Artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. Examples of AI applications include expert systems, natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition and machine vision.

As the hype around AI has accelerated, vendors have scrambled to promote how their products and services incorporate it. Often, what they refer to as "AI" is a well-established technology such as machine learning.

AI requires specialized hardware and software for writing and training machine learning algorithms. No single programming language is used exclusively in AI, but Python, R, Java, C++ and Julia are all popular languages among AI developers.

In general, AI systems work by ingesting large amounts of labeled training data, analyzing that data for correlations and patterns, and using these patterns to make predictions about future states.

For example, an AI chatbot that is fed examples of text can learn to generate lifelike exchanges with people, and an image recognition tool can learn to identify and describe objects in images by reviewing millions of examples. Generative AI techniques, which have advanced rapidly over the past few years, can create realistic text, images, music and other media