Generative AI in Practice

1UNVEILING GENERATIVE AI: A NEW FRONTIER

Okay, let's go back to basics. What is generative AI (artificial intelligence)? How does it work? And what is the technology capable of? You'll find out in this chapter as we delve under the hood of GenAI, tug at a few wires, and examine what the heck's going on in there.

I really want this chapter to give you an inspiring feel for the many things that GenAI is capable of – but also to drive home the point that GenAI isn't just about ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer). Sure, ChatGPT is a prime example of GenAI (and it certainly hoovers up the majority of GenAI's press), but there's a lot more to GenAI than ChatGPT … as you'll find out in this chapter.

What Is Generative AI? A Quick Explanation

Actually, let's start by defining artificial intelligence (AI) in its broadest sense. The term “AI” refers to computer algorithms that can effectively simulate human cognitive processes, like learning, decision-making, and problem-solving.

GenAI is a groundbreaking subset of AI – the cutting edge of the cutting edge – that is able to create new content based on patterns and structures it has learned from existing data. Like any AI, GenAI tools are given enormous amounts of data to learn from (what's known as “training data”). They learn from the training data, and then use the patterns or rules that they've learned to create new content that's similar to, but not exactly the same as, the data they have been trained on.

An example ...