What is a token in AI?
Published . Updated .
Token: The unit of text a language model reads and writes, usually a word or part of a word; in English, one token is about four characters.
OpenAI's rule of thumb is that 100 tokens come to about 75 English words. Model limits, prices and the context window are all counted in tokens.
Long pages cost more tokens to read, which is one reason assistants lean on snippets and opening paragraphs.
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