Neural Network
A system of simple connected units, loosely inspired by the brain, that learns patterns from examples rather than following rules somebody wrote. Nearly all modern AI is built on one.
Related terms
Token
The unit an AI reads and writes in — roughly three quarters of a word. Models are priced and limited by tokens, which is why very long documents cost more and sometimes get truncated.
llms.txt
An emerging convention: a plain-text file at your site root that gives AI systems a clean map of what is on it. It saves an assistant from crawling around to work out what your site contains.
Speech Recognition
Turning spoken words into text. It underpins voice search, dictation and call transcription, and it now handles accents and background noise far better than it used to.
Prompt Injection
An attack where hidden instructions in a web page or document trick an AI into ignoring its real orders. The reason a careful assistant treats page content as information, never as commands.
AI Agent
An AI that does things rather than only answering — browsing a site, filling a form, completing a booking. It is why websites are starting to be judged on whether a machine can use them, not only read them.
Function Calling
When a model, instead of answering from memory, asks to run a specific tool — look up a price, check stock — and uses the result. It is what turns a chat assistant into something that can act.