inference is similar to prediction, ==but in the context of Generative AI, it is more specific to the application of a pre-trained model to produce an output from new input data==.
While prediction often refers to tasks like classification or regression, inferencing in Gen AI refers to generating novel outputs, such as text, images, or audio, based on learned patterns.
The key distinction is that in generative models, inferencing not only predicts but ==creates new data== (like text or images) rather than assigning categories or predicting numerical values, as in traditional machine learning models. For example:
- In a language model LLM, inferencing is generating the next word or sentence in a text.
- In a text-to-image model, inferencing produces an image based on a textual description.