AI Literacy / Glossary

Generative AI

Generative AI is AI that creates new content, such as text, images, music, video or code, based on patterns it learned from large amounts of existing examples.

Older AI mostly sorted or predicted things, like spam or not spam. Generative AI produces something new in response to a prompt: a story, an email draft, a picture of a cat in a spacesuit or a short song.

Text tools are usually built on large language models that predict the next word piece. Image tools often use diffusion models that start from random noise and shape it, step by step, into a picture.

Generative AI is useful for drafts, ideas and explanations, but its output can be wrong, biased or too close to someone else's work. Check facts, say when AI helped and follow the rules of your school or workplace.