Product Diagram showing how OpenAI’s embedding model converts user prompts into vector outputs, illustrating the transformation of text into numerical representations using text-embedding-ada-002.

Search by Meaning, Not Metadata: Semantic Image Filtering with 4D.Vector

Your users don’t think in filenames or folder hierarchies. They think in ideas.

  • “A robot painted in watercolor.”
  • “A sunny beach filled with color.”
  • “Something that feels like Mona Lisa… but from the future.”

It doesn’t matter if that idea comes from an image, a customer order, an email, or a 4D Write Pro document — the challenge is the same: how do you deliver results that match intent, not just keywords?

With 4D.Vector and 4D AI Kit, your application can finally make sense of meaning. In this post, we’ll illustrate it with semantic image similarity search. And here’s the key: we’re not really working with raw images at all — we’re working with their descriptions. The very same approach works for any kind of text data in your application.

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SHOWCASE: SMART EXPENSE REPORTING WITH AI

You know the pain of expense reporting — not for you, for your users. The receipts piling up, the manual entry, the typos that slip through. With 4D AIKit, that grind is gone. A simple upload turns a paper receipt or invoice into clean, structured JSON, ready for your database.

No more wasted time on totals, dates, or vendor names. Vision AI reads it, language models structure it, and 4D ties it straight into your app. From paper to database in seconds — and your users never feel the friction.

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4D AI: Discover the power of 4D Vectors

When working with modern applications, especially those involving Artificial Intelligence, natural language processing, or spatial data, vector math is key. That’s why 4D 20 R10 introduces a new object: 4D.Vector, designed to help developers store and compare data vectors with just a few lines of code.

For example, if you’re building a feature to rank images based on how well they match a text prompt, just generate vectors, compare them using cosine similarity, and sort your results from most to least relevant, all directly in 4D.

Product Infographic showing four business use cases of vector search: image recognition for retail, manufacturing, and healthcare; recommendation systems for e-commerce, media, and finance; semantic search for legal, HR, and enterprise tools; and anomaly detection for finance, cybersecurity, and IoT.

Why Your Search Stack Feels Broken — and How Vector Search Fixes It

You ask a question. Your system gives you keyword matches — close, but not the answer. The real insight? It’s buried in a doc, phrased differently, or hiding in a format your search can’t understand.

Now imagine search that gets what you mean — even if you don’t say it perfectly. That surfaces meaning, not just matching words.

That’s the shift we’re exploring in this blog post: what’s failing today, what’s replacing it, and why vector search is becoming the new default for teams that need clarity at scale.

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SHOWCASE: SMART COMMENT MODERATION WITH AI

Continuing our journey into intelligent features with 4D AIKit, let’s explore a highly relevant use case for any modern application: automated comment moderation. In a world where online conversations can happen in real-time, keeping your platform safe, respectful, and compliant is no longer optional, it’s essential. With AIKit, you can build powerful moderation tools directly into your application logic, without relying on external moderation services or human reviewers.