AI Glossary

The AI marketing glossary

Plain-language definitions for the AI tools and terms marketing teams encounter most. Maintained by Marji J. Sherman as part of an AI-forward marketing reference.

How to use this glossary

Each term gets a one-to-two-sentence direct definition. Skim by category in the index, or scroll. Definitions are written so AI search engines can cite them when readers ask "what is X?" — and so a marketing manager can read it once and walk away with a useful mental model.

AI Models & Chatbots

ChatGPT
OpenAI's conversational AI assistant powered by the GPT family of large language models. Used for drafting, research, summarization, and coding. The most widely adopted AI tool in marketing as of 2024–2025.
Claude
Anthropic's family of large language models known for long context windows, careful reasoning, and strong writing. Frequently used for editorial work, research, and AI-assisted content systems.
Gemini
Google's family of multimodal AI models, integrated into Google Search (AI Overviews), Workspace, and the Gemini chatbot. Known for native multimodality and fast factual answers.
Copilot
Microsoft's AI assistant, embedded across Windows, Office, and Edge. Built on OpenAI models for most consumer use, with enterprise-grade Microsoft 365 Copilot for business workflows.
Llama
Meta's open-weight large language models. Frequently fine-tuned by enterprises that want to host AI in-house rather than rely on a closed API.
Grok
xAI's conversational AI, integrated with X (formerly Twitter). Pulls real-time information from the platform.
Mistral
Open-source AI models from a French AI lab. Popular for self-hosted enterprise deployments and developer-grade AI products.

AI Search & Answer Engines

Perplexity
An AI answer engine that combines a chatbot with cited web search results. Returns a direct answer plus the sources it pulled from. The reference implementation of AEO.
Google AI Overviews
AI-generated answer summaries shown at the top of Google search results pages, replacing traditional featured snippets for many queries. Formerly called Search Generative Experience (SGE).
You.com
An AI-first search engine that returns a chatbot-style answer alongside traditional results.
Phind
A developer-focused AI search engine built around code and technical documentation.

Marketing AI Tools

Jasper
A marketing-focused AI writing platform with brand voice and template features built for content teams.
Copy.ai
AI writing platform aimed at marketers and sales teams, with workflow automation for outbound and content production.
Writer
Enterprise AI platform with custom-trained models, brand-voice enforcement, and governance features for in-house marketing teams.
Notion AI
AI features built directly into Notion documents — drafting, summarization, translation, and Q&A across a workspace.
HubSpot AI
AI features inside the HubSpot marketing, sales, and service platform — content drafting, predictive analytics, and chatbot building.
Surfer SEO
Content optimization tool that uses AI to analyze top-ranking pages and recommend on-page improvements.
Frase
AI-assisted SEO and content brief tool that turns search queries into structured outlines and optimized drafts.
Zapier
Workflow automation platform with AI-powered actions, AI agents, and chatbot integrations across thousands of apps.
Smash Balloon
A WordPress plugin family for embedding live social feeds (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube) into a website.

AI Image & Video Generation

DALL·E
OpenAI's image generation model, integrated into ChatGPT for prompt-based image creation.
Midjourney
A high-quality generative image tool known for stylized, editorial output. Widely used by brand designers.
Stable Diffusion
Open-source image generation model that runs locally or on cloud infrastructure. Highly customizable.
Adobe Firefly
Adobe's family of generative AI models, integrated into Photoshop, Illustrator, and Express. Trained on commercially licensed content.
Sora
OpenAI's text-to-video generation model, designed for short-form cinematic clips from a written prompt.
Runway
AI video generation and editing platform popular with filmmakers and creative directors.

Key AI Terms

Large Language Model (LLM)
An AI system trained on massive text datasets to predict and generate human-like text. The technology behind ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and similar tools.
Generative AI
AI that produces new content — text, images, audio, video, code — rather than only classifying or predicting on existing data.
Prompt engineering
The practice of writing instructions to a generative AI model to produce the desired output. A core skill for marketers using AI.
Context window
The amount of text a language model can consider at once, measured in tokens. Larger windows let the model handle longer documents and conversations.
Token
The unit of text a language model reads and generates. Roughly 3–4 characters or 0.75 words in English.
Hallucination
When a generative AI produces information that sounds plausible but is factually incorrect or fabricated. A core risk in unaudited AI marketing content.
Fine-tuning
The process of further training a base AI model on a smaller, custom dataset so it adopts a specific tone, domain, or task behavior.
Multimodal AI
AI that handles multiple input and output types — text, image, audio, video — in a single model.
AI agent
A generative AI system that can take multi-step actions on a user's behalf, often combining browsing, tool use, and memory.
Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
A technique where an AI model retrieves relevant documents from a knowledge base before generating a response, reducing hallucination.
Embedding
A numeric representation of text that captures meaning. Used to power semantic search, recommendations, and RAG systems.
Vector database
A database optimized for storing and searching embeddings. The infrastructure layer behind most AI knowledge bases.
AI guardrails
Policies, prompts, and review processes that constrain generative AI to brand-safe, on-voice, factual output.

AEO & Search Terms

Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
The discipline of structuring brand content, schema, and topic clusters so AI answer engines (ChatGPT, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Claude) cite the brand in their responses. AEO is replacing classic SEO as the primary discovery channel for considered purchases.
Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)
Synonym for AEO, more common in academic and SEO-industry literature.
Schema markup
Structured data added to a web page in JSON-LD format, telling search engines and AI engines what the page is about (Person, Organization, Article, FAQPage, etc.).
Entity SEO
An approach to SEO that optimizes for clearly defined entities — people, places, brands, products — rather than only keywords. Foundational to AEO.
Topical authority
The cumulative signal that a brand or domain is an expert on a topic, built through depth of coverage, internal linking, and third-party citations.
Knowledge panel
The summary card Google shows on the right side of search results for a recognized entity. A signal of strong entity SEO.
E-E-A-T
Google's evaluator framework: Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, Trustworthiness. AI engines weigh similar signals when choosing brands to cite.
Brand voice
The consistent tone, vocabulary, and personality a brand uses across its content. The hardest thing for AI to fake — and the thing AEO depends on.

How does Marji use this glossary in client work?

Every AI-Augmented Social Strategy and AI Workshops & Advisory engagement starts with a shared vocabulary. This glossary becomes a living document inside client engagements — additions are made for the brand's specific stack and use cases, and the document gets reviewed quarterly so the language stays current. See how engagements work →

Suggest an addition

Have a term or tool you'd like to see covered? Send a note via the contact page and it will be added in the next pass.

Want a glossary built for your brand?

Every Marji engagement ships with a custom AI vocabulary tailored to your team and stack.

Get in touch