# How to fix the blank Ask AI response
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** ai, ask-ai
**Created:** [September 3, 2026, 1:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572 "2026-09-03T13:19:51Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 3, 2026, 1:19pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/1 "2026-09-03T13:19:51Z")
The Ask AI feature is generating a response title, but the actual response is blank. How can I fix this?
For example, when I searched ‘Who is the author of the most recent post?’, it responded with ‘Author of Most Recent Post’, but it actually missed its response.
I noticed this after switching the default LLM. Not sure if that’s just a coincidence.
Link: [https://business.faktout.com/](https://business.faktout.com/)
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### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 8:06am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/2 "2026-09-04T08:06:40Z")
Logs are showing the response correctly but the final output is not appearing in the search box
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### Author:  [@nat](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nat)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 1:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/3 "2026-09-04T13:31:41Z")
The answer is in the correct format, and should stream properly, but your `ask_ai` response is taking a whopping 15.5 seconds. For a site with so few topics, I don’t think this is a good experience.
Ask AI has a 20-second deadline for the whole request, including retrieval, so I suspect it is timing out after showing the title and related topics.
I’d suggest switching back to the previous model, or using a provider with more consistent response times, to see if the answer appears. That would help confirm whether the request is timing out.
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### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 3:28pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/4 "2026-09-04T15:28:59Z")
- I have already switched back to the previous model (gemini 2.5 flash) but the problem persists with both models.
- I tried again. This time it took only 10 seconds but the answer didn’t appear.
- Does it have to do anything with embeddings / semantics? Do I need to reset or clear anything? I’ve never changed the embeddings provider.
- For some reason, AI functions always had latency on my site. I thought it was due to the cold start problem as the site stays mostly inactive (I’m yet to market it). Is there any setting I need to change?
- If I change to a different model (grok-4-1-fast-reasoning via Azure), search always times out and even title doesn’t appear
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### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 3:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/5 "2026-09-04T15:59:36Z")
Let me show one more test:
This time the query took 3.7+0.9 seconds only still Ask AI timed out though logs show the correct response.
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### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2026, 4:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/6 "2026-09-04T16:49:42Z")
This issue is occurring only on desktop (I tried deleting cookies and using two different browsers). No problem on mobile devices.
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### Author:  [@nat](https://meta.discourse.org/u/nat)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2026, 9:48am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/7 "2026-09-07T09:48:59Z")
A desktop-only bug feels peculiar. What browser are you using?
Can you try each of these and re-run the “ask” -
- [safe mode](https://meta.discourse.org/t/53504?silent=true) at /safe-mode, with themes and theme components disabled
- full-page Ask AI versus the search dropdown. If only the dropdown fails, that narrows it to the search UI
- if you’re familiar, try opening the browser console and see if there are any errors
- if there are no errors, consider opening the Network tab and look for a /message-bus/…/poll result and its “Preview” tab. There should be proper streamed results there
- are your desktop and mobile on the same Wi-Fi? use the same account and query
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### Author:  [@Karthik\_K1](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karthik_K1)
#### Post date: [September 7, 2026, 1:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/8 "2026-09-07T13:11:48Z")
Themes are causing the issue.
I switched to the Foundation theme to test, and the response is appearing normally. When I switch back to the Mint theme, which is my default, the answer is showing up only when I scroll down a little. Follow-up questions are never appearing, even though I could see the follow-up question in the AI Logs.
I’m using Chrome. It doesn’t matter whether I use the same accounts or Wi-Fi on desktop and mobile; the outcome is the same.
And the error has nothing to do with my website latency. Now I changed to a much faster AI model.
after scrolling down
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### Author:  [@awesomerobot](https://meta.discourse.org/u/awesomerobot)
#### Post date: [September 15, 2026, 2:09pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response/411572/9 "2026-09-15T14:09:09Z")
I see the issue, some color styles in the theme needed to be adjusted… you should be able to update the theme and see the text now!
>
>
> Reported here: https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-to-fix-the-blank-ask-ai-response…/411572/
>
> There were some styles for the search banner that made text white on white in AI responses, this adjusts the scoping a bit to fix it, and also fixes a couple minor button style issues I noticed.