Glossary
The people, companies and terms behind the AI news, explained the way a friend would. Names in our articles link here automatically.
AI agent
An AI that doesn't just answer, but takes actions across multiple steps to complete a task.
AI Security Institute
A UK government body that studies and tests the safety of advanced AI systems.
Alibaba
The Chinese e-commerce and cloud giant, and a major AI model developer.
AlphaFold
The AI system that predicts protein shapes, a landmark scientific use of AI.
Amazon
The e-commerce and cloud giant; its AWS cloud hosts much of the AI industry.
Amazon Mechanical Turk
Amazon's marketplace for paid human micro-tasks, long used to train AI.
Anthropic
The AI safety company that builds Claude, founded by former OpenAI researchers.
Apple
The iPhone maker, known for running AI directly on its devices.
Arthur Mensch
Co-founder and CEO of Mistral AI, Europe's leading open-model lab.
Artificial Analysis
An independent firm that benchmarks AI models on quality, speed and price.
Atlas
OpenAI's short-lived AI web browser, launched 2025 and shut down in 2026.
Baidu
The Chinese search and AI giant, active in open document-AI models.
benchmark
A standard test used to measure and compare how well AI models perform.
Bridgewater Associates
One of the world's largest hedge funds, which tested custom AI on finance tasks.
Broadcom
A chip and infrastructure supplier central to building large AI data centres.
Bun
A fast tool for running JavaScript, popular with developers.
ByteDance
The Chinese company behind TikTok, and the AI video tool Seedance.
ChatGPT
OpenAI's widely used AI chatbot, the app that brought AI to a mass audience.
Claude
Anthropic's family of AI assistants, used for writing, coding, analysis and more.
Claude Code
Anthropic's AI coding tool that writes and edits software from the command line.
Claude Cowork
Anthropic's AI agent for everyday file and task work on your computer.
Claude Science
Anthropic's research workbench that runs locally so sensitive data stays on your machines.
Codex
OpenAI's AI coding agent that writes and fixes software on its own.
compute
The raw computing power — chips, data centres and electricity — needed to build and run AI.
context window
How much text a model can consider at once — its working memory for a single conversation.
Copilot
Microsoft's brand for the AI assistants built into Windows and Office.
Cursor
A popular AI-powered code editor for developers.
CVE
A publicly catalogued software security flaw, each given a unique reference number.
Databricks
A major data platform company where many businesses run their AI.
DeepSeek
A Chinese AI lab famous for strong open models at very low cost.
EU AI Act
The European Union's landmark law regulating AI according to how risky its uses are.
Fable 5
An advanced Anthropic model, powerful at coding and available through Claude plans.
fine-tuning
Taking an existing model and training it further on your own data to specialise it.
frontier model
One of the most advanced AI models at the leading edge of what's currently possible.
Gemini
Google's family of AI models, spanning fast lightweight versions to advanced ones.
Gemma 4
Google's open model that you can download and run on your own computer.
GitHub
The world's largest platform for hosting and sharing code, owned by Microsoft.
GitLost
A 2026 attack that hijacked AI coding agents through poisoned repositories.
The search giant whose DeepMind lab builds the Gemini models.
Google DeepMind
Google's AI research division, maker of the Gemini models and AlphaFold.
GPT-5.5
OpenAI's 2025 flagship model, predecessor of the GPT-5.6 family.
GPT-5.6
OpenAI's model line that combines three models sharing one large memory.
GPT-Live
OpenAI's real-time voice mode that can listen and speak at the same time.
GPU
A powerful processor, originally for graphics, now the workhorse chip of modern AI.
Greg Brockman
Co-founder and president of OpenAI, a leading voice on where AI interfaces are heading.
Grok
Elon Musk's AI chatbot, built by his company xAI.
Hacker News
A tech discussion forum where many AI projects first surface.
hallucination
When an AI states something false or invented as if it were true.
Hatch
Meta's paid AI agent that does tasks for you across its apps.
inference
Running a trained AI model to get an answer — as opposed to training it in the first place.
Jacobian Lens
An Anthropic research method for reading a model's hidden working memory.
John Jumper
Nobel-winning scientist behind AlphaFold, who moved from Google DeepMind to Anthropic in 2026.
large language model
The type of AI, trained on huge amounts of text, that powers chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude.
Leanstral
Mistral's model specialised in mathematically proving that code is correct.
MAI
Microsoft's own in-house AI model family, reducing its reliance on OpenAI.
Mark Zuckerberg
CEO of Meta, which is investing tens of billions into AI and AI agents.
Menlo Ventures
A venture-capital firm whose early bet on Anthropic became hugely profitable.
Meta
The company behind Facebook and Instagram, and a major AI spender and open-model publisher.
Microsoft
The software giant behind Windows, Office and the Copilot AI assistants.
MiniMax
A Chinese AI lab known for powerful open-weight models like M3.
MiniMax M3
An open-weight model from MiniMax that rivals closed systems and handles text, images and video.
Mistral AI
The French lab making Europe's leading open-weight AI models.
model weights
The billions of numbers a model learns during training — effectively its knowledge.
Muse Spark
Meta's family of AI models for generating images and video.
Nvidia
The chip maker whose GPUs power most AI training and a lot of AI at home.
Ollama
A popular, free tool for running open AI models locally on your own computer.
open source
Software — or an AI model — released so others can freely use, inspect and build on it.
open-weight model
An AI model whose trained parameters can be downloaded and run on your own hardware.
OpenAI
The US research company behind the GPT models and ChatGPT.
optical character recognition
Technology that turns images of text — scans, photos, PDFs — into editable, searchable data.
Oracle
A veteran enterprise software giant, now a major AI cloud provider.
Orca
A model from Beijing's BAAI lab built on a different architecture than chatbots.
Pangram
A company that builds detectors for AI-generated text.
Phantom squatting
Registering fake package names that AI models tend to invent.
prompt injection
An attack that hides instructions in content an AI reads, hijacking what it does.
Qwen
Alibaba's family of open AI models, among the most downloaded worldwide.
Reflect
An AI journaling app that asks you questions instead of answering them.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation
A technique that feeds a model relevant snippets from your own documents before it answers.
Robostral Navigate
Mistral's AI model for robot navigation.
Rowboat
An open-source, local-first AI coworker that keeps your data on your machine.
Rust
A programming language known for safety and speed, common in AI tooling.
Sam Altman
Co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, one of the most prominent figures in AI.
Seedance
ByteDance's AI video-generation tool at the centre of a Hollywood dispute.
SensorFM
A foundation model for sensor data instead of text.
SWE-Bench
A widely used test of how well AI models fix real software bugs.
system prompt
The hidden instructions that set an AI's role and rules before you start chatting.
Tesla
The electric-car company using AI for driver assistance and robotics.
token
The small chunk of text — roughly three-quarters of a word — that AI models read and produce.
TPU
A specialised Google chip designed to run AI workloads efficiently.
usage credits
A pay-as-you-go way of billing for AI, where you're charged for what you actually use.
Z.ai
A Chinese AI company (formerly Zhipu AI) behind the GLM model family.
ZCode
Z.ai's low-cost coding agent, undercutting Western rivals on price.
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