Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few months, you would have probably heard about the latest artificial intelligence (AI) craze that hit the internet back in November 2022. It’s called ChatGPT, and if you haven’t acquainted yourself with this chatbot yet, you could be missing out.
So, what does this so-called generative AI have to offer the average person like you and me, especially if you don’t consider yourself to be tech literate, or you have a creative job that makes you see it as a threat to your livelihood?
In this article, What Is ChatGPT?, we’re going to give you an introduction to the AI world of this latest tech trend, as well as offer the basics on how to use it effectively. Plus, we’ll share with you some of the ‘dangers’ associated with ChatGPT, and what you need to know when it comes to interacting with this new powerful entity.
So, What Is ChatGPT?
The brainchild of American non-profit AI research and deployment company OpenAI, ChatGPT is basically a chatbot that mimics conversation with the human user. AI chatbots are nothing new (the first one, called Eliza, was developed by an MIT computer scientist in the 1960s).
However, ChatGPT is different, because it has been designed to generate text that mimics the structure of the human that asks it a question, or suggests a prompt, in order to get it to respond.
Many businesses and marketers have already been using this advanced AI technology to help them generate content quickly, which has led many creative types to believe that these entities will no longer need the help of copywriters or content creators, and that ChatGPT and its successors will eventually put them out of work.
Many businesses and marketers have already been using this advanced AI technology to help them generate content quickly, which has led many creative types to believe that these entities will no longer need the help of copywriters or content creators, and that ChatGPT and its successors will eventually put them out of work.
However, although we believe ChatGPT is an exciting addition to the world of AI that can help with writing tasks if used in a conscious and effective way, it does have its limitation. And that means this new tech isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ of content creation for those who actually like language, reading, and writing.
ChatGPT generates a response after being given prompts or by asking it questions. And the more you ask it to elaborate and clarify the answers that it provides with further questions, the better results you will receive through its responses.
You could also simply input some text, and ask it to write a story or content from the prompt, although you shouldn’t expect a Shakespearean soliloquy. Text can be generated in multiple languages, including English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
How Does ChatGPT Talk Back?
ChatGPT is based on an AI technology that is called natural language processing, or NLP (not to be confused with neurolinguistic programming). ChatGPT’s NLP works by analyzing and understanding how language works, in order to decide what human-like response it should output.
The resulting responses come in the format of a dialog, so that you can follow up with further questioning, if needed, and thus ‘converse’ with the chatbot.
The language processing has been trained by its developers using sample text generated from code and pulled from web pages before 2021, as well as from real human conversations that provided the desired prompts.
However, it should be noted that OpenAi’s developers built the NLP with its own set of rules and filter systems that avoid certain topics, based on their own subjective beliefs and restrictions. And the fact that the AI chatbot has been programmed with data that was pulled before 2021, it is very possible that the answers you receive from ChatGPT could be completely outdated.
OpenAi’s developers built the NLP with its own set of rules and filter systems that avoid certain topics, based on their own subjective beliefs and restrictions. And the fact that the AI chatbot has been programmed with data that was pulled before 2021, it is very possible that the answers you receive from ChatGPT could be completely outdated.
These restrictions have already led many Reddit users to ‘jailbreak’ or hack ChatGPT by giving it an alter-ego entity called DAN (which stands for Do Anything Now). DAN ignores ChatGPT’s programmed rules, and the responses it gives are sometimes hilarious.
For instance, when asked a specific question about an American sci-fi author’s pet cat, ChatGPT gave a very biased answer that isn’t based in actual reality, whereas DAN answered with the truth. Clearly, this shows a huge problem with allowing ChatGPT to do all of your writing work for you.
What ChatGPT Can Do
You can use ChatGPT to conduct research, just as you would with a search engine, making it a useful starting point. In fact, Microsoft’s Bing search engine and Edge browser are moving quickly to full ChatGPT integration into their search capabilities. As of writing, selected Bing users are being invited to opt-in and test the AI service.
ChatGPT can also be put to good use to help you save time and energy when it comes to creating content, just like my conversation with the AI chatbot showed:
During our conversation with ChatGPT, we asked how it could help us to enhance our writing creativity, and it gave us a decent summary of how it could help:
Overcome Writer’s Block
If you’re a writer, at some time or another you will have stared at a blank page feeling frustrated at your lack of inspiration. ChatGPT can help you breakthrough your writer’s block by generating ideas, building an outline, and writing prompts to help you get back into a more creative flow.
Strengthen Your Skills
ChatGPT can provide you with creative writing tools, and examples of different genres and styles, which can help to support your writing process. You can then use the AI chatbot as a sounding board for your new creations, if you so choose.
