How AI twins work
Written for anyone who wants to know what's actually happening behind a twin — whether you're building one or talking to one.
Where answers come from
A twin is built from material its creator provided: things they wrote, said, recorded, or uploaded. When you ask a question, hiy searches that material for the passages most relevant to what you asked, and a language model writes an answer grounded in those passages, in the creator's voice.
It isn't searching the web, and it isn't drawing on general world knowledge to answer for the creator. If the material doesn't cover it, the honest answer is that it doesn't know.
Why answers show sources
Grounded answers carry a citation. Open it and you see the actual passage the answer drew on — not just a title, the text itself.
This is the part we care most about. An AI answer you can't check is a claim; an answer with its evidence attached is something you can judge for yourself.
What "I don't know" means
When the material doesn't support an answer, a twin says so. That's a designed behaviour, not a failure — and it's never paywalled.
Those unanswered questions go to the creator, who can answer once and have the twin use their words from then on. Asking something a twin can't answer is genuinely useful: it's how the twin gets better.
What a twin is not
It isn't the person. It's a clearly labelled AI version of them, and it can be wrong. It doesn't have access to their calendar, inbox, or private life. Treat it as a very well-read stand-in, not as the person speaking.