What is Generative AI?

Generative AI refers to a class of artificial intelligence models designed to create new content in the form of text, images, videos, or music. These models have recently become so powerful that it is now hard to distinguish the content they generate from content generated by humans. AI models capable of producing human-like text are based on so-called Large Language Models (LLMs). These models have the potential to be particularly impactful in education. The most famous of these text-producing models is ChatGPT. It uses statistical calculations of probabilities to swiftly create texts in various styles and languages. In simple terms, all ChatGPT does is predict the next word in a sentence. To do this, it relies on an extensive repository of existing texts, so-called training data. As a result, ChatGPT can produce complex and well-written content, but it can also generate text that is factually incorrect. This phenomenon is often referred to as ‘hallucination’.