Chat Model
A model fine-tuned to handle multi-turn conversational exchanges between a user and an assistant.
Full Definition
A chat model is an instruction-tuned model further specialised to maintain context across a conversation history formatted as a sequence of alternating user and assistant turns. It is trained to be helpful, harmless, and coherent across multiple exchanges — remembering what was said earlier, updating its understanding as the conversation evolves, and avoiding contradictions. Chat models use a special message format (e.g., OpenAI's messages array with system/user/assistant roles) to represent conversation state. They are the model type powering ChatGPT, Claude.ai, and most consumer AI products.
Examples
GPT-4o responding to a series of code debugging questions where each turn builds on the previous output.
Claude holding a multi-turn tutoring conversation, referencing an explanation it gave three turns earlier.
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Related Terms
Instruction-Tuned Model
A model fine-tuned on instruction-response pairs to follow natural-language dire…
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A privileged instruction block sent before the conversation that sets the model'…
View →Context Window
The maximum number of tokens a model can process in a single input-output intera…
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