AI assistant

AI assistant is a component of the AI Assist add-on that helps you use AI within your document.

Opening the AI assistant

Select via the icon in the Left Bar to open the AI assistant. You can reposition the chat to either side of the editor using the option at the top of the panel.

The AI assistant is available on the Student, Standard, and Pro plans. It's not included on the Free plan or with Commons access.

Chatting with your document

Type a question or instruction in the chat box. For example:

• "Explain this equation"

• "Suggest a better title for this section"

• "Fix the grammar in the selected paragraph"

If you're not sure where to start, the panel shows suggested prompts you can select.

Working with selections: Highlight text in the editor before sending a message, and the assistant focuses its response on that selection. Suggested prompts update based on what you've selected.

The assistant is aware of your cursor position and can search other parts of your project when needed.

Citation reviewer

The citation reviewer scans your document for claims that may be missing references and suggests relevant publications.

To use it:

1. Open the AI assistant panel and start a new chat.

2. Select Check file for missing citations above the chat box.

3. Review the highlighted passages. Select View suggestions on any passage to see relevant papers sourced from Dimensions.

4. To add a citation, select the paper — it's added to your document and bibliography automatically.

AI allowance

Each message exchange counts as one use from your daily AI allowance. When the allowance is used up, a notification appears in the panel showing when it resets and the option to upgrade.

Conversation history isn't stored between sessions — each new session starts fresh.

We suggest starting a new chat for every new task.

Data and privacy

To answer your questions, content from your project is sent to OpenAI. The assistant may also send queries to third-party search engines. Your data is never used to train AI models.

See AI features in Overleaf — data and privacy for full details.