Generative AI is an umbrella term for AI systems that create new content – text, images, sound and video – instead of only analysing or recognising what already exists.
For many years, AI worked in the background on recognition: filtering out spam, suggesting the next series to watch, finding faces in photos. That kind of AI assessed something that already existed. Generative AI produces things itself – it writes the sentence instead of judging it.
For communicators, that is precisely why the technology suddenly concerns us. The machine has moved into our core discipline: phrasing, conveying and shaping messages. It is no longer an IT tool – it is a colleague with opinions about your language.
In practice
When this week’s newsletter has to go out, generative AI can deliver three suggestions for the subject line, a draft of the body text and a shorter version for LinkedIn – in minutes. Your task shifts from writing the first draft to choosing, sharpening and standing behind the final version.
“AI used to be able to recognise and sort – now it can create. That moves the technology out of the IT department and into communication work.”
I have written a more thorough introduction in the article on what artificial intelligence actually is.