Response Delay from Reference Validation | Generated by AI
That delay you’re observing at the end of the response, even after the text seems complete and the response button is still “loading” (or the copy/share buttons haven’t appeared), is indeed often due to the model fetching and validating potential reference links to include in the response.
Here’s a breakdown of what’s happening:
⏳ The Post-Generation Delay
When an AI model generates a response, it typically involves two major steps:
- Text Generation: The core model generates the entire text of the answer. This is the part you see appearing on your screen.
- Verification and Sourcing (The Delay): After the text is generated, the system often runs a secondary process to:
- Verify Facts: Check the generated information against its knowledge base or real-time search results (if a search tool was used).
- Fetch References: If the model used external sources or its internal knowledge base relies on specific documents or web pages, the system attempts to validate and format the source links to be displayed as footnotes or references.
- Tool Finalization: If a tool (like Google Search) was used, the system is compiling the final output from that tool before completing the full response.
🔗 Reference Links and UI Elements
The system usually holds off on finalizing the response (showing the copy/share buttons, removing the loading state) until it has either successfully retrieved and formatted the references or determined that no relevant references could be included.
This ensures that the final product presented to you is a complete package, including both the answer and the sources used to support it. The delay is essentially the time it takes for the backend to perform this final verification and sourcing step.
In short, you are correct: the delay is frequently associated with the process of fetching, verifying, and preparing the reference links.