How to Integrate Generative AI into Spring Boot with Spring AI

In the past year, generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard have sparked widespread interest in applying AI to projects and daily life.

If you are a Spring developer, you may wonder how to embed generative AI into a Spring application. The following video provides a concise introduction.

[00:00] Introduction

Spring AI is a new project that brings generative AI capabilities to Spring Boot.

It currently supports interaction with OpenAI and Azure OpenAI, with plans to add more AI APIs.

[04:01] Setting Up the Project

A sample "songs API" project is created with Spring Web and DevTools dependencies.

The Spring AI starter dependency is added.

The OpenAI API key is configured in application.properties or via environment variables to avoid hard‑coding.

[08:02] Generating Completions

Spring AI generates the next likely completion based on the provided prompt.

Different prompts produce different types of completions, such as answering a question.

[12:03] Using Templates

Templates allow insertion of path variables or maps into prompts.

Templates can be used to generate specific questions for the AI.

[16:08] Adding Placeholders

Multi‑line strings and placeholders can be added to templates to specify expected output formats.

The output parser can suggest format strings for the AI response.

[20:10] Parsing Responses

Using a parser to convert the AI's JSON response into a TopSong object.

Returning a string instead of the object causes errors; the parser ensures correct deserialization.

[24:13] Additional Features

The video also mentions JSON‑formatted answers, Retrieval‑Augmented Generation (RAG), vector stores, and function calling, though these are not explored in depth.