This year will be remembered as the year that 人工知能 (jinkō-chinō, artificial intelligence) and 生成AI (seisei-ēai, generative AI) went mainstream. この技術の進歩が喜ばしい事かは意見が分かれるところですが、多くの人の生活を変えるであろう事は確かです (Kono gijutsu no shinpo ga yorokobashii koto ka wa iken ga wakareru tokoro desu ga, ōku no hito no seikatsu o kaeru de arō koto wa tashika desu, Opinions are divided on whether or not this technological advancement is a wonderful thing, but it’s certain that this [development] is going to change many lives.)

One place where 生成AI is already having an impact is Hollywood, where, alongside the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union, the Writers Guild of America is on strike. In light of the game-changing 自然言語処理 (shizen gengo shori, natural language processing) of AI tool ChatGPT, many have expressed that ChatGPTに仕事を奪われるかもしれない (chatto gīpītī ni shigoto o ubawareru kamo shirenai, ChatGPT could take away my job).

You may wonder how the word 生成 (seisei, generation) differs from other nouns that also mean 作る (tsukuru, to make), such as 作成 (sakusei, creation), 制作 (seisaku, production) and 製作 (seisaku, manufacture). Well, 生成 often implies a change in nature, as exemplified by phrases like, 太陽光から電気を生成する (taiyōkō kara denki o seisei suru, to generate electricity from solar energy). That may be why the term is used with AI, which excels at producing new passages and artworks from 蓄積されたデータ (chikuseki sareta dēta, data that has been accumulated).