role of prayer in dealing with grief—something I imagine many of my resources could speak to. Unfortunately, almost all of the top 50 search results, except for two, were for books that I don’t own, meaning I would have to purchase additional resources to access the content.

    I tried the query in Books Search and the Synopsis states "The articles do not directly address the role of prayer in dealing with grief."  In All Search, Synopsis states "Prayer plays a significant role in dealing with grief according to several articles." 

    So if you start with Books Search, you can see the necessity to enlarge the scope (All Search) and consider buying some books.

    Dave
    ===

    Windows 11 & Android 13

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