Help & Support
What’s this? A plain-language glossary
If a word on this site sent you here, this is where it gets explained properly. No definition uses another word that also needs explaining.
- AI (Artificial Intelligence)
- Software that can do things we used to think needed a person — answering a question, recognising a face in a photograph, suggesting a route. It is very good pattern-matching, not a thinking being.
- Algorithm
- A set of steps a computer follows, like a recipe. Nothing mysterious about it.
- App
- A program on a phone or tablet. The little squares on your home screen are apps.
- Assistant
- An AI you talk to — Claude, ChatGPT, Alexa, Siri. It takes your question and gives you an answer.
- Chatbot
- An assistant you type to rather than speak to. Same idea.
- Cloud
- Someone else’s computer, somewhere else, that yours talks to over the internet. Your photos being “in the cloud” means a copy sits on a company’s machine.
- Data
- Information — your name, your photos, what you searched for. When people talk about protecting your data, this is what they mean.
- Hallucination
- When an AI states something untrue with complete confidence. It is not lying; it has no idea it is wrong. This is why you check anything that matters.
- Large Language Model
- The kind of AI behind assistants like ChatGPT and Claude. It learned patterns from an enormous amount of writing, and predicts what words should come next.
- Password Manager
- A locked book for your passwords. You remember one password, and it remembers all the others.
- Phishing
- A fake message pretending to be your bank, your doctor, or a grandchild, designed to get a password or money out of you. AI has made these harder to spot.
- Privacy Settings
- The controls that decide how much a company keeps about you. Worth going through once, slowly, when you set up something new.
- Prompt
- What you type or say to an AI. Your question is the prompt. A better prompt gets a better answer.
- Smart Home
- Lights, locks, and doorbells you can control by voice or from your phone.
- Smart Speaker
- A speaker that listens for its name and then answers — an Echo, a Nest, a HomePod.
- Streaming
- Watching or listening to something over the internet as it arrives, rather than owning a copy.
- Subscription
- A charge that repeats every month or year until you cancel it. Always check whether a “free” tool becomes one.
- Two-Factor Authentication
- A second check after your password, usually a code sent to your phone. It is a nuisance, and it is the single best thing you can turn on.
- Virtual Reality (VR)
- A headset that puts you somewhere else — a street from your childhood, a concert hall. You look around and it moves with you.
- Voice Typing
- Speaking instead of typing. Tap the small microphone on your keyboard and talk.
- Wi-Fi
- How your devices reach the internet without a cable. If something “is not connecting,” this is usually the culprit.
Something missing?
If you met a word here that is not on this list, that is a gap we want to close.
Tell us the word and we will add it.