Glossary

Generative AI

In one line: Generative AI is AI that creates new content — text, images, video, code — instead of just analyzing what already exists.

Generative vs predictive

The big AI shift in recent years is from predictive AI (forecast demand, classify emails, recommend products) to generative AI (write the email, design the image, draft the description). Both are useful. Generative AI is what most people now mean when they say “AI” in casual conversation — ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, Sora.

Where retailers use it

• Product descriptions and copy at scale
• Marketing content — social posts, ads, emails, blog content
• Customer support drafts — AI writes reply, human polishes
• Product photography — generate on-model shots without a photo shoot
• Internal docs — SOPs, training materials, summaries

What to be careful of

Generative AI invents confidently when it doesn’t know — the hallucination problem. For customer-facing content, every output needs a human check until you’ve built trust in the system. For internal drafts, the tolerance for error is higher and the time savings are bigger.

Related terms

Large Language Model (LLM), Hallucination, Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG)