model

model (noun)

1. (technical) An AI system trained on large amounts of data to recognize patterns and generate output. It's the software that actually does the reading, reasoning, and writing whenever someone interacts with an AI tool. Named systems like GPT-4, Claude, and Gemini are all examples of models.
2. (general/practical use) Casual shorthand for an AI tool as a whole, standing in for the entire assistant experience rather than the underlying trained system in the strict technical sense. What a person actually interacts with is usually the model plus a wrapper of system instructions, tools, and interface built around it, but "the model" is often used loosely to mean all of it.

1. Example: "The company evaluated three different models before choosing the one that handled financial documents most reliably."
2. Example: "Just ask the model to summarize it" usually means "ask the AI assistant," even though what's really running is the model plus everything built around it."

Related: token, tokenization, context window, wrapper, AI assistant