{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]],"date-time":"2026-07-21T06:05:02Z","timestamp":1784613902040,"version":"3.55.0"},"reference-count":59,"publisher":"Frontiers Media SA","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]],"date-time":"2026-07-21T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1784592000000},"content-version":"vor","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/4.0\/"}],"funder":[{"DOI":"10.13039\/100019904","name":"Vellore Institute of Technology, Chennai","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","id":[{"id":"10.13039\/100019904","id-type":"DOI","asserted-by":"publisher"}]}],"content-domain":{"domain":["frontiersin.org"],"crossmark-restriction":true},"short-container-title":["Front. Artif. Intell."],"abstract":"<jats:p>The rapid commercialization of generative artificial intelligence (AI), along with the maturation of quantum technologies has raised a question: can quantum-powered neural networks become the next major shift in large language model (LLM) technology? This naturally leads to another misconception that quantum systems will replace classical LLMs. In this study, both architectures are compared in a contrastive manner in terms of mathematics. The data reveals that identical dynamics that help classical systems learn natural language distributions constrain its ability to use efficient sampling of quantum-mechanical spaces. Performing complexity-theoretic separations (i.e., the widely believed but unproven conjecture that BPP \u2286 BQP) and a 2025 preprint reporting experimental demonstrations of quantum advantage for generative tasks we conclude that quantum utility is unlikely to lie in tasks involving natural language processing under current architectures, but rather in certain computational subroutines. We then suggest a hybrid quantum-classical architecture as the best direction to take in the future, as it has the advantages of both paradigms. This is done by studying a case study that optimizes retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines with Grover's search algorithm.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.3389\/frai.2026.1836641","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]],"date-time":"2026-07-21T05:35:15Z","timestamp":1784612115000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/crossmark-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Quantum-enhanced generative artificial intelligence: a critical review of classical limitations, complexity barriers, and hybrid quantum\u2013classical architectures"],"prefix":"10.3389","volume":"9","author":[{"given":"Diljot","family":"Singh","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology","place":["Chennai, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Omana","family":"J.","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology","place":["Chennai, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Smrithy","family":"G. S.","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"School of Computer Science and Engineering, Vellore Institute of Technology","place":["Chennai, India"]}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"1965","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"B1","first-page":"1","article-title":"\u201cComplexity-theoretic foundations of quantum supremacy experiments,\"","author":"Aaronson","year":"2017"},{"key":"B2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"54","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-021-03202-1","article-title":"Quantum circuits with many photons on a programmable nanophotonic chip","volume":"591","author":"Arrazola","year":"2021","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B3","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"505","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-019-1666-5","article-title":"Quantum supremacy using a programmable superconducting processor","volume":"574","author":"Arute","year":"2019","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B4","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1704","DOI":"10.1126\/science.1113479","article-title":"Simulated quantum computation of molecular energies","volume":"309","author":"Aspuru-Guzik","year":"2005","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"B5","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"12685","DOI":"10.1021\/acs.chemrev.9b00829","article-title":"Quantum algorithms for quantum chemistry and quantum materials science","volume":"120","author":"Bauer","year":"2020","journal-title":"Chem. Rev."},{"key":"B6","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"043001","DOI":"10.1088\/2058-9565\/ab4eb5","article-title":"Parameterized quantum circuits as machine learning models","volume":"4","author":"Benedetti","year":"2019","journal-title":"Quantum Sci. Technol."},{"key":"B7","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"195","DOI":"10.1038\/nature23474","article-title":"Quantum machine learning","volume":"549","author":"Biamonte","year":"2017","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B8","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"595","DOI":"10.1038\/s41567-018-0124-x","article-title":"Characterizing quantum supremacy in near-term devices","volume":"14","author":"Boixo","year":"2018","journal-title":"Nat. Phys."},{"key":"B9","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2108.07258","article-title":"On the opportunities and risks of foundation models","author":"Bommasani","year":"2021","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B10","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"308","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aar3106","article-title":"Quantum advantage with shallow circuits","volume":"362","author":"Bravyi","year":"2018","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"B11","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1877","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2005.14165","article-title":"Language models are few-shot learners","volume":"33","author":"Brown","year":"2020","journal-title":"Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst."},{"key":"B12","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1147\/JRD.2018.2888987","article-title":"\u201cPotential of quantum computing for drug discovery,\u201d","volume":"6","author":"Cao","year":"2018","journal-title":"IBM journal of research and development, Vol. 62"},{"key":"B13","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"10856","DOI":"10.1021\/acs.chemrev.8b00803","article-title":"Quantum chemistry in the age of quantum computing","volume":"119","author":"Cao","year":"2019","journal-title":"Chem. Rev."