AI glossary

Every AI term, in plain English.

Each entry gives you a one-line definition and an example from a real small business — so you can use the word correctly in a meeting today.

A B E F L P V W

A

AI Agent
An AI setup that can take several steps toward a goal — looking things up, calling tools — instead of answering one question at a time.
API
A defined way for two pieces of software to exchange information automatically, without a person copying data across.
Artificial Intelligence
Software that produces useful output — text, decisions, predictions — from patterns it has learned rather than from rules a person wrote out step by step.
Automation
Setting up work to happen without someone remembering to do it, usually by connecting a trigger to an action.

B

Business Automation
Removing repeat administrative work from a business so people spend their time on judgement, selling and service.

E

Embeddings
A numerical representation of meaning that lets software judge how similar two pieces of text are.

F

Fine-Tuning
Further training a model on your own examples so it adopts a specific style or format by default.

L

LLM (Large Language Model)
The kind of AI model behind assistants like ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini: it predicts language, which is why it writes fluently and can still be confidently wrong.

P

Prompt Engineering
Writing instructions for an AI model clearly enough that the output is consistent and usable without heavy editing.

V

Vector Database
A store that finds information by meaning rather than exact words, which is how AI tools search your documents usefully.

W

Workflow
The defined sequence of steps a piece of work travels through, from arrival to completion.