Generative AI: what it is and how to use it

In a couple of years the word "neural network" went from a research paper to a button on your phone. Today a neural network writes an email for you, draws a picture from a single phrase, voices text in a narrator's voice and assembles a draft presentation while you pour your coffee. All of this is generative artificial intelligence: technology that doesn't look up a ready answer on the internet but creates a new one.

This guide is the general entry point. Here we work out what a neural network even is and how it differs from the "artificial intelligence" of the news, where to use it for free, how ChatGPT and its rivals work, and why it's most convenient to keep all these abilities in one chat — for example, in Twelver. After that come four separate guides, each about its own kind of creation.

The most honest way to understand what neural networks can do is to try. Nothing to install: describe a picture right here.

Four kinds of generation — four guides

"Generative neural networks" usually hide not one technology but several families, each with its own rules. Pick what's closest to you:

• Image generation — a picture from text, photo editing, face swap, logos and product cards.
• Video generation — animate a photo, make a clip from text, a talking avatar, subtitles and dubbing.
• Music generation — a track from a description, a song with vocals, beats and backing tracks, picking a genre.
• Speech synthesis and processing — voicing text, voice cloning, transcribing audio to text.

What ties them all together

Whichever medium you choose, one rule holds: the result depends not on a "magic" service but on how precisely you can explain to the machine what you want. So it's worth starting with the basics — what a neural network is and how to talk to it — and only then diving into a specific task.

Contents

1. 1.What a neural network is and how it works
2. 2.Free neural networks with no sign-up: what is really out there
3. 3.ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and other AI chats
4. 4.Online generators: everything in one chat
5. 5.A neural network for presentations: slides from text