Generative AI is a domain within artificial intelligence that involves generating various forms of content: text, images (2D and 3D), levels for games, music, audio, speech, videos, etc. These systems often use text prompting to map natural-language requests to specific outputs; such systems are often referred to as text-to-image, text-to-speech, and so forth. When the output involves an ongoing dialog, it is referred to as a chatbot or assistant.

The various text-to-output systems ordinarily use a “large language model” (LLM) which is an AI that is trained to work with human language.

Further reading

The Generative AI Canon contains a reading guide for anyone interested in learning more about this form of artificial intelligence, from the most conceptual to as deep as you wish to learn (the science, theory and math).