The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a request for information seeking industry and academia feedback on the latest artificial intelligence tools to bolster the agency's internal search function. Patent examiners have a tough job: reviewing millions of applications submitted each year to discover whether they truly add anything unique to the body of human knowledge. As the amount of knowledge--data--in the world increases exponentially, those examiners are looking for help from a digital counterpart. When an application is submitted to USPTO, an examiner is assigned the case and begins sifting through all available data related to the invention in an effort to find "prior art," or "all information that has been made available to the public in any form before a given date that might be relevant to a patent application's claims of novelty and non-obviousness," according to the office. This task is fast becoming too large for any human to accomplish on their own.