Large language models (LLMs) rely on having lots of good-quality data on which to train. Regarding developers, few organizations have as much data as Stack Overflow, a leading online knowledge-sharing platform used by more than 100 million developers every month.
Today Stack Overflow announced a partnership with Google Cloud to bring advanced artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to millions of developers worldwide. A key part of the partnership involves integrating Stack Overflow’s knowledge base into Google Cloud’s AI tools like Gemini and the Cloud Console. This will give developers access to relevant answers, code snippets and documentation surfaced by Stack Overflow’s community. The partnership is indicative of a growing trend among LLM vendors, including OpenAI to strike up deals with content providers to help inform generative AI training efforts.
The integration of the knowledge base is enabled via the new OverflowAPI, which in the future might also be used by other LLM providers.
“Today Stack Overflow is launching a new program that will give AI companies access to its knowledge base through a new API,” Prashanth Chandrasekar, CEO of Stack Overflow, told VentureBeat. “The launch partner for this is Google, which will use Stack Overflow’s data to enrich Gemini for Google Cloud and provide validated Stack Overflow answers in the Google Cloud console.”
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What the Overflow API will bring to both Google and Stack Overflow
Google getting access to the massive amounts of information available on Stack Overflow is a valuable opportunity, though it’s not entirely clear just how valuable. Chandrasekar declined to comment on the financial terms of the Google Cloud partnership.
Chandrasekar explained that through the OverflowAPI, Google now has continuous access to the APIs that pull public data from Stack Overflow. These APIs enable access to the same data available to the Stack Overflow community via its public APIs. This includes over 58 million questions and answers, millions of user comments and post metadata such as votes and edits.
The partnership is not a one-way street either. Stack Overflow will be adopting Google Cloud technology more broadly moving forward. Stack Overflow will now be using Google Cloud as “the platform of choice” according to the company as a host for its public-facing platform. Exactly what technologies and services are being adopted is still being worked out.
It’s also important to note that the Google partnership and access to the OverflowAPI do not preclude Stack Overflow from working with other LLM providers.
“This is not exclusive to Google nor does Google have access to proprietary Stack Overflow data, customer data on any product at Stack, or any user personal information as part of this partnership,” Chandrasekar said.
How the new OverflowAPI compliments OverflowAI
The new partnership with Google is hardly Stack Overflow’s first foray into the world of gen AI.
In July 2023, Stack Overflow announced its OverflowAI effort. Chandrasekar said that the new API complements the OverflowAI technology. He explained that OverflowAI is the overarching term used by Stack Overflow to describe initiatives that introduce new AI/machine learning (ML) capabilities and features to Stack Overflow for Teams and the public platform. Examples of OverflowAI initiatives that are part of the Stack Overflow for Teams offering include Stack Overflow for Visual Studio Code, Enhanced Search and Auto-answer App for Slack.
In contrast, OverflowAPI is an API service that provides continuous access to Stack Overflow’s public dataset to train and fine-tune large language models.
“Our goal with the introduction of OverflowAI last summer was to ensure developers are not only contributing to the foundation of what GenAI is today, they are also an integral part of building its future,” Chandrasekar said. “For today’s news, this is about the most developer friendly cloud joining forces with the most popular developer knowledge platform in the world.”
