Glossary
The words, in plain English.
Every term below comes from one of the explainers, defined the way you would explain it at the kitchen table. Each one links back to the explainer that teaches it.
A
- Ad profile
- The collected guesses about you, your interests, your household, and your habits that ad systems use to pick what you see.
- From Is My Phone Listening To Me?
- Algorithm
- A set of steps or rules used to solve a problem or make a decision.
- From Algorithms Explained With a Grocery Store Analogy
- App permissions
- The switches on your phone that control which apps can use your microphone, camera, location, and contacts.
- From Is My Phone Listening To Me?
C
- Classifier
- A system that sorts something into a category, such as spam or not spam.
- From Generative AI vs Regular AI
- Confidence
- In AI writing, a confident tone is not the same as verified knowledge.
- From Why ChatGPT Sometimes Makes Things Up
- Constraint
- A limit or rule, such as length, tone, audience, reading level, or format.
- From What Is a Prompt?
D
- Data broker
- A company that collects, combines, and sells information or profiles about people.
- From What People Mean by "Your Data"
- Deepfake
- A fake or altered video, image, or audio clip that makes it seem like someone said or did something they never did.
- From The Phone Call That Sounds Like Family and Deepfakes Explained Without the Panic
G
- Generative AI
- AI that creates new text, images, audio, video, or code instead of only sorting or labeling information.
- From What AI Actually Is and Generative AI vs Regular AI
- Grounding
- Connecting an AI answer to reliable documents, databases, or search results so it has something specific to use.
- From Why ChatGPT Sometimes Makes Things Up
H
- Hallucination
- An AI answer that sounds plausible but includes information that is wrong, invented, or unsupported.
- From Why ChatGPT Sometimes Makes Things Up
I
- Impersonation
- Pretending to be someone else, such as a family member, company, government office, or boss.
- From How to Spot AI Scams
M
- Metadata
- Information about information, such as when a photo was taken or what device sent a message.
- From What People Mean by "Your Data"
- Model
- The trained system that turns an input into an output, such as a prediction, answer, image, or recommendation.
- From What AI Actually Is
O
- Optimization
- Adjusting a system to get more of a chosen outcome, such as speed, clicks, sales, or accuracy.
- From Algorithms Explained With a Grocery Store Analogy
P
- Personal data
- Information that identifies you or can reasonably be connected to you.
- From What People Mean by "Your Data"
- Phishing
- A message that tries to trick you into giving up money, passwords, or personal information.
- From How to Spot AI Scams
R
- Ranking
- Putting results in an order, such as which posts, products, or search results appear first.
- From Algorithms Explained With a Grocery Store Analogy
- Recommendation system
- Software that predicts what a person may want to watch, buy, read, or click next.
- From Generative AI vs Regular AI
T
- Tracking
- Collecting a record of what you do across apps and websites, usually to build an advertising profile.
- From Is My Phone Listening To Me?
- Training
- The process of showing software many examples so it can learn patterns from them.
- From What AI Actually Is
V
- Verification
- Confirming a request through a channel the other person controls, like calling back on a number you already know.
- From The Phone Call That Sounds Like Family and Deepfakes Explained Without the Panic
- Verification channel
- A known, trusted way to contact someone, such as a saved phone number rather than a link in a message.
- From How to Spot AI Scams
- Voice clone
- A synthetic voice made to sound like a specific person.
- From Deepfakes Explained Without the Panic
- Voice cloning
- Using AI to copy the sound of a specific person's voice from a recorded sample.
- From The Phone Call That Sounds Like Family