chapter three

3 Connecting AI models with the Vercel AI SDK

 

This chapter covers

  • An overview of the Vercel AI SDK for React/Next.js
  • Incorporating streaming AI responses into React apps
  • Separating AI and UI state in React/Next.js
  • Enhancing conversational UIs with multimedia content

While building our minimal AI application, we encountered several challenges. One was vendor lock-in. Since our direct API calls created a tight coupling with a single provider, it would be difficult to switch services if we ever needed to. A second challenge concerned streaming responses: delivering AI responses in real time is a critical user experience feature that requires significant, nontrivial architectural changes. Finally, there is the problem of state management. As applications grow, managing both UI state and the conversational state (memory) becomes a complex task requiring a robust, scalable solution.

Rather than building custom solutions for each of these problems, a better approach is to use a dedicated framework that provides these capabilities out of the box. Enter the Vercel AI SDK (https://vercel.com/docs/ai), an open source framework developed by Vercel that offers powerful abstractions to streamline the development of AI projects in JavaScript and TypeScript.

3.1 Introducing the Vercel AI SDK

3.1.1 Key features and benefits

3.1.2 A strategic approach to integration

3.1.3 Practical integration: The Vercel AI SDK with Astra AI

3.2 Handling streaming responses with the Vercel AI SDK

3.2.1 Challenges and how the SDK solves streaming in web applications

3.2.2 Implementing streaming with the Vercel AI SDK

3.2.3 Integrating streaming into Astra AI

3.3 Working with multiple AI providers

3.3.1 Handling different AI providers and models

3.3.2 Using the Vercel AI SDK’s interoperability

3.3.3 Astra AI project: Integrating multiple AI providers and models

3.4 Enhancing conversational UIs with multimedia content

3.4.1 Introducing OpenAI’s vision capabilities

3.4.2 Astra AI project: Integrating Gemini vision queries

Summary