Case Study: Stack Overflow achieves trusted, AI-powered developer search with Elastic

Stack Overflow rolls out generative AI using Elasticsearch and Azure Open AI

Stack Overflow, the developer knowledge platform with more than 60 million questions and answers and a Teams SaaS used by over 15,000 organizations, needed a way to give developers fast, accurate, and trustworthy results as generative AI adoption grew. Research showed 70% of developers turn to AI tools but only 42% trust their accuracy, so Stack Overflow had to ensure AI responses were grounded in reliable, attributed community knowledge across public and private knowledge bases.

To solve this, Stack Overflow built OverflowAI using Elasticsearch and Azure OpenAI, enriching content with vector embeddings for semantic and hybrid search and surfacing citations from trusted community experts and Teams instances. The result is more relevant, faster answers that preserve attribution and trust, let Stack Overflow focus on its core product while Elastic handles advanced search, and enable a seamless move from lexical search to hybrid and conversational AI-driven search.

Stack Overflow

Prashanth Chandrasekar

Chief Executive Officer