},{"key":"B14","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"602","DOI":"10.1126\/science.aag2302","article-title":"Solving the quantum many-body problem with artificial neural networks","volume":"355","author":"Carleo","year":"2017","journal-title":"Science"},{"key":"B15","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"625","DOI":"10.1038\/s42254-021-00348-9","article-title":"Variational quantum algorithms","volume":"3","author":"Cerezo","year":"2021","journal-title":"Nat. Rev. Phys."},{"key":"B16","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"60","DOI":"10.1038\/s41534-020-00288-9","article-title":"The Born supremacy: quantum advantage and training of an Ising Born machine","volume":"6","author":"Coyle","year":"2020","journal-title":"npj Quantum Inf."},{"key":"B17","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4171","DOI":"10.18653\/v1\/N19-1423","article-title":"\u201cBERT: Pre-training of deep bidirectional transformers for language understanding,\u201d","author":"Devlin","year":"2019","journal-title":"Proceedings of NAACL-HLT 2019"},{"key":"B18","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"033125","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevResearch.2.033125","article-title":"Expressive power of parametrized quantum circuits","volume":"2","author":"Du","year":"2020","journal-title":"Phys. Rev. Res."},{"key":"B19","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"074001","DOI":"10.1088\/1361-6633\/aab406","article-title":"Machine learning and artificial intelligence in the quantum domain: a review of recent progress","volume":"81","author":"Dunjko","year":"2018","journal-title":"Rep. Prog. Phys."},{"key":"B20","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.1109\/TQE.2020.3030314","article-title":"Quantum computing for finance: state-of-the-art and future prospects","volume":"1","author":"Egger","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE Trans. Quantum Eng."},{"key":"B21","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.1411.4028","article-title":"A quantum approximate optimization algorithm","author":"Farhi","year":"2014","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B22","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.1802.06002","article-title":"Classification with quantum neural networks on near term processors","author":"Farhi","year":"2018","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B23","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"662","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-017-00705-2","article-title":"Efficient representation of quantum many-body states with deep neural networks","volume":"8","author":"Gao","year":"2017","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"B24","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"13","DOI":"10.1090\/psapm\/068\/2762145","article-title":"\u201cAn introduction to quantum error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computation,\u201d","author":"Gottesman","year":"2010","journal-title":"Proceedings of symposia in applied mathematics, Vol. 68"},{"key":"B25","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"212","DOI":"10.1145\/237814.237866","article-title":"\u201cA fast quantum mechanical algorithm for database search,\u201d","author":"Grover","year":"1996","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 28th annual ACM symposium on theory of computing (STOC '96)"},{"key":"B26","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"150502","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevLett.103.150502","article-title":"Quantum algorithm for linear systems of equations","volume":"103","author":"Harrow","year":"2009","journal-title":"Phys. Rev. Lett."},{"key":"B27","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"209","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-019-0980-2","article-title":"Supervised learning with quantum-enhanced feature spaces","volume":"567","author":"Havl\u00ed\u010dek","year":"2019","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B28","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2509.09033","article-title":"Generative quantum advantage for classical and quantum problems","author":"Huang","year":"2025","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B29","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2305.10310","article-title":"QRAM: a survey and critique","author":"Jaques","year":"2023","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B30","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"242","DOI":"10.1038\/nature23879","article-title":"Hardware-efficient variational quantum eigensolver for small molecules and quantum magnets","volume":"549","author":"Kandala","year":"2017","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B31","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1","DOI":"10.4230\/LIPIcs.ITCS.2017.49","article-title":"Quantum recommendation systems","volume":"49","author":"Kerenidis","year":"2017","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 8th innovations in theoretical computer science conference (ITCS)"},{"key":"B32","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"500","DOI":"10.1038\/s41586-023-06096-3","article-title":"Evidence for the utility of quantum computing before fault tolerance","volume":"618","author":"Kim","year":"2023","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B33","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"489","DOI":"10.1145\/3183713.3196909","article-title":"\u201cThe case for learned index structures,\u201d","author":"Kraska","year":"2018","journal-title":"Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD international conference on management of data"},{"key":"B34","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"174","DOI":"10.1038\/s42254-025-00813-9","article-title":"Barren plateaus in variational quantum computing","volume":"7","author":"Larocca","year":"2025","journal-title":"Nat. Rev. Phys."},{"key":"B35","unstructured":"Retrieval-augmented generation for knowledge-intensive NLP tasks\n          \n          9459\n          9474\n          \n            \n              Lewis\n              P.\n            \n            \n              Perez\n              E.\n            \n            \n              Piktus\n              A.\n            \n            \n              Petroni\n              F.\n            \n            \n              Karpukhin\n              V.\n            \n            \n              Goyal\n              N.\n            \n          \n          Adv. Neural Inf. Process. Syst.\n          33\n          2020"},{"key":"B36","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"631","DOI":"10.1038\/nphys3029","article-title":"Quantum principal component analysis","volume":"10","author":"Lloyd","year":"2014","journal-title":"Nat. Phys."