Artificial intelligence
Also called AI
A broad label for computer systems that do tasks which used to need human judgement, from filtering spam to writing text.
Artificial intelligence, or AI, isn't one technology. It's a label for computer systems that do things we used to think needed a person: recognising a face, translating a sentence, spotting a fraudulent payment, writing an email.
Almost everything called AI today is built by machine learning: instead of following rules a programmer wrote line by line, the system learned patterns from huge numbers of examples. Chatbots like ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude are one kind, generative AI, which produces new text, images or sound.
Because the label covers so much, the useful question is always "which AI, doing what?"
For example
The filter that sends a fake parcel text to your junk folder and the chatbot that drafts your cover letter are both called AI, yet they have almost nothing in common inside.
Put it to use
Where you'll meet artificial intelligence in ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude, how to use it there, and the mix-up most people make.
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