> I’m not sure I understand a definition of AI that doesn’t include the ability to generate things.
It depends how you define "generate." For example, is software that controls a robot arm generating anything? I guess it's generating the movements of the arm. But when people use the term "generative" with regards to machine learning models right now, they generally mean content—e.g. text or images for consumption.
Generative has a more technical meaning than that.
Generative AI is essentially the opposite of a classifier. You give it a prompt that could mean many different things, and it gives you one of those things. A robotic arm could use generative AI, because there are many different sets of electrical signals that would result in success for, say, catching a ball.
Classification is an example of a non-generative AI in that there is only 1 correct answer, but it still requires machine learning to acquire the classification function.
You can use AI to validate things, i.e. to check that they conform to some specification.
You may twist the language to say that they are generating a list of validations and errors, but even then it's definitely a different use case than merely creating new items.
