News and Insights
Generative AI FAQs
January 18, 2024
WHAT IS GENERATIVE AI?
Generative AI is a class of artificial intelligence algorithms that generate new, original content based on patterns learned from existing data. It can create text, images, music, and more. Examples of Generative AI tools include Chat GPT, Bard, Midjourney, and Dall-E.
HOW DOES GENERATIVE AI WORK?
Traditional software operates on predefined rules and instructions. If you press the “X” button on your keyboard, your computer follows those instructions to display an “X” on your screen. In contrast, AI, particularly generative AI, learns from examples, not explicit rules. It absorbs patterns from books, movies, social media, and other data sources, to generate new content. It generates its output based on its training data. Tools like ChatGPT, Microsoft Co-Pilot, and Google’s Bard produce text or code, while Dall-E and Midjourney create images from text prompts. Human input also plays a crucial role, especially in the early stages, to ensure accuracy in AI’s outputs, like distinguishing between an ambulance and a fire truck.
WHAT ARE SOME COMMON APPLICATIONS FOR GENERATIVE AI?
Generative AI has many applications, including content (text, images, music, and video) production, chatbots, creative design, recommendation systems, and even drug discovery and scientific research.
HOW DOES GENERATIVE AI DIFFER FROM OTHER TYPES OF AI?
The biggest difference between Generative AI and other types of AI is that it focuses on generating new content rather than classifying, predicting, or making decisions based on existing data.
ARE THERE ANY LIMITATIONS TO WHAT GENERATIVE AI CAN DO?
Though useful as copilots in the creative process, Generative AI tools have limitations. Some of these include the generation of artifacts or hallucinations (i.e., any undesired or unintended anomalies, errors, or inconsistencies present in outputs), biases in generated content, and the potential for copyright and/or intellectual property violations.
WHAT ARE THE LIMITATIONS OF GENERATIVE AI? CAN GENERATIVE AI REPLACE HUMAN CREATIVITY OR JOBS?
While Generative AI can assist and augment human creativity, it is not likely to replace it entirely. Instead, it will enhance productivity in various creative industries, including ours.
Generative AI contains numerous limitations. The tools are prone to hallucinations – they make things up. The data they are trained on may reflect the biases of humans. The quality of their outputs can lack nuance. Suffice it to say that any content generated by AI requires extensive review.
One of the big challenges when using Generative AI is that the output quality is often extremely high and its tone is very convincing. This may give users a false sense of confidence in its accuracy. Our practice is to validate any claims made by Generative AI rigorously.