What is Structured Output?
TL;DR
A feature that constrains LLM outputs to specific formats like JSON. Essential for application integration.
Structured Output: Definition & Explanation
Structured Output is a feature that constrains LLM outputs to specific data formats such as JSON, XML, or CSV. While LLMs normally produce free-form text, application integration requires structured data that programs can parse. OpenAI's Structured Outputs and Anthropic's Tool Use allow you to specify a JSON schema and guarantee outputs that conform to it. For example, you can extract 'sentiment (positive/negative),' 'rating (1-5),' and 'summary' from a product review in JSON format. This is a critical feature for function calling and API integration.