Fact · Voice and AI
Google's Machine Learning Glossary defines a prompt as any text entered as input to a large language model to condition the model to behave in a certain way.
Checked against its source on October 17, 2026
In the source's own words
“Any text entered as input to a large language model to condition the model to behave in a certain way.”
Machine Learning Glossary, Google Developers, Google Developers, 2026, Glossary entry: prompt.
Open the original- What it measures
- The entry adds that prompts can be as short as a phrase or arbitrarily long, such as the entire text of a novel, and that they fall into several categories.
- What it does not show
- The definition covers text prompts. It does not say how a prompt should be written, and it does not cover spoken input, which must first be converted to text in most current systems.