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What is Token?

It is the smallest unit of meaning that artificial intelligence uses to process texts.

Overview

They are the most basic particles that artificial intelligence uses to process language. A word, syllable, or punctuation mark corresponds to a numerical code in the world of the model.

Analogy: While reading a book, it is like building a meaningful wall by stacking words or syllables, not letters, like bricks.

How it works

Before reading the text, the model breaks it into small pieces. Thanks to these parts, artificial intelligence can mathematically calculate the structure of the language and the relationships between words.

Where it is used

It is used in cost calculations and speed measurements of artificial intelligence models. How much text a model can process or how quickly it responds is determined by the number of tokens.

Commonly confused with

It is confused with word count, but tokens can sometimes be part of a word or just a space.

Frequently asked questions

Approximately how many words are 1000 tokens?

Generally, in English texts, 1000 tokens correspond to approximately 750 words.

Why do we use tokens?

Since computers understand numbers, not words, we need to convert the text into a mathematical format.

Related terms

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This explanation was written in plain language for TreScout and machine-translated from the Turkish original · the Turkish version prevails. If something looks wrong or missing, write to hello@trescout.com. Read in Turkish →