General

API

Application Programming Interface — a set of rules and protocols that allow different software applications to communicate with each other. In AI, APIs let developers integrate AI capabilities into their applications.

Why It Matters

APIs are how most businesses consume AI — rather than building models, they call APIs from providers like OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google to add AI features.

Example

Calling the OpenAI API with a prompt and receiving a generated response, or using Google's Vision API to analyze an uploaded image.

Think of it like...

Like a waiter in a restaurant — you (the application) tell the waiter (API) what you want, and they bring it from the kitchen (the AI model) without you needing to cook.

Related Terms

Model Serving

The infrastructure and process of deploying trained ML models to production where they can receive requests and return predictions in real time. It includes scaling, load balancing, and version management.

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