New advancements in AI are rapidly transforming many aspects of our society. At the forefront of this development are powerful machine learning algorithms known as foundation models. The deployment of these models are on the rise, leading to unprecedented adoption across many industries without any guardrails. The generative tools powered by this technology have now captured people’s imagination, but not necessarily public understanding. Stanford HAI and scholars from the Center for Research on Foundation Models collaborated to develop an easy-to-understand explainer to help non-experts gain a broad understanding of this nascent technology that’s poised to transform our society.