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When an AI chatbot should refuse to answer

A chatbot on your own site is only useful if its answers are true. This hub covers the mechanism: score every passage against the question, answer only from the pages that scored, attach the page the answer came from, and decline below a confidence floor rather than guessing. DFYe ships that behaviour on by default, and the demo will refuse a question it cannot support.

What this hub covers

  • Retrieval confidence floors
  • Citing the source page
  • Refusal and handoff
  • Measuring invention on your own content

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What happens when an AI chatbot cannot answer a question?: a wide gauge arc in grey with a brand-coloured segment and a dark needle pointing to the right side
Guides

What happens when an AI chatbot cannot answer a question?

Three things can happen and only one of them is acceptable. This is the behaviour worth testing before you buy anything, and almost nobody tests it.

10 min read

Related topic hubs

Named across this hub: WordPress, OpenAI, Anthropic, BM25, retrieval-augmented generation.

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