Lesson 3 — The Technology Behind Generative AI

Several key models power the incredible capabilities of modern Generative AI. Here are the most important ones to know:

• Large Language Models (LLMs): These models are trained on massive amounts of text data, allowing them to predict the next word in a sentence with remarkable accuracy.
• Transformer Models: This architecture allows the model to pay ‘attention’ to different parts of the input text, helping it understand context, nuance, and the relationship between words.
• Diffusion Models: Primarily used for image generation, these models start with random noise and progressively refine it into a coherent image based on a text prompt.
• Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs): This model consists of two competing neural networks—a “forger” that creates images and a “detective” that tries to spot the fakes—which work against each other to produce highly realistic outputs.
• Variational Autoencoders (VAEs): These models are a type of generative model that specializes in anomaly detection.