Glossary
AI words, explained plainly.
The terms you are most likely to hear from suppliers, colleagues and regulators, each in a sentence or two.
A
- Anonymisation
- Removing or changing details so a person cannot be identified. Harder than it sounds: context can still give someone away.
- Article 22
- The part of UK GDPR that restricts decisions made solely by a computer where they have a legal or similarly significant effect on someone. Adding a person who genuinely reviews the decision takes it outside this restriction, but not outside your other duties. Deciding eligibility, risk or who gets a service
- Artificial intelligence(Also called AI)
- Computer systems that do tasks we usually think need human intelligence, such as understanding language or recognising patterns. Today, most tools people mean by "AI" are generative AI. What AI is, and what it is not
- Automated decision-making
- A decision made by a computer without meaningful human involvement. UK GDPR gives people extra rights when this affects them.
B
- Baseline
- How long a task takes, or how often it goes wrong, measured before you change anything. Without one, any claim about time saved is an impression. Measuring an admin task before you change it
- Bias
- When an AI tool treats groups of people unfairly, often because of patterns in the data it learned from.
C
- Chatbot(Also called AI assistant)
- A tool you talk to by typing or speaking, which replies in natural language.
- Cyber Essentials
- A UK government-backed scheme certifying basic cyber security controls. Useful to ask about, and often relevant to a DSPT submission.
D
- Data controller(Also called controller)
- The organisation that decides why and how personal data is used. When you use an AI tool with care records, you are usually the controller and the supplier is the processor.
- Data processing agreement(Also called DPA)
- A contract between you and a supplier that handles personal data for you, setting out what they may and may not do with it.
- Data processor(Also called processor)
- An organisation that handles personal data on a controller’s behalf and under its instructions. A data processing agreement is what sets those instructions down. Free and paid AI tools: what happens to your data
- Data protection impact assessment(Also called DPIA)
- A written check of how a new process uses personal data, what could go wrong and how you will reduce the risk. Do you need a DPIA?
- Data residency
- Where your data is physically held. Some suppliers let you choose a country or region, usually only on their most expensive plans. The UK sits outside the EU Data Boundary, so an EU commitment is not a UK one. Free and paid AI tools: what happens to your data
- Deepfake(Also called voice cloning)
- Realistic fake audio, images or video of a real person, made with AI. Increasingly used in scams. Safeguarding and AI
- DSPT
- The Data Security and Protection Toolkit, an online self-assessment that care providers use to show they handle data safely.
- DTAC
- The Digital Technology Assessment Criteria, a set of standards used in health and care to assess digital tools.
E
- Enterprise plan(Also called business plan)
- A version of an AI tool sold to organisations, usually with admin controls, stronger data terms and a DPA.
G
- Generative AI
- AI that produces new text, images, audio or video in response to a request. ChatGPT, Copilot, Gemini and Claude are examples.
H
- Hallucination
- When an AI tool states something false or invents a detail, often confidently. Every AI tool does this sometimes. How to spot AI mistakes
- Human in the loop(Also called human oversight)
- A person reviews and approves what an AI tool produces before it is used or acted on.
I
- ICO
- The Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator for data protection.
- ISO 27001
- An international standard for managing information security. Like SOC 2, check which of a supplier’s products the certificate actually covers.
L
- Large language model(Also called LLM)
- The technology behind most AI chatbots. It has learned patterns from vast amounts of text and predicts which words are likely to come next.
M
- Model
- The trained system that does the work inside an AI tool. One tool may use several models.
O
- Opt-out
- A setting that is on until someone turns it off. On several consumer AI plans, using your text to train the model is the default, and stopping it means finding the setting. Free and paid AI tools: what happens to your data
P
- Personal data
- Any information about an identifiable living person. Health information is "special category" data, which needs extra protection.
- Pilot(Also called trial)
- A small, time-limited test of a tool on real work, with a way to measure whether it helped. Measuring a task before you change it
- Prompt
- The instruction or question you give an AI tool. Clear, specific prompts with examples usually get better results. Prompt library
- Prompt injection
- A trick where instructions hidden in a document or web page are followed by an AI tool as though they came from you. A reason to be careful about feeding untrusted documents into a tool that can act on them.
R
- Retention
- How long information is kept before it is deleted, by you and by the supplier.
S
- SOC 2
- An independent audit of how a company manages security and confidentiality. Common among AI suppliers, and usually covering only their business plans rather than personal ones. Questions to ask an AI supplier
- Special category data(Also called sensitive personal data)
- Information needing extra protection under UK GDPR, including health, race, religion, sex life and biometric data. Almost everything in a care record falls into this category. Do you need a DPIA for an AI tool?
- Sub-processor
- A company your supplier uses to help deliver its service, which may also handle your data. Worth asking about: your agreement is with the supplier, not with everyone behind it.
- Summarisation
- Producing a shorter version of a longer text. Useful for triage, but summaries can leave out the detail that matters.
T
- Training data
- The information an AI model learned from. Some suppliers also use what customers type to improve future models, depending on the plan. Free and paid tools: what happens to your data
- Transcription(Also called speech to text)
- Turning spoken words into written text. AI transcription is fast but mishears names, medicines and places.
U
- UK GDPR
- The main data protection law in the UK, alongside the Data Protection Act 2018.
V
- Voice agent
- An AI system that holds spoken conversations, for example on a phone call. Automated wellbeing check-in calls