The only form of AI that currently exists. Systems designed and trained for a specific, limited task — such as playing chess, recognizing faces, or translating text — with no ability to generalize beyond that domain.
In Depth
Narrow AI, also called Weak AI, is any AI system designed to perform one specific task — and only that task. Despite the word 'weak,' these systems can be extraordinarily powerful within their domain. AlphaGo can defeat any human at Go but cannot play checkers. GPT-4 can generate fluent prose but cannot drive a car. Every AI product in use today falls into this category.
The 'narrowness' refers to generalization, not capability. A Narrow AI system learns a statistical mapping from inputs to outputs within a well-defined problem space. If the problem space shifts even slightly, performance degrades. This is why a face-recognition model trained on one demographic can fail on another, and why a model fine-tuned for legal documents may produce nonsense when asked about cooking.
Understanding Narrow AI is foundational to understanding the hype cycle around AI. Many claims about AI 'thinking' or 'understanding' describe systems that are, in practice, sophisticated pattern matchers within a constrained domain. Recognizing these constraints helps set realistic expectations about what current AI can and cannot do.
Every AI system deployed in the real world today is Narrow AI — extraordinarily capable within its specific domain, but unable to transfer that capability to anything outside it.
Real-World Applications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is an example of Narrow AI?
Virtually every AI product you use today is Narrow AI. Examples include Siri and Alexa (voice assistants), Google Translate (language translation), Tesla Autopilot (driver assistance), spam filters in your email, Netflix recommendation algorithms, and facial recognition systems. Each excels at one task but cannot perform tasks outside its trained domain.
Why is it called 'Weak AI' if it can beat humans?
The word 'weak' refers to the scope of intelligence, not its power. A chess AI like AlphaZero can defeat any human at chess but cannot have a conversation, drive a car, or recognize a face. It has no understanding of what chess is — it just optimizes within a mathematical framework. 'Weak' means narrow in scope, not limited in capability.
Can Narrow AI become AGI?
This is one of the most debated questions in AI research. Some experts believe scaling up current Narrow AI approaches (like Large Language Models) could eventually produce AGI-like capabilities. Others argue that fundamentally new architectures or paradigms are needed. As of today, no Narrow AI system has demonstrated true general intelligence or the ability to transfer knowledge freely across unrelated domains.