Delphi, a San Francisco-based AI startup founded two years ago, focuses on creating “Digital Minds,” which are interactive chatbots designed to replicate an individual’s voice based on their writings and media. However, the growing amount of data from various sources, such as podcasts and social media, posed a significant challenge for the company, making it increasingly difficult to maintain system responsiveness in real-time.
To address these issues, Delphi transitioned from open-source vector databases that struggled to meet their needs to Pinecone, a managed vector database. This shift has allowed each Digital Mind to operate within its own namespace, enhancing privacy and compliance while streamlining data retrieval to improve performance. Notably, Pinecone boasts fast retrieval times, consistently responding in under 100 milliseconds while meeting Delphi’s latency targets.
Delphi’s architecture incorporates a retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipeline that embeds content from multiple sources before storing it in Pinecone. This design helps facilitate real-time conversations and manage data more efficiently. Pinecone’s ability to dynamically load vectors and adjust algorithms based on namespace size contributes to improved scalability and reduces costs associated with data management.
Delphi aims to host millions of Digital Minds and is working on various applications, including professional development and coaching. The collaboration with Pinecone signifies a strategic move from novelty to a more robust infrastructure, emphasizing reliability and security.
Looking ahead, Delphi plans to introduce features like “interview mode,” which will allow Digital Minds to ask creators questions, thereby making the technology more accessible. Pinecone continues to enhance its platform to support the sophisticated retrieval workflows required for this ambitious growth trajectory. Both companies envision a future where millions of users interact with these AI-driven knowledge repositories.
Source: https://venturebeat.com/data-infrastructure/how-ai-digital-minds-startup-delphi-stopped-drowning-in-user-data-and-scaled-up-with-pinecone/