3.1 What is Generative AI?

Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates brand-new content such as text, images, music, audio, or video. Instead of only analysing or sorting data like earlier AI, generative models learn the patterns inside huge amounts of examples and then produce something original that follows those patterns.

For example, if you type "write a short congratulations message in Amharic for a friend who passed Grade 12," a generative AI tool can produce an original message it has never written before — not copied from a database, but composed on the spot.