How do I use Ask AI?

With Marvin’s Ask AI, you can answer any question using research from across your repository. Gain customer insights into everything: from features customers want, to learning how they use your product in existing workflows.

Just type your question, and Marvin will scan all the data to which you have access. It'll surface and collate relevant data to help you synthesize the insights you need to answer the question.

For example, "What do customers say about our onboarding?" or "Which customers want more payment options." You can add filters to only search among surveys, and even time filters to search across specific time periods.

You can use Ask AI in two modes, depending on the kind of answers you need.

In this mode, Marvin generates a quick response from a subset of the most relevant data.

We recommend you use this for quick questions. Such as when you’re conducting discovery or exploring a topic. Marvin will help you identify starting points for your research. Check the linked sources to read notes, files, and view clips from interviews to gain deeper insights. You can also ask follow-up questions to focus on specific details.

Query in Quick Response mode every time you need quicker answers. When you have more detailed questions, you can switch to the other mode.

Think Longer mode uses Marvin’s Agentic Ask AI to generate in-depth answers with insights from across your entire repository. Multiple AI research agents work together to transform years of customer knowledge into comprehensive, evidence-backed answers.

The Agentic Ask AI questions itself to ensure it provides the best possible answer. This way, you can connect all your customer research and data across tools to a custom LLM that helps you shape product, sales, and marketing decisions.

Every response links directly to your interview transcripts, support tickets, sales calls, notes, and documents, so you can verify everything yourself.

You can learn more about Agentic Ask AI in our help center article.

You can use Ask AI effectively at every stage of your research project.

Before you begin your project, you can ask questions about your existing research to form a hypothesis.

You can also identify participants who you’ve interviewed before and meet the criteria for your new project. Use the information to write project overviews and discussion guides.

Type in questions in the Ask AI bar on your home page. Marvin will surface insights based on the most relevant data in your repository.

Or you can also go to the Discover Research tab.

You can also use Ask AI within files to query the data in interviews, surveys, usability tests, etc. Marvin will check the context of the recordings, images, and documents to surface relevant insights.

Under the tab "Q/As", you’ll see key points from the call tagged to specific questions.

Click "My topics" to see insights grouped by topic, theme or use-case. The default topics available for each call are listed under "Pre-made topics". "Feedback for Researcher" will contain helpful guidance and suggested questions for the person moderating the call.

"Painpoints & Concerns" and "Key Takeaways" will group relevant information from the call under these topics.

Marvin will consider your discussion guide and labels to create accurate summaries and find relevant insights.

Once you’re ready to synthesize your research, you can uncover trends, find themes in the data, prove or disprove your hypothesis, locate quotes, etc. Use the Analyze tab to run Ask AI on the data within a project. You can add the answers to Insights to create reports to share with your team.

You can also use Ask AI while analyzing notes across multiple projects in "Cross project analysis".

To get relevant answers more easily, make sure you apply the right filters. Marvin will then be able to provide more targeted results. You can filter by project, file tags, research areas, time and even the file type.

Whenever you Ask AI a question, it will recommend filters you can apply to get better insights.

For example, when we asked, "What are users saying about our customer support?", it recommended that we search for insights in 3 projects containing support tickets.

Similarly, you may ask about customer sentiment of XYZ feature in March 2025. Marvin will recommend filters for file tags and projects where XYZ feature and March 2025 are mentioned.

Click "Apply & regenerate" to apply these filters and run the query again. If you want to search across the repository or stick to the filters you originally selected, you don't need to do anything. The answer Marvin generated already takes those preferences into account.

In case you want to apply only some of the suggested filters, click the ones you want to remove. Then select "Apply & regenerate".

You can ask follow-up questions on an Ask AI result to refine the answer. You can use a range of prompts. Here are some suggestions:

This is not an exhaustive list. We encourage you to explore Ask AI till you have the insights you need.

If you apply a filter after the answer is generated, Marvin will create a new branch of the answer. You can switch between these branches by using the arrows in the top right corner of the answer.

Marvin will also retain a history of your Ask AI results. You can access these quickly from the advanced search page. Find searches categorized by time period: last 7 days, 7-30 days, and older than 30 days.

You can navigate to the advanced search page from the search bar.

With Marvin, you can easily share all AI analysis with the rest of your team.

You can send anyone a link to a result. Just click "Share answer" and select "Copy share link". Viewers will still be able to read and copy analysis as well as sources, but not ask follow-up questions.

You can also share answers to any Slack channel. Select "Post answer to Slack" at the bottom of the answer or in the "Share answer" menu at the top. Then choose the Slack channel to which you want to share analysis.

Want to learn about the kind of prompts you can use on Ask AI? Check out our help center article.