1 Introduction  
2 Background and Preliminaries  
2.1 Traditional Information Retrieval  
2.2 Generative Retrieval  
2.3 Large Language Models  
3 Generative Document Retrieval: From Similarity Matching to Generating Document Identifiers  
3.1 Model Training and Structure  
3.2 Design of Document Identifiers  
3.3 Incremental Learning on Dynamic Corpora  
3.4 Downstream Task Adaptation  
3.5 Generative Recommender Systems  
4 Reliable Response Generation: Direct Information Accessing with Generative Language Models  
4.1 Internal Knowledge Memorization  
4.2 External Knowledge Augmentation  
4.3 Generating Response with Citation  
4.4 Personal Information Assistant  
5 Evaluation  
5.1 Evaluation for Generative Document Retrieval  
5.2 Evaluation for Response Generation  
6 Challenges and Prospects  
6.1 Challenges on Generative Document Retrieval  
6.2 Challenges on Reliable Response Generation  
6.3 Unified Framework  
7 Conclusion