A Transformer is a type of machine learning model designed to process and understand language. It uses a mechanism called self-attention, which allows it to weigh the importance of different words in a sentence, helping it grasp context and meaning. This makes Transformers particularly effective for tasks like translation, summarization, and text generation. Introduced in the paper "Attention is All You Need" by researchers at Google, Transformers have revolutionized natural language processing. They are the backbone of many advanced AI systems, including popular models like GPT and BERT, enabling them to generate human-like text and understand complex queries.