Generative artificial intelligence
Generative artificial intelligence or generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that is designed to create new things. This can include writing words, creating pictures, videos, and music.[1] A generative AI model learns how to do this by studying large amounts of example information (called data) that is given to it in a process called "training". This process lets it create new things that are similar to the information it studied.[2][3] ChatGPT is one famous type of generative AI.[4]
Generative AI's are not alive and can not think for themselves like a person, but the text and videos they create can sometimes trick people into thinking that the AI is alive.[5][6]
Generative Artificial Intelligence Media
Théâtre D'opéra Spatial (Space Opera Theater, 2022), an image made with Midjourney that won an award at the Colorado State Fair's fine art competition
Above: An image classifier, an example of a neural network trained with a discriminative objective. Below: A text-to-image model, an example of a network trained with a generative objective.
Private investment in AI (pink) and generative AI (green)
Architecture of a generative AI agent
Workflow for the training of a generative adversarial network
Comparison between images generated by a VAE (left) and a GAN (right). VAEs tend to produce smoother but blurrier images due to their probabilistic decoding.
The full architecture of a GPT model
A picketer at the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike. While not a top priority, one of the WGA's 2023 requests was "regulations around the use of (generative) AI".
According to research institute Epoch AI, energy consumption per typical ChatGPT query (0.3 watt-hours) is small compared to the average U.S. household consumption per minute (almost 20 watt-hours). Queries containing long entries can consume significantly more energy (2.5 watt-hours for a query of around 7,500 words).
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Related pages
References
- ↑ Generative AI vs. other AI types. Microsoft AIMicrosoft. Retrieved May 31, 2025.
- ↑ Pasick, Adam. Artificial Intelligence Glossary: Neural Networks and Other Terms Explained. New York Times (March 27, 2023). Retrieved May 31, 2025.
- ↑ Explained: Generative AI. MIT.
- ↑ What is generative AI?.
- ↑ No, Today’s AI Isn’t Sentient. Here’s How We Know. Time. Retrieved 2024-08-22.
- ↑ Metz, Cade (February 15, 2024). "OpenAI Unveils A.I. That Instantly Generates Eye-Popping Videos" (in en-US). The New York Times. . https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/technology/openai-sora-videos.html. Retrieved February 16, 2024.