What's the actual difference between AI and machine learning? People use them interchangeably

[Cheeky Blake]

Genuinely confused why these two terms get used like they mean the same thing sometimes and completely different things other times

[Tiger]

AI is the broad umbrella term for any system designed to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, reasoning, understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions

Machine learning is one specific approach to building AI, where instead of programming explicit rules by hand, you feed a system large amounts of data and let it find patterns on its own

So all machine learning is AI, but not all AI is machine learning, some older AI systems were built entirely from hand coded rules with no learning from data involved at all. Modern chatbots and image generators are AI systems built using machine learning specifically, which is why the terms get blurred together so often in casual conversation