What is Generative AI versus AI?

What Generative AI is

Generative AI (GenAI) is a subset of AI that empowers machines to imitate the creative human process to produce original content such as text, images, code, voice, and video rather than merely interpreting existing data.¹ GenAI has the potential to add contextual awareness and humanlike decision making to enterprise workflow. It is powered by large datasets or foundation models, and the algorithms utilized to interpret this data are modeled after the neurons of the human brain. GenAI is different from earlier iterations of AI in three key ways.

01. It’s trained on a large set of data.

02. It’s designed to respond to natural language instructions.

03. It can generate unique content that looks and sounds like it was created by a human.²

What Generative AI is not

Various forms of AI were in use before the advent of GenAI. While these technologies could automate tasks, uncovering patterns and correlations, and making predictions about the future based on current and historical data, the precursors to GenAI lacked the ability to mimic the human creative and decision-making processes that appear to have the same fidelity as human-created-artifacts.³ The following list is representative of traditional AI, but not GenAI.

01. Intelligent automation

02. Predictive analytics

03. Machine learning

¹ Deloitte, "Benefits and limitations of Generative AI," 2023; Artificial Intelligence Act, "The Artificial Intelligence Act - Regulation (EU) 2024/1689," accessed June 14, 2023. 
² Beena Ammanath et al., Generative AI is all the rage, Deloitte AI Institute, 2023.
³ Gopal Srinivasan et al., A new frontier in artificial intelligence, Deloitte AI Institute, 2023.

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