--- title: Behind the popular AI tools lies a crucial bit of tech... description: A brief explainer on the transformer architecture — the foundational technology behind modern AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It traces the origin... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/behind-the-popular-ai-tools-lies-a-crucial-bit-of-tech-called-a-transformer--epbdlywov twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Behind the popular AI tools lies a crucial bit of tech called a transformer. | daily.dev og:description: A brief explainer on the transformer architecture — the foundational technology behind modern AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It traces the origin... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/behind-the-popular-ai-tools-lies-a-crucial-bit-of-tech-called-a-transformer--epbdlywov og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/EpBDlYwov.png og:image:alt: Behind the popular AI tools lies a crucial bit of tech called a transformer. og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Behind the popular AI tools lies a crucial bit of tech called a transformer. **[freeCodeCamp](https://daily.dev/sources/freecodecamp)** · 1 min read · 3 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A brief explainer on the transformer architecture — the foundational technology behind modern AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. It traces the origin of transformers to a 2017 Google research paper aimed at improving Google Translate, explaining how transformers solved two key limitations of earlier sequential language models: forgetting context over long sequences and inability to process tokens in parallel. The transformer's ability to attend to an entire sequence at once allowed it to outperform all existing systems and become the backbone of virtually every major AI language model today. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [The Paper That Created Modern AI: The Story Behind the Transformer](https://daily.dev/posts/the-paper-that-created-modern-ai-the-story-behind-the-transformer-ottnd8r0s) · freeCodeCamp · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#ai](https://daily.dev/tags/ai), [#llm](https://daily.dev/tags/llm), [#nlp](https://daily.dev/tags/nlp) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/behind-the-popular-ai-tools-lies-a-crucial-bit-of-tech-called-a-transformer--epbdlywov) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Behind the popular AI tools lies a crucial bit of tech called a transformer.","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/behind-the-popular-ai-tools-lies-a-crucial-bit-of-tech-called-a-transformer--epbdlywov","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/behind-the-popular-ai-tools-lies-a-crucial-bit-of-tech-called-a-transformer--epbdlywov"},"datePublished":"2026-07-28T12:15:10.783Z","dateModified":"2026-07-28T12:15:25.573Z","description":"A brief explainer on the transformer architecture — the foundational technology behind modern AI systems like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. 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