Hands-On Generative AI with Transformers and Diffusion Models

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Generative Media

Generative models have become widely popular in recent years. If you’re reading this book, you’ve probably interacted with a generative model at some point. Maybe you’ve used ChatGPT to generate text, used style transfer in apps like Instagram, or seen the deepfake videos that have been making headlines. These are all examples of generative models in action!

In this book, we’ll explore the world of generative models, starting with the basics of two families of generative models, transformers and diffusion, and working our way up to more advanced topics. We’ll cover the types of generative models, how they work, and how to use them. In this chapter, we’ll cover some of the history of how we got here and take a look at the capabilities offered by some of the models, which we’ll explore in more depth throughout the book.

So, what exactly is generative modeling? At its core, it’s about teaching a model to generate new data that resembles its training data. For example, if I train a model on a dataset of images of cats, I can then use that model to generate new images of cats that look like they could have come from the original dataset. This is a powerful idea, and it has a wide range of applications, from creating novel images and videos to generating text with a specific style.

Throughout this book, you’ll discover popular tools that make using existing generative models straightforward. The world of machine learning (ML) offers numerous ...