Generative AI Basics You Need to Know
Artificial intelligence (AI) has advanced significantly in the last few decades, and it is now used widely by businesses and individuals. Modern AI software has transformed the way the world works and its constantly evolving.
One of the recent evolutions of AI is something known as generative AI. In this article, we’re going to cover the basics of generative AI that everybody needs to know.
What is Generative Artificial Intelligence?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that comprises a group of complex systems. Together, these advanced systems can create brand new text, images, and even music based on previous data and information that has been inputted into the systems.
Unlike other AI systems, generative AI is able to generate new data or content from previous information that resembles human-generated content. Because of its unique ability to create unique, human-like content, the introduction of generative AI has opened the door for exciting opportunities and advancements.
How Does Generative AI Work?
Generative AI uses machine learning to generate new content. More specifically, it uses several machine learning algorithms, including Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) and Variational Autoencoders (VAEs).
These various machine-learning models are provided with thousands or millions of prompts. These prompts are produced from previous data, such as text, images, and videos, and they effectively ‘train’ the generative AI systems and enable them to generate new outputs.
When given a new prompt, the generative AI systems analyse the many prompts they have been previously given and process the relevant ones to produce an answer to the new prompt. The generated output provides two benefits – it provides an answer to the new prompt and also contributes to further training of the generative AI systems. The more prompts the systems are given over time, the starter they become.
What Are the Main Features of Generative AI?
Generative AI has several key features that make it unique and allow it to generate new data. The main features of generative AI include:
Creation and generation – the main use of generative AI is content generation and modern creativity. The AI systems are able to generate brand-new text, imagery, and video by combining previous data in novel ways.
Automation – as with other forms of artificial intelligence, generative AI has the ability to automate the creative process, thereby reducing the time needed to generate new content. Despite being automated, the content generated by AI is highly sophisticated and resembles human generated content very closely.
Adaptability – generative AI is highly adaptable. It is constantly learning new data from the inputs it receives, and this enables it to constantly generate new content, almost infinitely
Versatility in content generation – the data it can output is extremely versatile due to its ability to combine different elements of previously inputted data, allowing for a high level of versatility in the content generated using generative AI.