Definition: pattern recognition

Identifying an object by its shape or properties. For example, stock forecasting identifies trends by recognizing historical patterns. Although pattern recognition has been around for decades, it is the dominant theme in AI.

Pattern recognition applies to all data formats, including audio and video, speech, images and text. AI systems recognize the patterns in poetry and prose so they can generate their own and even analyze code to create new software.

After training, AI systems generate the most probable answer to any question in their domain. See AI in a nutshell.

Facial Recognition Software

Long before AI, this software used pattern recognition to isolate faces. Such systems are "trained" on thousands of face samples. See deep learning.