You know that text autocomplete function that makes your smartphone so convenient -- and occasionally frustrating -- to use? Well, now tools based on the same idea have progressed to the point that they are helping researchers to analyse and write scientific papers, generate code and brainstorm ideas. The tools come from natural language processing (NLP), an area of artificial intelligence aimed at helping computers to'understand' and even produce human-readable text. Called large language models (LLMs), these tools have evolved to become not only objects of study but also assistants in research. LLMs are neural networks that have been trained on massive bodies of text to process and, in particular, generate language.