---
features:
  - |
    Added a new `SentenceTransformersSimilarityRanker` component that uses the Sentence Transformers library to rank
    documents based on their semantic similarity to the query.

    This component is a replacement for the legacy `TransformersSimilarityRanker` component, which may be deprecated in
    a future release, with removal following after a deprecation period.

    The `SentenceTransformersSimilarityRanker` also allows choosing different inference backends: PyTorch, ONNX,
    and OpenVINO.

    To use the `SentenceTransformersSimilarityRanker`, you need to install `sentence-transformers>=4.1.0`.
