Introduction to Generative AI

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) is certainly the term on everybody’s lips at the moment. If you haven’t already had an opportunity to “get your hands dirty” with GenAI, then you will soon learn why it is currently taking the world by storm as we dive into the kinds of amazing things we can do with this relatively new set of technologies. In this chapter, we will explore some of the concepts underpinning what GenAI is and its distinctions from other artificial intelligence (AI)/machine learning (ML) approaches. We’ll also cover some of the major historical developments that have led to its meteoric rise, and examples of how it is being used today.

We’ll begin the chapter by introducing some fundamental concepts before moving on to more complex topics and the evolution of various GenAI approaches, such as autoencoders (AEs), generative adversarial networks (GANs), diffusion, and large language models...