AI content is full of jargon that gets thrown around without explanation. Here’s what the common terms actually mean, in plain language.
LLM (Large Language Model)
The type of AI system behind most chatbots — trained on huge amounts of text to predict and generate human-like language.
Prompt
The instruction or question you give an AI tool. Better prompts (more specific, more context) generally produce better results.
Hallucination
When an AI tool confidently states something false or made-up — a fabricated fact, source, or quote presented as if it were true.
Context window
How much text (your conversation, an uploaded document) an AI tool can “remember” and consider at once. Longer context windows mean the tool can work with bigger documents or longer conversations without losing track.
Fine-tuning
Additional training applied to an AI model to make it better at a specific task or style, beyond its general training.
Token
A small chunk of text (roughly a word or part of a word) that AI models process. Usage limits and pricing are often measured in tokens.
Temperature
A setting that controls how predictable versus creative an AI’s output is — lower temperature gives more consistent, conservative answers; higher gives more varied, unexpected ones.
Multimodal
An AI tool that can work with more than just text — images, audio, or video as input or output.
Once you’re comfortable with these terms, put them into practice: see How to Fact-Check AI Output Before You Trust It.
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