How can I use a .txt file as reference context for OpenAI's LLM?

Answer

Currently, OpenAI’s API does not support uploading a .txt file for use as context in chat completions or similar endpoints. Here are the key points:

• File Upload Requirements:
  For purposes like fine-tuning, OpenAI’s API requires you to upload files in a specific format (e.g., .jsonl). Uploading a plain .txt file for fine-tuning isn’t supported.

• Using File Content as Context:
  There isn’t a built-in mechanism to upload a file (such as a .txt file) and have the LLM internally reference it during interactions. To provide context or reference material, you would need to include the necessary information within your prompt messages, possibly by extracting and formatting the text beforehand.

• Alternatives:
  If your goal is to avoid repeatedly sending context, you might consider:

  • Fine-tuning: Prepare your data in the .jsonl format and fine-tune a model. This way, the model learns from your provided data and you won't need to send lengthy contexts every time.
  • Embeddings and Retrieval: Use embeddings to index your text file and then retrieve the most relevant parts of the text based on the query. This retrieved context can then be included as part of the prompt.

In summary, direct uploading of a .txt file to have it served as reference for LLM interactions isn’t supported. Instead, you’ll need to preprocess your content and include it as prompt input or use alternative techniques such as fine-tuning (with .jsonl files) or retrieval-augmented generation.