## 2.3 AI language models

### What is it?

In November 2022 ChatGPT was introduced: a chatbot that can create texts through the use of artificial intelligence. GPT stands for 'Generative Pre-Training Transformer'. ChatGPT is a 'Large Language Model' (LLM), a technological model that can process large data sets, summarize and ultimately generate new content. LLMs focus on language, its processing and its (re)production. They do this by calculating the probability of one word following another.

### What are the risks?

LLMs are easy to use and the texts they produce initially seem both coherent and correct. But it is best to think of these texts as a kind of average of all the texts the model has been fed/trained with and there could be errors. It is, for example, hard to see where an LLM gets the information from. This means you cannot check the original source and do not know whether the information is reliable.

In summary:

- Answers are based on linguistic probability, not content knowledge
- Correctness of the information provided is unclear
- No (correct) source citation

With an LLM anyone can easily and quickly have convincing looking texts generated. The rise of ChatGPT and other LLMs therefore makes it even more important to properly check where information comes from and what sources have been used.