Troubleshooting AI Summary Overviews from JSON Lookup Data

Jill Myers-Young · 2025-10-14 21:03:06.324296+00

Hey! I am trying to create AI summary overviews based on the JSON return from the "Lookup Multiple Rows in Other Table". I am trying to reference the JSON return in the lookup in an AI column, but when I try to reference it states "I cannot provide a summary since the input "[object Object]" is not valid JSON data. It appears to be a placeholder or incorrectly formatted data. To summarize prospects and event names, I would need the actual JSON data with proper structure and content."

Troubleshooting AI Summary Overviews from JSON Lookup Data | Clay

Clay Support
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Hi there, thanks so much for sharing this! We’ll be passing your feedback along to our product team, and any additional context you can provide will help us prioritize with your needs in mind as we shape the roadmap.
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Clay Support
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Jill Young clicked 'Talk with the team!'
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Jill Myers-Young
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I am wondering if I am just doing this wrong? Or how can I summarize the multiple lookup JSON with AI?
Jill Myers-Young
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https://app.clay.com/workspaces/745725/workbooks/wb_0t3rqmfoA6agFoQUbTy/tables/t_0t44v2jQKXknejEXjSe/views/gv_0t3rqmvHs2FENDTYYjW
Sayli Godse
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Hi Jill,
Thanks for flagging this AI summary error. I've investigated the issue and here's what I found:
What I observed:
Your JSON Summary column is receiving "[object Object]" instead of valid JSON data
You are referencing the entire lookup column instead of the record results inside it.
Technically this should not matter since I tried recreating this in my workspace and referenced the entire lookup column like you did and it worked just fine.
Here is some testing I did in your workspace:
Experiment 1: Tried clicking into the Lookup Result > Take action on list > Ask questions using AI and that worked. It worked probably because the 'results' under the Lookup was selected and not the entire Lookup.
Experiment 2: Created a different AI column and generated a proper prompt and it seemed to solve the issue.
Currently I would suggest creating an AI column where you reference 'records' instead of the entire column and use the generate button to create the prompt. This will unblock you for the time being.
Next steps: I've filed a bug report for this since there's inconsistent behavior - it works in my workspace but not in yours when referencing the Lookup column. Our engineering team will investigate why this is failing specifically in your setup.
I would suggest not deleting the test columns i have created. Let me know!
Jill Myers-Young
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No problem! I can leave them in there for now! Thank you so much for looking into this. Being able to summarize the full lookup will be so helpful for us
Sayli Godse
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I have created a test column where I generated an in depth prompt for this summarisation. It is able to summarise the information correctly. You can duplicate that column and continue working!
Jill Myers-Young
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Awesome! Sounds good! I will leave all our test columns in red like you had them.
Sayli Godse
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Great! Thanks!
Jill Myers-Young
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Sayli Godse FYI I can't get it to work with Claude. I will leave this column in Blue, duplicate and flip back to GPT so you can look at this one too
Sayli Godse
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Thanks for the context. Will flag this as well! :)
Sayli Godse
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Hey Jill! Can you try creating a new lookup column from scratch (without duplicating but actually creating a new one) and try to summarize that to see if it solves the issue? This could be a lookup column bug.
Clay Support
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We haven't heard back from you here, so we're going to go ahead and close this thread out.
Still need help here? Reply back and someone will jump back in.
Have a question thats not related to this thread? We recommend kicking off a new ticket in the support channel!
Jill Myers-Young
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Sayli Godse FYI I am so sick, I will be back on Monday and will make this change. Sorry for the delay

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