token

token (noun)

1. (technical) The basic unit of text an AI model reads, processes, and generates. It typically takes the form of a word, a piece of a word, or a punctuation mark, rather than a whole sentence or paragraph.
2. (general use, by extension) A loose unit of measure for the amount of AI "work" something costs or takes. It's used casually, the way people say "gallons" of fuel, even by those who don't know the technical sense above.

1. Example: "The model splits sentences into tokens before generating a reply."
2. Example: "That report probably cost us a few thousand tokens to generate."

Related: tokenization, token economics, token budget, model