read_csv() is a function in the Python pandas library used to import data from a CSV (Comma Separated Values) file into a pandas DataFrame. The function requires the file path or a file object of the CSV file as its first argument.

Additional parameters can be specified to control how the data is read. For example, you can specify the delimiter used in the file, whether to treat the first row as headers with the header parameter, or define column names directly using the names parameter if the file does not contain headers.