Research Guides: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Literacy : What is AI?

What is AI?

Generative Artificial Intelligence is a subset of the wider world of AI that utilizes machine learning models to create new content. Generative AI models can create original text, images, and music—some generative AI models mimic human speech and likeness.

Generative AI differs from traditional AI models because of its ability to create new materials. Traditional AI models are trained to perform a specific task and are not designed to create anything new. Examples of Traditional AI models include search algorithms, voice assistants such as Siri or Alexa, or grammar and spelling checkers such as Grammarly.

Natural language processing (NLP) is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on giving computers the ability to understand text and spoken words in the same way that humans can. NLP combines computational linguistics with statistical, machine learning, and deep learning models. These technologies enables computers to process human languages in the form of text or vocal data and allows the computer to understand the full meaning of the languages.

Natural language processing is commonly found in language translators, digital assistants, and speech-to-text functions. Generative AI models and chat bots also utilize natural language processing to understand what the user is putting into the system and produce the material they are seeking.

A large language model (LLM) is a type of AI model that has been trained through deep learning algorithms to recognize, generate, translate, and/or summarize vast quantities of written human language and textual data.