What Is Generative AI? Understanding GenAI

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data.

How generative AI works

Generative AI responds to prompts entered by humans. For example, someone might enter a prompt such as “Write a professional letter of acceptance for an offer of employment as a project manager.” The more specific and well-written the prompt, the more likely the model is to produce a satisfactory output. You might hear the term prompt engineering, which refers to the process of tweaking a prompt’s phrasing or including additional instructions to get higher-quality, more accurate results from a generative AI tool.

Generative AI models

There are many techniques used for generative AI. At their core, they all use neural networks, which is a type of architecture that resembles how the human brain works. You may also hear the term deep learning, which simply refers to a neural network with more than three layers (which is all neural networks beyond the most basic ones).

A neural network consists of layers of interconnected nodes. Each node has its own statistical model that’s specialized at processing a single facet of the input based on what it’s learned from the training data. Similar to how parts of the brain are dedicated to different tasks—certain neurons might fire when you see a familiar face—different parts of the neural network recognize different patterns and relationships.

Large language models (LLMs):

This type of model uses a neural network architecture called a transformer. Transformers can essentially consider all of the words in an input sequence at the same time and figure out how they’re related, making them an especially useful technique for understanding and generating text. While the concept of transformers has been around since 2017, applying vast amounts of training data and improving model performance with human reinforcement has led to the breakthroughs we see today with generative AI natural language tools.

Conclusion: Make the most of generative AI

Generative AI is a force to be reckoned with across many industries, not to mention everyday personal activities. As individuals and businesses continue to adopt generative AI into their workflows, they will find new ways to offload burdensome tasks and collaborate creatively with this technology.

At the same time, it’s important to be aware of the technical limitations and ethical concerns inherent to generative AI