To get started using AI, you use an AI program such as ChatGPT, TitanGPT (CSUF's own brand), Gemini (Google), CoPilot (Microsoft), or others. These programs prompt you--or ask you for what you want--and then they create it, either as text, illustration, video, music, or other, drawing upon the massive collection of information available on the Internet. This video explains the process:
To learn more about the various generative AI programs, see the boxes below.
ChatGPT was one of the first generative AI programs to become popular, and remains popular today. It was developed by the OpenAI organization in 2022. By January 2023, it had become the fastest growing consumer software application in history, gaining over 100 million users in just two months (citation). As of July 2025, ChatGPT's website (for launching it) is among the 5-most visited websites globally (citation).
A tutorial how to get started using it is here, courtesy of the University of Arizona:
https://libguides.library.arizona.edu/students-chatgpt
In Spring 2025, ChatGPT partnered with the California State University (CSU) system to provide ChatGPT tailored to all CSU students and employees. It offers the ability to build custom GPTs for sharing within campus workspaces, as well as the needed privacy and data protection, and other enterprise security such as single sign-on (SSO). You can learn about it, and get started with it, here: https://www.fullerton.edu/it/services/software/chatgpt-edu.html
TitanGPT is a generative AI tool, similar to ChatGPT. It was was offered to the campus by CSUF's Information Technolgy in Spring 2025 for students & faculty to have their own TitanGPT accounts. The underlying AI technology is from Microsoft (like CoPilot). You can learn about, and get started with, TitanGPT here: https://www.fullerton.edu/it/projects/titangpt/
Gemini is the Generative AI product from Google. An introduction to it, from Google, is here:
https://gemini.google/assistant/
A video introduction of Gemini is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HuXSoDXfTY
Copilot is the Generative AI product from Microsoft. An introduction to it, from Microsoft, is here:
https://copilot.microsoft.com/
A video introduction of CoPilot is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-CuF6dlqLg
The above four generative AI programs are not the only ones; there are others too. Some have more emphases over others (like producing images versus producing text). The website below describes many more of them, explains what they are best for, and provides links to them: https://zapier.com/blog/generative-ai-tools/