While AI has been a prominent emerging technology for at least a decade, the speed of progress in the past few years has been remarkable – and possibly unsettling. Generative AI, most notably in the form of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT has gone viral – the first general purpose AI technology to reach a global audience. In this talk, Michael Wooldridge will review what is generative AI and how is it different, and ask why generative AI has taken off now. Michael will look at capabilities of generative AI now, and how will they evolve, and the implications for all of us.