If you've been anywhere near the tech world in the past two years, you've heard the term "large language model" (LLM) thrown around constantly. But what actually is a large language model? How does it work? And why should you care?

This guide breaks it down without the hype.

The simple explanation

A large language model is a computer program that has read a massive amount of text and learned to predict what word comes next.

That's it. That's the core idea.