Glossary

Document Intelligence Glossary

Definitions written for real evaluation and implementation work, not generic dictionary filler.

A

A

Defined term

AI Hallucination

A false or unsupported AI answer that sounds plausible but is not grounded in the source material.

Defined term

Active Learning

A machine learning approach where the model selects which examples to learn from.

Defined term

Application Programming Interface

A standardized way for software systems to communicate and share data.

Defined term

Audit Trail

A record of who accessed, changed, queried, or acted on documents and outputs inside a system.

B

B

Defined term

Batch Processing

Processing large volumes of documents automatically as a group.

C

C

Defined term

Context Window

The maximum amount of text a language model can process in a single request.

Defined term

Chain-of-Thought Reasoning

A prompting technique where AI shows its reasoning steps to improve accuracy.

Defined term

Confidence Score

A numerical measure of how certain an AI system is about its output.

Defined term

Classification Taxonomy

A hierarchical categorization system for organizing documents.

Defined term

Cross-Document Analysis

Using AI to compare, connect, and synthesize information across multiple documents instead of treating each file in isolation.

D

D

Defined term

Document AI

The use of AI to read, extract, understand, and act on information inside documents.

Defined term

Document Classification

Using AI to sort documents into types or categories so the right workflow can start automatically.

Defined term

Document Chunking

Splitting documents into smaller segments for efficient AI processing and retrieval.

Defined term

Data Lineage

Tracking the origin and transformations of data throughout its lifecycle.

Defined term

Document Understanding

AI's ability to interpret what a document means, not only what text appears on the page.

Defined term

Document Annotation

Adding labels, notes, or markup to documents for training AI or collaborative review.

Defined term

Document Redaction

Permanently removing or obscuring sensitive information from documents.

Defined term

De-identification

Removing or obscuring personal identifiers from documents while preserving useful content.

E

E

Defined term

Embedding

A numerical vector representation of text that captures semantic meaning for AI processing.

F

F

Defined term

Fine-Tuning

Adapting a pre-trained AI model to perform better on specific tasks or domains.

Defined term

Few-Shot Learning

Providing a few examples to guide AI model behavior for specific tasks.

G

G

Defined term

Ground Truth

The verified correct answer used to train and evaluate AI systems.

H

H

Defined term

Human-in-the-Loop

Combining AI automation with human oversight for quality control and exception handling.

I

I

Defined term

Intelligent Document Processing

AI-powered document automation that classifies files, extracts data, and routes work without relying only on manual review or fixed templates.

Defined term

Information Extraction

Using AI to pull structured, usable facts out of unstructured or semi-structured documents.

K

K

Defined term

Knowledge Graph

A structured network representing entities and relationships extracted from documents.

L

L

Defined term

Large Language Model

AI models trained on vast text data that can understand and generate human-like text.

Defined term

Layout Analysis

Detecting and understanding document structure including regions, columns, tables, and reading order.

M

M

Defined term

Multimodal AI

AI systems that can process and understand multiple types of data like text, images, and audio.

Defined term

Model Inference

Using a trained AI model to make predictions or generate outputs on new data.

N

N

Defined term

Natural Language Processing

AI technology that enables computers to understand, interpret, and generate human language.

Defined term

Named Entity Recognition

AI technique that identifies and classifies named entities like people, organizations, dates, and amounts in text.

O

O

Defined term

Optical Character Recognition

Technology that turns scanned images or image-based PDFs into machine-readable text.

P

P

Defined term

Prompt Engineering

The practice of designing effective prompts to get optimal outputs from language models.

Defined term

PDF Parsing

Extracting text, structure, and content from PDF documents for processing.

Q

Q

Defined term

Question Answering

AI that answers natural-language questions using document content rather than only returning search results or extracted fields.

R

R

Defined term

Retrieval-Augmented Generation

A pattern that retrieves relevant document context before a language model answers, so the output is grounded in source material instead of memory alone.

Defined term

Recall and Precision

Metrics measuring AI's ability to find all relevant items (recall) and avoid false positives (precision).

S

S

Defined term

Semantic Search

Search that matches by meaning and intent, not only by exact keywords.

Defined term

Semi-Structured Data

Data with some organizational properties but not rigid schema, like invoices and forms.

T

T

Defined term

Transformer Architecture

The neural network architecture powering modern language models using self-attention mechanisms.

Defined term

Token

The basic unit of text processed by language models, roughly equivalent to a word or word fragment.

Defined term

Text Summarization

AI-powered condensing of documents into shorter summaries while preserving key information.

Defined term

Table Extraction

Automatically detecting and extracting structured data from tables in documents.

Defined term

Training Data

The labeled examples used to teach machine learning models.

U

U

Defined term

Unstructured Data

Information that doesn't follow a predefined format, like text documents, emails, and images.

V

V

Defined term

Vector Database

A database optimized for storing and searching high-dimensional vector embeddings for semantic search.

W

W

Defined term

Webhook

Automated notifications sent when events occur in a system.

Defined term

Workflow Automation

Automating business processes that involve documents, decisions, and handoffs.

Z

Z

Defined term

Zero-Shot Learning

AI's ability to perform tasks it wasn't explicitly trained on, without examples.