AI WORLD HQ📖 Dictionary
The little AI dictionary
Every AI word you keep seeing — explained in one breath, no jargon.
AI (artificial intelligence)
Computer programs that can do tasks which normally need human thinking — writing, answering questions, recognising pictures. The AI you meet online today is clever software, not a thinking robot.
Chatbot / AI assistant
A program you talk to by typing or speaking — like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude. You ask in normal sentences, it answers in normal sentences. No commands or code needed.
LLM (large language model)
The engine inside a chatbot. It learned from enormous amounts of text how words follow each other, which is how it writes and summarises so well. It predicts likely words — it doesn't "know" facts the way you do.
Prompt
The instruction or question you type to an AI. A better prompt gets a better answer: say what you want, who it's for and in what style — like briefing a helpful colleague.
Prompt engineering
The craft of phrasing your requests so the AI gives you what you actually need. No coding involved — just clear instructions, examples and context. Anyone can learn the basics in an afternoon.
Token
The small chunks of text an AI reads and writes — a word is usually one or two tokens. Prices and limits of AI services are often measured in tokens, which is why the word pops up everywhere.
Context window
How much text the AI can keep "in mind" within one conversation. If a chat gets very long, the oldest parts slip out — which is why the AI sometimes seems to forget what you said earlier.
Hallucination
When an AI states something false with full confidence — an invented fact, source or date. It's not lying on purpose; it's predicting plausible-sounding text. Always double-check facts that matter.
Generative AI
AI that creates new content — text, pictures, music, video — rather than just sorting or finding existing things. ChatGPT writing a poem and an app drawing a picture from your description are both generative AI.
Image generator
An AI that draws a picture from your written description — "a koala on a surfboard at sunset" becomes an actual image in seconds. Built into tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Canva.
Multimodal
An AI that understands more than text: you can show it a photo, a document or a voice message, and it can work with those too — describe the photo, summarise the document, answer the voice note.
AI agent
An AI that doesn't just answer but carries out multi-step tasks with some independence — searching, comparing, filling things in, booking. You give the goal; it works through the steps.
Fine-tuning
Extra training that specialises a general AI for a specific job — say, medical texts or one company's writing style. Like sending a good all-round student to trade school.
Open-source model
An AI model whose "recipe" is public: anyone can download it, run it and build on it, often for free. Meta's Llama family is a well-known example.
API
The plug through which programs talk to each other. Developers use AI companies' APIs to build AI into their own apps and websites — that's how AI shows up inside so many tools you already use.
Deepfake
An AI-made fake video, photo or voice that looks or sounds real. If a shocking clip of a famous person appears out of nowhere, check a trusted news source before believing or sharing it.
Voice cloning
AI copying a real person's voice from a short sample. Useful for audiobooks and accessibility — and abused in phone scams. Agree on a family password for "urgent money" calls.
Training data
The huge pile of text and images an AI learned from. Whatever wasn't in it — very recent events, your private files — the AI can't know by itself, though many assistants can now search the web to catch up.
AGI (artificial general intelligence)
A still-hypothetical AI that could think as flexibly as a human across every area. Today's AI is not this — it's very capable at specific tasks, which is exactly why it's useful and predictable.