AI Terminology Course
AI Terminology
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Beginner

Text Classification

Definition

The foundational NLP task of automatically assigning predefined categories or tags to free-text documents.

Explain Like I'm New

A digital mail-sorter. It reads an incoming document and throws it into the correct bucket. (e.g., Is this email Spam or Not Spam? Is this news article about Sports, Politics, or Technology?)

Real World Example

Gmail's automatic inbox tabs. Gmail reads every incoming email and classifies it into 'Primary', 'Social', or 'Promotions' so your inbox stays clean.

Common Use Cases

  • •Spam filtering
  • •Ticket routing
  • •Content moderation

Interview Questions

basic

  • Is Spam Filtering a form of Text Classification?

intermediate

  • What is 'Multi-Label' classification?

Flash Cards

Question

Is Spam Filtering text classification?

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Answer

Yes. It is the most famous example of binary (two-category) text classification.

Question

What is Multi-Label?

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Answer

When a single document can be assigned to multiple buckets simultaneously. For example, a news article about the Super Bowl halftime show could be classified as BOTH 'Sports' AND 'Entertainment'.