Meilisearch AI launch week recap

As the first quarter of 2025 closes, we've completed our first Meilisearch launch week, marking our most significant product evolution since introducing Meilisearch Cloud. This update brings comprehensive AI-powered search capabilities to all users.

Traditional keyword search has limits. It matches characters, not intent—often returning results that miss the mark. AI-powered search changes that. By understanding meaning, not just words, it delivers smarter, more intuitive results.

What we announced: Day by day

Day 1: Semantic and hybrid search now GA

We kicked off the week by announcing that our AI capabilities, including semantic search and hybrid search, are now generally available:

• Semantic search: AI-powered understanding delivers more relevant results beyond simple keyword matching
• Hybrid search: Combines traditional full-text reliability with semantic intelligence
• Performance optimization: All this intelligence with sub-50ms response time

We launched semantic and hybrid search as generally available on the Meilisearch platform. Now your search results understand context, personalize experiences, and power better recommendations, whether you're building an e-commerce site, a knowledge base, a media and news archive, or a SaaS app.

These capabilities significantly reduce failed searches and "no results" responses. E-commerce platforms report higher conversion rates as shoppers find products using natural language, while app builders see increased engagement as users discover precisely what they need, even with imprecise queries.

📹 Watch our Head of Product, Guillaume, explain the release.

Day 2: Multiple embedder options and vector storage

On day two, we made vector search more flexible with multiple embedder choices—eliminating the need for separate vector database infrastructure:

• Choose your embedder: OpenAI, Hugging Face, Ollama, or bring your own
• documentTemplate feature: Better prompting for improved results
• Binary quantization: Optimize large databases for speed while maintaining result quality

Our flexible embedder options address critical infrastructure and cost concerns. Organizations can choose solutions that balance budget constraints, performance requirements, and proprietary needs. This approach eliminates the expense of maintaining separate vector databases and reduces operational complexity.

📹 Watch the walkthrough – Our Sr. Product Manager, María, explains embedders and best practices..

Day 3: Multi-modal search capabilities

The middle of the week brought multi-modal search, allowing searches beyond just text. This opens new possibilities for industries with diverse content types:

• Flexible input types: Search across text, images, and more

• AI-powered semantics: Smarter results across content types

• Real-world implementations: learn more about how early adopters like Agora and MotionElements already using these capabilities

  

Day 4: Personalized recommendations

Thursday's focus was on helping users discover relevant content faster:

• /SIMILAR documents: Find content similar to what you're viewing

• Engagement improvements: Smart, similarity-based product and document recommendations

• Seamless user experience: Help users find what they need (and didn't know about)

  

Day 5: Wrapping up and looking ahead

https://youtu.be/I42NbytO0hQ

We closed the week with a recap and vision for the future with our CEO, Quentin.

At Meilisearch, our mission is to make the best search experience accessible to everyone. We want to deliver the best technologies and combine them with an amazing user experience. This week, we’ve taken a big step forward and are closer to this vision, helping search results understand context, offer personalized experiences, and enable smarter recommendations.

In the coming months and quarters, you'll see exciting new features—from better search analytics and more insights for taking action on your business, to more customization capabilities for tailored experiences, but also we’ll continue advancing on exclusive capabilities like built-in RAG or image search to make them work out of the box, with little to no configuration required.

📹 Watch Meilisearch AI launch week wrap up with CEO.

📖 Read Quentin’s blog on building the future of search with Meilisearch AI.

Join us on this journey

As we celebrate reaching 50,000 GitHub stars, we're just getting started on our mission to redefine search. Whether you're new to Meilisearch or already part of our community, these new capabilities unlock more intuitive, personalized search experiences.

To mark the occasion, we’re giving new subscribers an exclusive gift: use the code MEILIAI and get 2 months of Meilisearch, including AI-powered searches, completely free. It’s the perfect time to start building the search experience you’ve always wanted.