Generative AI (GenAI) is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new output (text, images, audio, video, or code) in response to a prompt written in ordinary language such as English, Dutch, or Chinese. This sets it apart from the more 'analytical' AI that, for example, detects cancer cells in a scan: rather than analysing or classifying existing data, GenAI produces something new.

Generative AI is one part of the much larger field of Artificial Intelligence. The diagram below is a simple visual representation of how the different areas are connected.

Adapted from Shahab O, El Kurdi B, Shaukat A, Nadkarni G, & Soroush A. (2024).

Artificial Intelligence is the broadest term, covering any technique that lets computers carry out tasks we would normally associate with human intelligence. Within it, Machine Learning refers to systems that learn patterns from data and examples, rather than following rules written out step by step by a programmer. Deep Learning is a further specialisation that uses large, layered neural networks to learn from very large amounts of data. Generative AI, the innermost field and the focus of these pages, builds on this to create new content (text, images, audio or code) instead of only recognising or sorting information that already exists. 

A large share of today's generative AI tools are built on Large Language Models (LLMs). These are models trained on vast amounts of text, which learn the patterns of language well enough to interpret a written prompt and generate a fitting response. Because LLMs are the type of tool you are most likely to encounter and use in your studies, they are what these pages will focus on for the most part.