Artificial intelligence software that creates text and media that appear to be original creations. Generative AI became wildly popular in the early 2020s, and ChatGPT is the poster child for this category (see
ChatGPT).
The input to a generative AI system can be text, images, audio or video, and the output can be the same. Text-to-image, text-to-video, text-to-audio, image-to-image, image-to-text and speech-to-text are other variations.
Trillions of words and images are copied from websites and other digital sources (mostly without permission) to train the models that generate results (see
Nightshade). Contrast with
predictive AI. See
AI prompt,
AI image generator,
AI video generator,
AI text generator and
generative art.
Everyone's Getting Into It
In 2023, Microsoft added generative AI to its Paint program in Windows 11. Although Paint has been a staple of Windows for decades, it was never used to create anything on its own. This example was prompted to create a "happy computer" using the Digital Art style to render the results.
Paint Has Eight Artistic Styles
These images of a "happy computer" were created using the Pixel Art (top) and Oil Painting (bottom) styles.