Research Guide: Generative AI and Research - What is Generative AI?

The term generative AI refers to computational techniques that are capable of generating seemingly new, meaningful content such as text, images, or audio from training data.

Generative AI systems can not only be used for artistic purposes to create new text mimicking writers or new images mimicking illustrators, but they can and will assist humans as intelligent question-answering systems.

Source: Feuerriegel, Stefan, Jochen Hartmann, Christian Janiesch, and Patrick Zschech. ‘Generative AI’. Business & Information Systems Engineering 66, no. 1 (2024): 111–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12599-023-00834-7.

Generative AI applications use large language models (LLMs) that are trained on sets of data to interpret, organize, make meaning of and generate natural language (human like) outputs. This type of artificial intelligence (AI) uses machine learning techniques to process large amounts of data, like text and images to identify patterns which are then used to create content and generate responses.

Source: https://guides.library.harvard.edu/airesearch