Simply put, a pre-trained model is a model created by some one else to solve a similar problem. Instead of building a model from scratch to solve a similar problem, you use the model trained on other problem as a starting point. For example, if you want to build a self learning car.

Why is it beneficial to use the pre-trained models for CNNs?

Usually, pre-trained CNNs have effective filters to extract information from the images because they are trained with a well-distributed dataset, and they have a good architecture. Basically, the filters in the convolutional layers are properly trained to extract the features of the images.

What is meant by Pretrained model?

Definition. A model that has independently learned predictive relationships from training data, often using machine learning.