An Automated Survey of Generative Artificial Intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence, and large language models in particular, have emerged as one of the most transformative paradigms in modern computer science. This automated survey provides an accessible treatment of the field as of early 2026, with a strong focus on the leading model families, deployment protocols, and real-world applications. The core of the survey is devoted to a detailed comparative analysis of the frontier large language models, with particular emphasis on open-weight systems: DeepSeek-V3, DeepSeek-R1, DeepSeek-V3.2, and the forthcoming DeepSeek V4; the Qwen 3 and Qwen 3.5 series; GLM-5; Kimi K2.5; MiniMax M2.5; LLaMA 4; Mistral Large 3; Gemma 3; and Phi-4, alongside proprietary systems including GPT-5.4, Gemini 3.1 Pro, Grok 4.20, and Claude Opus 4.6. For each model, we describe the architectural innovations, training regimes, and empirical performance on current benchmarks and the Chatbot Arena leaderboard. The survey further covers deployment protocols including Retrieval-Augmented Generation, the Model Context Protocol, the Agent-to-Agent protocol, function calling standards, and serving frameworks. We present an extensive review of real-world applications across fifteen industry sectors, from financial services and legal technology to tourism and agriculture, supported by empirical evidence and case studies. Technical foundations covering the Transformer architecture and training methodologies are provided in a self-contained appendix. This survey synthesises over 200 references to provide researchers and practitioners with a unified reference for the current state and future directions of generative AI.