The magic you're already using without knowing it
Every time you ask ChatGPT to explain a concept, when you use DALL-E to create an image from scratch, or when GitHub Copilot writes code for you... you're using Generative AI. It's AI that creates new content, not just classifies or recognizes (that's traditional AI).
"Generative AI is the most transformative technology since the internet." — Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, 2023
What exactly is Generative AI?
Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content that never existed: text, images, code, music, video.
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ TYPES OF AI │
├─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ Traditional AI (Analytical) Generative AI │
│ ─────────────────────────── ───────────────────────── │
│ │
│ • Classifies: "Spam or not?" • Creates: "Write an email" │
│ • Predicts: "Will it rain?" • Generates: "Draw a cat" │
│ • Detects: "Is this a cat?" • Produces: "Compose music" │
│ │
│ INPUT → CATEGORY INPUT → NEW CONTENT │
│ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
The key difference: traditional AI analyzes, generative AI creates.
The moment that changed everything: November 30, 2022
That day, OpenAI launched ChatGPT. In 5 days it reached 1 million users. In 2 months, 100 million.
┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ FASTEST ADOPTION IN HISTORY │
├────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ │
│ ChatGPT ████████████████████████████████████ 2 months │
│ TikTok ███████████████████████ 9 months │
│ Instagram █████████████████ 2.5 years │
│ Netflix ██████████ 10 years │
│ │
│ Time to reach 100M users │
└────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
How does it work? (No math)
Imagine a friend who has read all of the internet: Wikipedia, books, forums, code. They don't "remember" everything verbatim, but learned patterns.
When you ask something, they generate the most likely answer based on everything they learned.
Fun fact: GPT-4 was trained with ~13 trillion tokens. If you printed everything on A4 sheets, the stack would be 8,000 km tall.
The main players: Who does what?
| Company | Models | Characteristic |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI | GPT-4o, o1, o3 | Most popular |
| Anthropic | Claude 3.5, 4 | Safety and reasoning |
| Gemini 2.0 | Service integration | |
| Meta | Llama 3 | Open source |
| Mistral | Mistral Large | European alternative |
What Generative AI is NOT
| Myth | Reality |
|---|---|
| "It's intelligent like a human" | It has no consciousness or real understanding |
| "It always tells the truth" | It can invent facts (hallucinations) |
| "It will replace all jobs" | It transforms jobs, doesn't eliminate them |
| "It understands what I write" | It predicts statistical patterns |
Where to go next
Next step: Learn Prompt Engineering — the art of effectively communicating with AIs.