Artificial intelligence (AI) is a broad field encompassing various techniques and approaches to create intelligent machines that perceive their environment and take actions. Machine learning is a subfield of AI that allows computers to learn and improve their performance on a task without being explicitly programmed using algorithms that can identify patterns and make predictions based on data. Generative AI refers to AI systems that generate new data or outputs, such as images, music, or text, rather than classify or process existing data. Typically, generative AI uses machine learning. Large language models (LLMs) are a type of machine learning model that can process and generate natural language text. LLMs are a type of generative AI because they can produce novel text outputs based on patterns and learn from large amounts of input data.
Conversational agents, also known as chatbots or virtual assistants, are AI systems designed to engage in natural language conversations with humans. Conversational agents can use LLMs as a component to generate text responses that mimic human-like language and style.
ChatGPT is a conversational agent that uses the LLM GPT-3.5 or GPT-4. GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It is OpenAI’s acronym used in the name of large language models trained on data available on the Internet. The earliest of such models, GPT-1, was published by OpenAI in 2018; the most recent one – GPT-4 – on March 14, 2023. ChatGPT is a user interface to the models GPT-3.5 and GPT-4. The free ChatGPT research preview allows access to GPT-3.5. Since March 14, 2023, the fee-based premium version ChatGPT Plus additionally provides access to GPT-4. The GPT models are also available via an application programming interface (API).
