essay write chat gpt

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Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?

Everything high school and college students need to know about using — and not using — ChatGPT for writing essays.

Jessica A. Kent

ChatGPT is one of the most buzzworthy technologies today.

In addition to other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is expected to change the world. In academia, students and professors are preparing for the ways that ChatGPT will shape education, and especially how it will impact a fundamental element of any course: the academic essay.

Students can use ChatGPT to generate full essays based on a few simple prompts. But can AI actually produce high quality work, or is the technology just not there yet to deliver on its promise? Students may also be asking themselves if they should use AI to write their essays for them and what they might be losing out on if they did.

AI is here to stay, and it can either be a help or a hindrance depending on how you use it. Read on to become better informed about what ChatGPT can and can’t do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the benefits of writing your own essays.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial intelligence isn’t a twenty-first century invention. Beginning in the 1950s, data scientists started programming computers to solve problems and understand spoken language. AI’s capabilities grew as computer speeds increased and today we use AI for data analysis, finding patterns, and providing insights on the data it collects.

But why the sudden popularity in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes further than just data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, or a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it sees in the original data.

It’s like the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text makes suggestions of what should come next based on data from past conversations. Similarly, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.

But is generative AI as revolutionary as people think it is, or is it lacking in real intelligence?

The Drawbacks of Generative AI

It seems simple. You’ve been assigned an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a five-paragraph academic essay on the topic you’ve been assigned. You wait a few seconds and it generates the essay for you!

But ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect it to be. Be aware of the drawbacks of having ChatGPT complete your assignments.

It’s not intelligence, it’s statistics

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it has a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and work.

It “hallucinates”

Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even has a warning on its home screen , saying that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data, or because it lacks the ability to verify what it’s generating. 

It doesn’t do research  

If you ask ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they could be inaccurate or even made up.

This is because AI doesn’t know how to look for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — except it likely may not be.

There are data privacy concerns

When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it? 

Prompting ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application. 

JPMorgan has restricted use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”

It is important to be aware of these issues and take steps to ensure that you’re using the technology responsibly and ethically. 

It skirts the plagiarism issue

AI creates content by drawing on a large library of information that’s already been created, but is it plagiarizing? Could there be instances where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and places it into your work without citing it? Schools and universities today are wrestling with this question of what’s plagiarism and what’s not when it comes to AI-generated work.

To demonstrate this, one Elon University professor gave his class an assignment: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and then grade it yourself. 

“Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information,” he writes, adding that he expected some essays to contain errors, but all of them did. 

His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks” and were concerned about how many embraced such a flawed tool.

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How to Use AI as a Tool to Support Your Work

As more students are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.

Generate ideas for essays

Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays. For example, input specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth century novels.” Then, use what it provides as a starting point for your original research.

Generate outlines

You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.

Generate titles for your essays

Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”

The Benefits of Writing Your Essays Yourself

Asking a robot to write your essays for you may seem like an easy way to get ahead in your studies or save some time on assignments. But, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can negatively impact not just your grades, but your ability to communicate and think critically as well. It’s always the best approach to write your essays yourself.

Create your own ideas

Writing an essay yourself means that you’re developing your own thoughts, opinions, and questions about the subject matter, then testing, proving, and defending those thoughts. 

When you complete school and start your career, projects aren’t simply about getting a good grade or checking a box, but can instead affect the company you’re working for — or even impact society. Being able to think for yourself is necessary to create change and not just cross work off your to-do list.

Building a foundation of original thinking and ideas now will help you carve your unique career path in the future.

Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills

In order to test or examine your opinions or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to determine the argument you want to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills aren’t just necessary in school — they’re skills you’ll apply throughout your career and your life.

Improve your research skills

Writing your own essays will train you in how to conduct research, including where to find sources, how to determine if they’re credible, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to do research is another key skill required throughout a wide variety of professional fields.

Learn to be a great communicator

Writing an essay involves communicating an idea clearly to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and making a conclusion that challenges them to think differently about a subject. Effective and clear communication is necessary in every industry.

Be impacted by what you’re learning about : 

Engaging with the topic, conducting your own research, and developing original arguments allows you to really learn about a subject you may not have encountered before. Maybe a simple essay assignment around a work of literature, historical time period, or scientific study will spark a passion that can lead you to a new major or career.

Resources to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills

While there are many rewards to writing your essays yourself, the act of writing an essay can still be challenging, and the process may come easier for some students than others. But essay writing is a skill that you can hone, and students at Harvard Summer School have access to a number of on-campus and online resources to assist them.