},{"key":"B37","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"824","DOI":"10.1109\/TPAMI.2018.2889473","article-title":"\u201cEfficient and robust approximate nearest neighbor search using hierarchical navigable small world graphs,\u201d","volume":"42","author":"Malkov","year":"2020","journal-title":"IEEE transactions on pattern analysis and machine intelligence"},{"key":"B38","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"015003","DOI":"10.1103\/RevModPhys.92.015003","article-title":"Quantum computational chemistry","volume":"92","author":"McArdle","year":"2020","journal-title":"Rev. Mod. Phys."},{"key":"B39","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4812","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-018-07090-4","article-title":"Barren plateaus in quantum neural network training landscapes","volume":"9","author":"McClean","year":"2018","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"B40","year":"2025","journal-title":"The State of Artificial Intelligence in 2025: Agents, Innovation, and Transformation"},{"key":"B41","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"949","DOI":"10.22331\/q-2023-03-16-949","article-title":"Latency considerations for stochastic optimizers in variational quantum algorithms","volume":"7","author":"Menickelly","year":"2023","journal-title":"Quantum"},{"key":"B42","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","author":"Nausheen","year":"2025","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2504.09909"},{"key":"B43","volume-title":"Quantum Computation and Quantum Information","author":"Nielsen","year":"2010"},{"key":"B44","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"1787","DOI":"10.1038\/s41567-023-02240-y","article-title":"Purification-based quantum error mitigation of pair-correlated electron simulations","volume":"19","author":"O'Brien","year":"2023","journal-title":"Nat. Phys."},{"key":"B45","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"030501","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevLett.128.030501","article-title":"Simulation of quantum circuits using the big-batch tensor network contraction strategy","volume":"128","author":"Pan","year":"2022","journal-title":"Phys. Rev. Lett."},{"key":"B46","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"4213","DOI":"10.1038\/ncomms5213","article-title":"A variational eigenvalue solver on a photonic quantum processor","volume":"5","author":"Peruzzo","year":"2014","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"B47","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2109.04298","article-title":"Quantum machine learning for finance","author":"Pistoia","year":"2021","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B48","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.1203.5813","article-title":"Quantum computing and the entanglement frontier","author":"Preskill","year":"2012","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B49","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"79","DOI":"10.22331\/q-2018-08-06-79","article-title":"Quantum computing in the NISQ era and beyond","volume":"2","author":"Preskill","year":"2018","journal-title":"Quantum"},{"key":"B50","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"130503","DOI":"10.1103\/PhysRevLett.113.130503","article-title":"Quantum support vector machine for big data classification","volume":"113","author":"Rebentrost","year":"2014","journal-title":"Phys. Rev. Lett."},{"key":"B51","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.1609.04747","article-title":"An overview of gradient descent optimization algorithms","author":"Ruder","year":"2016","journal-title":"arXiv."},{"key":"B52","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"533","DOI":"10.1038\/323533a0","article-title":"Learning representations by back-propagating errors","volume":"323","author":"Rumelhart","year":"1986","journal-title":"Nature"},{"key":"B53","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.1007\/978-3-030-83098-4","author":"Schuld","year":"2021","journal-title":"Machine Learning with Quantum Computers"},{"key":"B54","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"172","DOI":"10.1080\/00107514.2014.964942","article-title":"An introduction to quantum machine learning","volume":"56","author":"Schuld","year":"2015","journal-title":"Contemp. Phys."},{"key":"B55","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"124","DOI":"10.1109\/SFCS.1994.365700","article-title":"\u201cAlgorithms for quantum computation: Discrete logarithms and factoring,\u201d","author":"Shor","year":"1994","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 35th annual symposium on foundations of computer science"},{"key":"B56","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"217","DOI":"10.1145\/3313276.3316310","article-title":"\u201cA quantum-inspired classical algorithm for recommendation systems,\u201d","author":"Tang","year":"2019","journal-title":"Proceedings of the 51st annual ACM symposium on theory of computing (STOC)"},{"key":"B57","article-title":"\u201cAttention is all you need,\u201d","volume-title":"Proceedings of the 31st international conference on neural information processing systems","author":"Vaswani","year":"2017"},{"key":"B58","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"6961","DOI":"10.1038\/s41467-021-27045-6","article-title":"Noise-induced barren plateaus in variational quantum algorithms","volume":"12","author":"Wang","year":"2021","journal-title":"Nat. Commun."},{"key":"B59","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","DOI":"10.48550\/arXiv.2502.13166","article-title":"Large language models can help mitigate barren plateaus","author":"Zhuang","year":"2025","journal-title":"arXiv."}],"container-title":["Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence"],"original-title":[],"link":[{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frai.2026.1836641\/full","content-type":"unspecified","content-version":"vor","intended-application":"similarity-checking"}],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]],"date-time":"2026-07-21T05:35:19Z","timestamp":1784612119000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.frontiersin.org\/articles\/10.3389\/frai.2026.1836641\/full"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]]},"references-count":59,"alternative-id":["10.3389\/frai.2026.1836641"],"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.3389\/frai.2026.1836641","relation":{},"ISSN":["2624-8212"],"issn-type":[{"value":"2624-8212","type":"electronic"}],"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,21]]},"article-number":"1836641"}}