19/02/25, 23:01 Vector embeddings - OpenAI API

Vector embeddings Copy page

Learn how to turn text into numbers, unlocking use cases like search.

New embedding models

text-embedding-3-small and text-embedding-3-large, our newest and most performant
embedding models, are now available. They feature lower costs, higher multilingual performance,
and new parameters to control the overall size.

What are embeddings?

OpenAI’s text embeddings measure the relatedness of text strings. Embeddings are
commonly used for:

Search (where results are ranked by relevance to a query string)

Clustering (where text strings are grouped by similarity)

Recommendations (where items with related text strings are recommended)
Anomaly detection (where outliers with little relatedness are identified)
Diversity measurement (where similarity distributions are analyzed)
Classification (where text strings are classified by their most similar label)

An embedding is a vector (list) of floating point numbers. The distance between two vectors
measures their relatedness. Small distances suggest high relatedness and large distances
suggest low relatedness.

Visit our pricing page to learn about embeddings pricing. Requests are billed based on the
number of tokens in the input.

How to get embeddings

To get an embedding, send your text string to the embeddings API endpoint along with the
embedding model name (e.g., text-embedding-3-small ):

Example: Getting embeddings javascript

1 import OpenAI from "openai";

2 const openai = new OpenAI();
3

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4 const embedding = await openai.embeddings.create({

5 model: "text-embedding-3-small",
6 input: "Your text string goes here",
7 encoding_format: "float",
8 });
9
10 console.log(embedding);

The response contains the embedding vector (list of floating point numbers) along with some
additional metadata. You can extract the embedding vector, save it in a vector database, and
use for many different use cases.

1 {
2 "object": "list",
3 "data": [
4 {
5 "object": "embedding",
6 "index": 0,
7 "embedding": [
8 -0.006929283495992422,
9 -0.005336422007530928,
10 -4.547132266452536e-05,
11 -0.024047505110502243
12 ],
13 }
14 ],
15 "model": "text-embedding-3-small",
16 "usage": {
17 "prompt_tokens": 5,
18 "total_tokens": 5
19 }
20 }

By default, the length of the embedding vector is 1536 for text-embedding-3-small or

3072 for text-embedding-3-large . To reduce the embedding's dimensions without losing its
concept-representing properties, pass in the dimensions parameter. Find more detail on
embedding dimensions in the embedding use case section.

Embedding models
OpenAI offers two powerful third-generation embedding model (denoted by -3 in the model
ID). Read the embedding v3 announcement blog post for more details.

Usage is priced per input token. Below is an example of pricing pages of text per US dollar
(assuming ~800 tokens per page):

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MODEL ~ PAGES PER DOLLAR PERFORMANCE ON MTEB EVAL MAX INPUT

text-embedding-3-small 62,500 62.3% 8191

text-embedding-3-large 9,615 64.6% 8191

text-embedding-ada-002 12,500 61.0% 8191

Use cases
Here we show some representative use cases, using the Amazon fine-food reviews dataset.

Obtaining the embeddings

The dataset contains a total of 568,454 food reviews left by Amazon users up to October 2012.
We use a subset of the 1000 most recent reviews for illustration purposes. The reviews are in
English and tend to be positive or negative. Each review has a ProductId , UserId , Score ,
review title ( Summary ) and review body ( Text ). For example:

PRODUCT ID USER ID SCORE SUMMARY TEXT

B001E4KFG0 A3SGXH7AUHU8GW 5 Good Quality Dog I have bought several of the

Food Vitality canned...

B00813GRG4 A1D87F6ZCVE5NK 1 Not as Advertised Product arrived labeled as Jumbo

Salted Peanut...

Below, we combine the review summary and review text into a single combined text. The
model encodes this combined text and output a single vector embedding.

Get_embeddings_from_dataset.ipynb

1 from openai import OpenAI

2 client = OpenAI()
3
4 def get_embedding(text, model="text-embedding-3-small"):
5 text = text.replace("\n", " ")
6 return client.embeddings.create(input = [text], model=model).data[0].embedding
7
8 df['ada_embedding'] = df.combined.apply(lambda x: get_embedding(x, model='text-embedding-3-
9 df.to_csv('output/embedded_1k_reviews.csv', index=False)

To load the data from a saved file, you can run the following:

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1 import pandas as pd
2
3 df = pd.read_csv('output/embedded_1k_reviews.csv')
4 df['ada_embedding'] = df.ada_embedding.apply(eval).apply(np.array)

Reducing embedding dimensions

Question answering using embeddings-based search

Text search using embeddings

Code search using embeddings

Recommendations using embeddings

Data visualization in 2D

Embedding as a text feature encoder for ML algorithms

Classification using the embedding features

Zero-shot classification

Obtaining user and product embeddings for cold-start recommendation

Clustering

FAQ

How can I tell how many tokens a string has before I embed it?

In Python, you can split a string into tokens with OpenAI's tokenizer tiktoken .

Example code:

1 import tiktoken
2

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3 def num_tokens_from_string(string: str, encoding_name: str) -> int:

4 """Returns the number of tokens in a text string."""
5 encoding = tiktoken.get_encoding(encoding_name)
6 num_tokens = len(encoding.encode(string))
7 return num_tokens
8
9 num_tokens_from_string("tiktoken is great!", "cl100k_base")

For third-generation embedding models like text-embedding-3-small , use the cl100k_base

encoding.

More details and example code are in the OpenAI Cookbook guide how to count tokens with
tiktoken.

How can I retrieve K nearest embedding vectors quickly?

For searching over many vectors quickly, we recommend using a vector database. You can find
examples of working with vector databases and the OpenAI API in our Cookbook on GitHub.

Which distance function should I use?

We recommend cosine similarity. The choice of distance function typically doesn't matter
much.

OpenAI embeddings are normalized to length 1, which means that:

Cosine similarity can be computed slightly faster using just a dot product
Cosine similarity and Euclidean distance will result in the identical rankings

Can I share my embeddings online?

Yes, customers own their input and output from our models, including in the case of
embeddings. You are responsible for ensuring that the content you input to our API does not
violate any applicable law or our Terms of Use.

Do V3 embedding models know about recent events?

No, the text-embedding-3-large and text-embedding-3-small models lack knowledge of

events that occurred after September 2021. This is generally not as much of a limitation as it
would be for text generation models but in certain edge cases it can reduce performance.

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