AI filters let you go beyond standard filters to qualify leads with custom, natural-language conditions, checked automatically by Topo's AI agent against every lead in your search.

This article covers how AI filters work, when to use it, and how to write effective prompts to get the best results.

What are AI filters?

When building a list in the lead search interface, you can apply filters to narrow down your results. AI filters are a special type of filter that lets you describe a qualification condition in plain language. Topo's AI agent then evaluates every lead in your search against that condition, showing you which ones match and which ones do not.

Think of it as a custom filter you write yourself for any criterion Topo doesn't already offer as a built-in option.

The goal of AI filters is neither to restrict the filtering of your list, nor to have AI generate some content. It's designed instead to verify a condition, either at company- or at contact-level, for which the agent can infer a "True" or "False" judgment, based on web queries and searches.

How do AI filters work?

AI filters verify a statement by scraping on the internet publicly available domains and websites. Think of it as a supercharged google search.

This means that AI filters scrape only pages that are not protected by paywalls, subscriptions, logins, etc. Therefore, AI filters cannot scrape social networks and data providers in search of information, such as LinkedIn, Apollo, Congism, etc.

In practical terms, if you want to verify that a certain lead works for a company, posted on LinkedIn, or that a company has a certain tech stack, you shouldn't use AI filters for that, as results will be poor. This sort of information is provided by native filters you can add in the Topo interface.

AI filters will instead be very good at scraping: company websites, blog posts, news articles, publicly available information, etc.

How to Add an AI Filter

1. Open the lead list interface and start building your list.

2. Scroll down in the filter panel until you see AI filters.

3. Click to add a new AI filter.

4. Type your condition in natural language (e.g., "is a B2B company").

5. On the right side of the filter, you'll see an icon labeled Company by default — this means the AI will evaluate your condition at the company level.

6. If you want to check a condition about a person instead, click on Company to switch it to People.

7. Click on "Update search" to get the agent's verification running

8. Once Topo has verified the filter, you'll be able to verify Topo's check, by clicking on the prospect's side-peek page and scrolling down to the sources.

Note: When you add an AI filter, Topo validates it automatically. If it can't find data on the internet for the condition you entered, it will show an explanation of why and suggest an alternative approach. You can still click "Use this filter anyway" to proceed if you want.

When to Use AI Filters

Since AI filters verify the prompt via internet search, your goal when adding one should be to ask it to verify if each company in the search (or each person) satisfies your condition.

AI filters are therefore most effective in two situations:

1. Filtering for conditions that don't have a built-in filter

Some qualification criteria simply aren't available as standard Topo filters. AI filters fill that gap.

Example: You want to target only B2B companies. There's no dedicated B2B filter in Topo — industry filters exist, but any given industry can include both B2B and B2C companies. Add an AI filter with: "is a B2B company".

2. Going deeper within an existing filter

You've already applied a standard filter, but you need a more granular level of detail than the filter provides.

Example: You're targeting original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). You apply the Manufacturing industry filter, but that's broad, not every manufacturer is an OEM. Add an AI filter with: "is an original equipment manufacturer" to narrow it further.

When not to use AI filters

You shouldn't use AI filters for any parameters that is available as filter in the search builder.

Example of poor use: you want to target University Directors. At first you might add the "Job Titles" filter with "Director" as entry, and add an AI filter saying: "Works in a university". This is not a good use case of AI filters: there's a more accurate way to filter for universities → add the "Industry" filter with "Higher Education" as entry; in addition, you might forget to switch the AI filter to the "People" setting, which would then cause an incorrect evaluation.

Correct solution: in this case, you should add the filter "Industry" with "Higher Education" as entry. You might add an AI Criterion if you wanted to verify that the institution "is a Business School" (set as "Company" setting).