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.
How to explain it to senior management
“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.