Completion Model
A model that continues text from a given prefix, used before chat-style interfaces became standard.
Full Definition
Completion models take a text prefix and predict the most probable continuation — they don't distinguish between instructions and data; they simply continue whatever they receive. GPT-3's text-davinci-002 is a classic example. Prompt engineering for completion models required clever formatting: wrapping the task in a pseudo-document structure (e.g., 'Q: ... A:') to elicit question-answering behaviour. Completion models have largely been superseded by chat and instruction-tuned models in consumer products, but they remain available for use cases requiring raw text continuation — fiction writing engines, autocomplete systems, and certain low-latency applications.
Examples
Sending 'The first step to baking sourdough bread is' to a completion model, which continues the sentence.
Using a completion model to generate news article continuations given a headline and opening paragraph.
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