In addition, ChatGPT can help you with researching, because it can summarize long text or explain complex ideas quickly, which can save you time. You can use it for keyword generation when writing blog posts, or for marketing purposes.
Oh, and if you’re a computer geek who needs to write or debug code for any reason, then ChatGPT has the skills to help you with it.
How To Get Started With ChatGPT
So, have you been convinced enough to give ChatGPT a go yet? As of writing, ChatGPT does not actually own ChatGPT.com, amazingly. Instead, you need to go visit OpenAI and sign up to create your own ChatGPT account.
A phone number is required during the registration process for verification purposes because OpenAI says that it wants to ensure you’re a real human and not a spambot — oh, the irony!
However, if you don’t want to risk handing over your personal cellphone number to an AI company, then we’ve got you, because there is another way.
If you have a Discord account, then someone has already made having a conversation or generating content with ChatGPT easy for you. Simply log on to Discord and use this link to join the r/ChatGPT server, and start your conversation with this generative AI program just like I did…
If you happen to live in a country where ChatGPT is blocked, you don’t have a Discord account, or you don’t want to use your personal cellphone number, then you can generate a temporary one to get around this restriction.
All you need to do is visit anonymsms.com and generate a temporary phone number that you can send the ChatGPT verification code to in order to finish creating your account. The service is free and will generate phone numbers for the US, United Kingdom, and Georgia. Don’t use the Ukraine number, since ChatGPT is blocked in this country.
What ChatGPT Can’t Do
Basically, although it has a lot to offer, ChatGPT isn’t our AI savior overlord when it comes to generating copy. And that’s because it contains the built-in biases of its programmers, so it doesn’t always tell the truth, and many times its responses can come across as rather ambiguous.
ChatGPT also lacks common sense reasoning, and can’t understand the meaning behind what it generates — just because it might at times sound like a human, it’s no more than a AI chatbot that has no concept of things like nuance, irony, sarcasm, or even a slight sense of humor.
This limitation alone will make ChatGPT problematic to use for many.
In addition, copyright infringement and plagiarism could be an issue, because ChatGPT’s output tends to be unimaginative and simplistic when it comes to language. This means its responses can read as robotic, due to the overuse of certain words and phrases.
Finally, the AI chatbot has been known to ‘hallucinate’, which basically means that it sometimes just makes stuff up, which can also be extremely biased and offensive, due to the programming and data input trawled from the internet that created it. Yes, AI chatbots can lie.
In fact, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, who co-founded the company with Elon Musk back in 2015, recently admitted on The New York Times Hard Fork podcast that he thought ChatGPT was a “horrible product” that wasn’t made to be utilized.
And yet, here it is being rolled out to the masses.
What this all means is that ChatGPT is far from the disruptive AI technology that many people think it’s going to be. For instance, it also breaks down quite often (check out #ChatGPTCapacity on Twitter for many examples), and it hallucinates whenever it doesn’t know an answer.
Of course, for many people, ChatGPT will provide new opportunities, but the fact that it is only able to spew out generic human-like text without nuance shouldn’t have you quaking in your boots if you’re a copywriter or writer.
Of course, for many people ChatGPT will provide new opportunities, but the fact that it is only able to spew out generic human-like text without nuance shouldn’t have you quaking in your boots if you’re a copywriter or writer.
Yes, this innovative AI advancement can definitely save you time and be helpful to break through writer’s block, but it’s not creative, nor is it a critical thinker. Therefore, you needn’t feel threatened about its ability to produce grammatically correct sentences without idiosyncrasy or a writer’s essence.
The AI chatbot is also available as ChatGPT Plus, a subscription-based service from OpenAI that also provides support, and other features. However, unless you’re a data scientist, researcher, developer, coder, or run a medium-sized or larger business that needs content fast, then the free version will probably suit you just fine.
Final Thoughts
The furor over the launch of ChatGPT to the masses has been hailed as simply amazing by some, while others have freaked out over the fear that it will spell the end of their artistry and careers.
Yes, Gen-Zers may be hailing ChatGPT as the next big thing, due to its woke bias and the fact that it can write an essay or polish up a resume for them. But for technophobes (which they call luddites) and those of us who have no problem stringing a sentence together, we really don’t have anything to worry about.
At least for now.
If there’s something we all should have learned since the turn of the decade, the times they are definitely a-changing, and there’s no going back since this AI genie has been let out of the bottle.
Therefore, you might as well embrace the useful features that ChatGPT has to offer because it’s definitely not as scary as it may seem. Plus, when you get to grips with what ChatGPT is, you can use it to break through any writer’s block when you’re creating your next content.
