Machine learning (ML)
Japanese 機械学習（マシンラーニング）
Machine learning is a kind of AI where, instead of people writing every rule, a program finds patterns in lots of data and uses them to make predictions. Generative AI is built this way too, so what a model learned from shapes how good its output is.
Most programs are made by people writing rules directly: "in this case, do that." Machine learning works the other way around. You show the program many examples with the right answers, and it finds the common patterns on its own. What it learns is called a model, and the model can then make predictions about data it has never seen. It is like a shop clerk who, after seeing customers many times, starts to recognize the regulars. Deep learning and generative AI are both branches of machine learning.
Watch out A model is only as good as the data it learned from. If that data is one-sided or out of date, its predictions can be off too. When you choose a service that uses machine learning, check its terms to see what data it learned from and whether what you type in will be used for more training.
Source: What is Machine Learning? | IBM · What is Machine Learning? | Machine Learning | Google for Developers (checked 2026-10-26)