Generative AI
Generative AI is artificial intelligence that creates new content, such as text, images, code, or audio, by learning the patterns in existing data. Built on deep learning models, it learns a statistical representation of its training data and uses that representation to produce original output in response to a prompt.
Most generative AI systems are trained on very large datasets. Large language models learn to predict the next word in text, while image models learn to turn random noise or a text description into a picture. At use time, a person gives the model a prompt and it generates output one piece at a time based on what it has learned.
In manufacturing, generative AI can draft maintenance instructions, summarize shift reports, or let operators ask questions about equipment manuals in plain language. Paired with vision AI, it can explain what a camera detected in a readable sentence.
Generative AI differs from predictive or discriminative AI, which classifies or scores existing data, for example labeling a part as defective. Generative models produce new data. Because they generate plausible output rather than looking up facts, they can hallucinate and benefit from human review.