Generative AI is a type of machine-learning model trained to learn common patterns in large datasets and generate new, convincing data that resembles the original. Despite all the buzz around ChatGPT and its competitors, the technology behind now commercially available Gen AI services isn’t new but an advancement of old computational techniques. 

Algorithms capable of performing next-word predictions by analyzing the previous words in a sentence, like the email auto-complete function, have been around since the turn of the twentieth century. By tuning up the training data size and complexity of early machine-learning programs, modern AI models made a huge leap, achieving natural language understanding. The base models underlying text-generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, are trained with web-scale data, hence the name Large Language Models (LLMs). By running through several blocks of online texts, these models learn to predict the recurrence of words and creatively generate text based on a user’s prompt. 

After analyzing large datasets, Generative AI uses the conferred patterns as a set of guiding rules to generate new, unique data. For example, let’s say you fed an AI model with several images of a spider. At the end of the training, it realizes that for a subject to pass as a spider it must have certain physical qualities, like eight slender legs. From here, the model can use that established principle to generate as many variations of the spider as the user wishes.

Typically, a well-trained Generative AI model learns from hundreds of millions of data points. Most base models come pre-trained with random internet data. Generative AI developers gather training data from the internet, and machine learning libraries, or personally engineer them in some unique cases. Due to the randomness of training data, most base models aren’t very accurate. For better evolved and differentiated outputs, users can fine-tune the models with their own data. This way, you can significantly improve the accuracy of the model, priming it to provide tailored solutions for your organization.