Students can start with the Harvard Summer School Writing Center , where writing tutors can offer you help and guidance on any writing assignment in one-on-one meetings. Tutors can help you strengthen your argument, clarify your ideas, improve the essay’s structure, and lead you through revisions. 

The Harvard libraries are a great place to conduct your research, and its librarians can help you define your essay topic, plan and execute a research strategy, and locate sources. 

Finally, review the “ The Harvard Guide to Using Sources ,” which can guide you on what to cite in your essay and how to do it. Be sure to review the “Tips For Avoiding Plagiarism” on the “ Resources to Support Academic Integrity ” webpage as well to help ensure your success.

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The Future of AI in the Classroom

ChatGPT and other generative AI models are here to stay, so it’s worthwhile to learn how you can leverage the technology responsibly and wisely so that it can be a tool to support your academic pursuits. However, nothing can replace the experience and achievement gained from communicating your own ideas and research in your own academic essays.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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How to Use ChatGPT to Write Essays That Impress

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Find and Refine Essay Topics

• Log into the service and type the following prompt into ChatGPT:

• As you can see, ChatGPT gave several good ideas for our essay. If you want to refine the idea further, you can ask the chatbot to cut out some parts of the idea and replace them. Or, you can ask for more context in certain parts. Example – “Expand more on topic number 5 and what it means.”

Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to Construct an Outline

• With the same chat open, type out “ Give me an essay outline for <selected topic>. Make sure to keep it structured as I’ll use it to write my essay .” In this case, I will use topic number 2 since it aligns with what I had in mind.

• As you can see above, we now have a structured outline for our essay. We can use this to write our essay or have ChatGPT do that job. Nonetheless, it’s a good starting point. As always, you can have the AI chatbot cut out parts of the outline or specifically add new ones depending on your requirement.

Step 3: Get ChatGPT to Cite Sources for Your Essay

Even though we have the idea and the outline, we will need to do our research for proof supporting our essay. Thankfully, ChatGPT can be of some help here. Since the chatbot is adept at moderate research, users can get a general idea of where to look for gathering information. Let’s begin doing that.

• Let’s begin asking ChatGPT for sources. With the same chat open, type in the following prompt:

• Now we have a list of 10 sources we can reference from. However, you can also see that ChatGPT mentions the year 2021 in some of them. Therefore, it’s best to use these websites but navigate to the latest pages pertaining to your essay for research. This applies to every topic, so always do it. Also, chatbots like ChatGPT have a habit of hallucinating and making up information, so do be careful.

Step 4: Have ChatGPT Write the Essay

• In the same chat, type the following prompt – “With the topic and outline available to you, generate a 700-word essay. Make sure to keep it structured and concise yet informational. Also, keep in mind my target audience is <Insert target audience> so cater to that accordingly.”
• In the middle of the essay, ChatGPT might stop and not answer. Simply type “ Continue ,” and it will finish the rest of the essay.

Step 5: Edit the Essay with ChatGPT

No matter if you have used ChatGPT to draft a complete essay or have written one yourself, you can use this step to make ChatGPT your co-editor and grammar checker. While your essay might need an initial look from a human, you can definitely use the bot to hash out the tone and add little details.

• Either open up the same chat or have your essay already in the clipboard. With that done, type out the following prompt:

Step 6: Export the Essay for Submission

However, for those who want to export the essay into a more aesthetic format, we have just the thing for you. There is no shortage of best ChatGPT Chrome extensions on the internet right now. We have one such selection linked in our list that can export selective chats onto beautiful image formats if you want to show off your essay. Check it out and let us know how you liked it.

Bonus: ChatGPT and AI Apps to Write Essays

1. writesonic.

Ryter is another helpful AI writing assistant that not only helps with essays but all types of articles. The service is powered by a language model that gives it intelligence. Rytr comes with 40+ different use cases and 20+ writing tones for all types of written material. For those who don’t want to stick to English, it even comes with support for 30+ languages.

Upanishad Sharma

Combining his love for Literature and Tech, Upanishad dived into the world of technology journalism with fire. Now he writes about anything and everything while keeping a keen eye on his first love of gaming. Often found chronically walking around the office.

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How to Write Your Essay Using ChatGPT

• 5-minute read
• 2nd May 2023

It’s tempting, isn’t it? You’ve read about and probably also witnessed how quickly ChatGPT can knock up text, seemingly in any genre or style and of any length, in less time than it takes you to make a cup of tea. However, getting ChatGPT to write your essay for you would be plagiarism . Universities and colleges are alive to the issue, and you may face serious academic penalties if you’re found to have used AI in that way.

