preface
The past few years have been beyond exciting. It’s not an overstatement to say that generative AI influences almost everything we do. As developers, you may be wondering how to integrate generative AI in your software projects. But as a Java developer, you may also be afraid that you’ll have to learn Python or some other language that is commonly associated with AI development.
The great news is that Spring AI enables integration with generative AI in the language you already know (i.e., Java or any JVM language) and is built on Spring, the de facto standard framework for the Java platform. In short, no Python? No problem!
Mark Pollack, Spring AI project lead, first introduced me to a very early incarnation of Spring AI at SpringOne 2023. At first, I didn’t fully grasp how big a deal this project would become. After all, what kind of application would I be writing that would ask simple questions of an LLM? But once the supporting pieces—retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), tools, chat memory, etc.—started falling into place, I quickly saw that Spring AI can unlock some very powerful capabilities in any Spring application.
With Spring AI in Action, I was given the wonderful opportunity to learn and write about Spring AI as it was being developed and evolving toward a 1.0 release. Naturally, it is a daunting challenge to write about a technology as it is being developed. But it gave me a chance to see it take shape and even help shape the project myself.