Large language model
Predicts the next piece of text, which lets it chat, write, summarize, translate and follow instructions.
AI Model Types
Every major kind of AI model in plain English: what it does, how it works, when to use it, and open-source repos to try.
24 model types · Page 1 of 2
Small language model
A compact language model that runs on a laptop or phone, trading some breadth for speed, cost and privacy.
Reasoning model
A language model trained to think step by step before answering, for math, code and multi-step problems.
Code model
A language model trained heavily on source code to complete, write, explain and fix programs.
Vision-language model
Takes images and text together, so it can describe pictures, read documents and answer questions about what it sees.
Contrastive image-text model
Maps images and text into the same space, so a sentence can find matching pictures and vice versa.
Image diffusion model
Creates images by starting from noise and removing it step by step, guided by a text prompt.
Video generation model
Generates short video clips from text or an image, keeping motion and objects consistent across frames.
Generative adversarial network
Two networks compete, one generating fakes and one spotting them, until the fakes look real.
Speech-to-text model
Turns spoken audio into written text, often in many languages and with timestamps.
Text-to-speech model
Reads text aloud in a natural voice, and some can copy a voice from a short sample.
Music and audio generation model
Composes music or sound effects from a text description or a melody.
Each page explains what the model type does, how it works, what it is good and bad at, and links to open-source GitHub repositories you can try. For single terms, see the AI Glossary.