Plain English
RAG
Letting an AI look things up in your own documents first, so it answers from them, not from memory.
Short for retrieval-augmented generation: the AI first searches a set of documents (your policies, product sheets, past answers) and then writes its answer from what it found. It’s how many “chat with your files” tools work.
Why it matters
Answers based on your own documents are more accurate and easier to check, as long as the documents are current. Out-of-date files give out-of-date answers.
At work
A support assistant answers “Do you deliver on Sundays?” by finding the line in your delivery policy and linking to it.
Think of it like an open-book exam: instead of answering from memory, it looks up the right page first.
Related terms
Where it appears