Plain English
Training data
The material a model learned from.
The huge collection of material (web pages, books, code, images, licensed data and more) that a model learned its patterns from. It shapes what the model knows, how it writes and where its blind spots are.
Why it matters
Training data explains a model’s knowledge cutoff, its biases and why it doesn’t know your business. It’s also why plans differ on whether your chats can become future training data.
At work
If your products launched after a model’s training data was collected, it won’t know them unless you paste in the details.
Think of it like everything a chef ate and cooked while learning: it shapes every dish they make, and what they’ve never tasted.
Related terms
Where it appears