AI Glossary: The Terms, Explained Simply
The words you hear when people talk about AI for business, each explained in a few lines, with a link to the full article where we have one.
RAG (retrieval-augmented generation)
A way for an AI assistant to answer from your own documents. The system first finds the passages that relate to the question, then the AI writes the answer from those passages only and shows the source. It is what lets an assistant answer about your policies or contracts instead of guessing from general knowledge. Read the full article →
OCR (optical character recognition)
Reading the text in a photo or a scanned page and turning it into text a computer can use. For business documents, the useful part is structure: not just the words, but which name goes with which price, or which field is the invoice total. Arabic adds right-to-left text, connected letters and Eastern Arabic digits. Read the full article →
Chatbot
A program that answers messages in a chat, such as WhatsApp, Messenger, Instagram or a website. Older chatbots followed fixed menus (press 1, press 2). AI chatbots read the question in the customer's own words and answer it from information the business approves. Read the full article →
AI agent
An AI system that doesn't only answer, but also takes steps: it looks something up in a system, fills in a record or sends an update, within rules you set. A chatbot that checks an order status in your system is a simple example.
Business automation
Letting software do the routine steps of a task, such as collecting, checking, moving or summarizing data, so people only handle what needs judgment. It works best on tasks that repeat often and follow clear steps. Read the full article →
API
The way two programs talk to each other. When a chatbot looks up an order in your system, it uses that system's API. If a system has no API and no export, connecting it automatically is hard, which is worth knowing before a project starts.
Embeddings
A way of turning text into numbers that capture its meaning, so a system can find passages that mean the same thing even when they use different words or another language. RAG systems use them to find the right parts of your documents.
Knowledge base
The approved information a chatbot or assistant answers from: services, opening hours, policies, product lists or documents. Keeping it short, current and reviewed matters more than making it long.
Human handover
The moment a chatbot passes a conversation to a person on your team, for example when the question isn't covered, the customer is upset, or they ask for a person. Good handover rules are part of building any customer chatbot.
WhatsApp Business Platform (API)
Meta's service for businesses to send and receive WhatsApp messages through software, which is what chatbots run on. It is different from the free WhatsApp Business app, needs a business account, and Meta charges per message under its own pricing. Read the full article →