Your own AI keys

By default the AI assistant rAlph uses the platform’s keys. Larger organizations often buy their own AI quotas — so under AI settings → Your own AI keys you can provide your own provider key for each purpose. Requests for that purpose then run on your own contract and are billed to you directly by the provider.

Purposes

You can set a separate key per purpose:

• Chat assistant — rAlph’s answers and actions in chat.
• Translation — automatic translation of content into other languages.
• Semantic search — finds related entries by meaning (similarity).

For each purpose you can see whether your own key or the platform key is currently in use.

Setting up your own key

1. Open AI settings and enable AI for your tenant.
2. In Your own AI keys, click Set up on the purpose you want.
3. Choose a provider (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral — Anthropic is unavailable for semantic search).
4. Enter your API key. It is stored encrypted and never shown in plain text.
5. Click Load models — this loads the models from your own provider account. Pick the model you want. You are not limited to a predefined catalog. For chat you can select multiple models and set a default for Ask and Plan — see Choosing chat models.
6. Optionally set a custom address (only needed for your own proxy or a region-specific endpoint).
7. Save.

Cost: With your own key the provider bills you directly. The platform then records only token usage, no cost — there is nothing to rebill. The AI usage monitor shows such use cases with “own key” and “none” as costs, and they do not count towards the AI budget.

Changing or removing a key

• Change: click Set up again. Leave the key field empty to keep the stored key and change only the model or address.
• Remove: use the trash icon. That purpose then automatically uses the platform key again — there is no gap.

When it says “Key unreadable”

If a purpose shows this red marker, your key is still stored but can no longer be decrypted — usually because the server’s encryption secret changed. Until it is fixed, that purpose falls back to the platform key; your own key is no longer used.

What to do: click Set up and enter your provider’s key again. It gets encrypted afresh and the marker disappears. The platform cannot show you the previous key — retrieve it from your provider account or create a new one there.

If instead the notice at the top says the platform key cannot be decrypted, there is nothing you can do yourself: the basis for every purpose without an own key is missing. Please contact the platform administration.

Good to know

• If no own key is set, everything keeps working via the platform key.
• For semantic search, Anthropic is not available (that provider offers no interface for it).
• Only administrators of your tenant can manage own keys.