An auto-encoder is an artificial neural network used for learning efficient codings. The aim of an auto-encoder is to learn a compressed representation (encoding) for a set of data. Auto-encoders use three layers: An artificial neural network (ANN) or commonly just neural network (NN) is an interconnected group of artificial neurons that uses a mathematical model or computational model for information processing based on a connectionist approach to computation. ...
An input layer. For example, in a face recognition task, the neurons in the input layer could map to pixels in the photograph.
A considerably smaller hidden layer, which will form the encoding.
An output layer, where each neuron has the same meaning as in the input layer.