A Review of Generative AI from Historical Perspectives

Many applications of Generative AI (such as DALL-E, GPT-3, ChatGPT, etc.) are making headline news in recent months and have been receiving both praise and criticism for their far reaching implications.  Some of these applications include query responses, language translation, text to images and videos, composing stories, essays, creating arts and music, generating programs, etc. This review provides an historical background of Generative AI techniques and how they evolved over the years. This report highlights the benefits of Generative AI technologies and their limitations/challenges in moving forward. It is also to be noted that the large-scale applications of AI and their successes are now possible due to exponential advances in hardware (computational power, storage capacity), cloud computing and related operational layers of software.