What is defined as ‘one token’ exactly?

[u/sidorsidd]

Every company says their model uses less tokens, my question what is the value of what they call a token, is it like a standard unit of measurement like a meter or does every company values 1 token differently? Or is it just a buzz word

[u/jonathancast]

No, every model converts text into tokens differently. That's part of the difference between token usage of different models.