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AI Made Crystal Clear · chapter 2: What AI Actually Is: AI, ML, GenAI, and LLMs

The family map

2026-08-27

Generative AI is the doll inside that. Where older AI sorts or scores things that already exist (this email is spam, this transaction looks fraudulent), generative AI creates new things: text, images, audio, video, code. The Google machine learning glossary puts it simply: most experts agree generative AI produces content that is "complex, coherent, original." The old AI decides whether an email is spam. The new AI writes the email.

Figure 2.1 is the whole family on one map. It is the anchor figure of this book: every later chapter places its topic somewhere on this drawing, so it is worth a slow minute now.

Figure 2.1: The family map. AI contains machine learning, which contains deep learning, which contains generative AI, where the LLMs live. The famous names on the right are products wrapped around those models. Later chapters point back to this figure, so dog-ear this page. Confusingly, vendors reuse the same name for the model family and the app: the left box means the models, the right column the apps.
Figure 2.1: The family map. AI contains machine learning, which contains deep learning, which contains generative AI, where the LLMs live. The famous names on the right are products wrapped around those models. Later chapters point back to this figure, so dog-ear this page. Confusingly, vendors reuse the same name for the model family and the app: the left box means the models, the right column the apps.

This diagram is one of many in AI Made Crystal Clear.

Every chapter opens with the gist, draws the hard ideas, and ends with recipes and sources.

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