AI glossary for business owners
The terms you keep hearing about artificial intelligence, explained from a business owner's perspective — not an engineer's.
What is an AI agent?
It's an artificial intelligence system that talks to your customers on its own — answering questions, booking appointments, qualifying leads — following rules and data you approved beforehand. It's not a simple menu-based chatbot: it understands natural language and decides what to do case by case.
See the AI Agents pillar →What is an LLM?
LLM stands for "Large Language Model." It's the technology behind assistants like ChatGPT: a system trained on huge amounts of text that learns to generate coherent responses in natural language. An AI agent uses an LLM as its conversation "brain."
What's the difference between a chatbot and an autonomous agent?
A traditional chatbot follows a fixed decision tree ("type 1 for..."). An autonomous agent understands what the customer writes in their own words, decides what to ask next, and can take actions (booking, saving data, escalating to a person) without you programming every possible reply.
What is RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation)?
It's a technique where the agent, before answering, looks up real information in your own database or documents (prices, policies, catalog) instead of "making up" the answer from memory. It's one of the most effective ways to stop an AI from hallucinating data.
What is a prompt?
It's the instruction given to an AI model to make it do something — from a simple question to a detailed set of behavior rules. How good an AI agent is depends heavily on how well its prompt is designed, not just on the underlying model.
What's the difference between process automation and AI automation?
Traditional process automation (sometimes called RPA) follows fixed, predictable rules: "if X happens, do Y." AI automation can handle cases with variation and uncertainty — understanding an ambiguous message, choosing between several options — because it reasons over natural language, not just exact rules.
See the Development & Automation pillar →What is an AI hallucination?
It's when a model generates an answer that sounds confident and well-written but is false — a made-up price, a policy that doesn't exist. It's a real risk of any generative AI, and the reason a good AI agent only answers sensitive data with previously approved information.
Read the full article on this topic →What is a webhook or an integration?
It's an automatic connection between two systems so they exchange information without a person copying it by hand — for example, a new WhatsApp lead saving itself into your CRM. It's what lets an AI agent "talk" to your other tools.
What is a CRM?
CRM stands for "Customer Relationship Management." It's the system where each customer's or lead's information is stored — their data, what stage they're in, what's been discussed — so your team (or your AI agent) knows exactly where each case stands.
What is a qualified lead?
It's a contact who has already shown real interest and meets the conditions to be a likely customer (has the problem, budget, or urgency you're looking for). Qualifying leads is exactly what a sales AI agent does: separating who can actually buy from who's just browsing.
What is the WhatsApp Business API?
It's the official channel that lets you connect an automated system (like an AI agent) directly to a WhatsApp number, to send and receive messages programmatically and at scale, respecting Meta's policies — unlike using regular WhatsApp from a phone.
What's the difference between SEO and GEO?
SEO (search engine optimization) aims to get your site to rank higher on Google. GEO (generative engine optimization) aims to get assistants like ChatGPT or Gemini to mention you directly in their answer. Today it pays to work on both at once.
Read the full article on this topic →