So that’s that, right? Not necessarily.

This post is not about how to get ChatGPT to write your essay . It’s about how you can use the tool to help yourself write an essay .

What Is ChatGPT?

Let’s start with the basics. ChatGPT is one of several chatbots that can answer questions in a conversational style, as if the answer were coming from a human. It provides answers based on information it receives in development and in response to prompts you provide.

In that respect, like a human, ChatGPT is limited by the information it has. Where it lacks the information, it has a tendency to fill the gaps regardless . This action is dangerous if you’re relying on the accuracy of the information, and it’s another good reason you should not get ChatGPT to write your essay for you.

How Can You Use ChatGPT to Help With Your Essay?

Forget about the much talked-about writing skills of ChatGPT – writing is your thing here. Instead, think of ChatGPT as your assistant. Here are some ideas for how you can make it work for you.

Essay Prompts

If your task is to come up with your own essay topic but you find yourself staring at a blank page, you can use ChatGPT for inspiration. Your prompt could look something like this:

ChatGPT can offer several ideas. The choice of which one to write about (and you may, of course, still come up with one of your own) will be up to you, based on what interests you and the topic’s potential for in-depth analysis.

Essay Outlines

Having decided on your essay topic – or perhaps you’ve already been given one by your instructor – you may be struggling to figure out how to structure the essay. You can use ChatGPT to suggest an outline. Your prompt can be along these lines:

Just as you should not use ChatGPT to write an essay for you, you should not use it to research one – that’s your job.

If, however, you’re struggling to understand a particular extract, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it or explain it in simpler terms.

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That said, you can’t rely on ChatGPT to be factually accurate in the information it provides, even when you think the information would be in its database, as we discovered in another post. Indeed, when we asked ChatGPT whether we should fact-check its information, the response was:

An appropriate use of ChatGPT for research would be to ask for academic resources for further reading on a particular topic. The advantage of doing this is that, in going on to locate and read the suggested resources, you will have checked that they exist and that the content is relevant and accurately set out in your essay.

Instead of researching the topic as a whole, you could use ChatGPT to generate suggestions for the occasional snippet of information, like this:

Before deciding which of its suggestions – if any – to include, you should ask ChatGPT for the source of the fact or statistic so you can check it and provide the necessary citation.

Referencing

Even reading the word above has probably made you groan. As if writing the essay isn’t hard enough, you then have to not only list all the sources you used, but also make sure that you’ve formatted them in a particular style. Here’s where you can use ChatGPT. We have a separate post dealing specifically with this topic, but in brief, you can ask something like this:

Where information is missing, as in the example above, ChatGPT will likely fill in the gaps. In such cases, you’ll have to ensure that the information it fills in is correct.

Proofreading

After finishing the writing and referencing, you’d be well advised to proofread your work, but you’re not always the best person to do so – you’d be tired and would likely read only what you expect to see. At least as a first step, you can copy and paste your essay into ChatGPT and ask it something like this:

You’ve got the message that you can’t just ask ChatGPT to write your essay, right? But in some areas, ChatGPT can help you write your essay, providing, as with any tool, you use it carefully and are alert to the risks.

We should point out that universities and colleges have different attitudes toward using AI – including whether you need to cite its use in your reference list – so always check what’s acceptable.

After using ChatGPT to help with your work, you can always ask our experts to look over it to check your references and/or improve your grammar, spelling, and tone. We’re available 24/7, and you can even try our services for free .

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How to Get ChatGPT to Write an Essay: Prompts, Outlines, & More

Last Updated: April 28, 2024 Fact Checked

Getting ChatGPT to Write the Essay

Using ai to help you write, expert interview.

This article was written by Bryce Warwick, JD and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Bryce Warwick is currently the President of Warwick Strategies, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area offering premium, personalized private tutoring for the GMAT, LSAT and GRE. Bryce has a JD from the George Washington University Law School. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 47,520 times.

Are you curious about using ChatGPT to write an essay? While most instructors have tools that make it easy to detect AI-written essays, there are ways you can use OpenAI's ChatGPT to write papers without worrying about plagiarism or getting caught. In addition to writing essays for you, ChatGPT can also help you come up with topics, write outlines, find sources, check your grammar, and even format your citations. This wikiHow article will teach you the best ways to use ChatGPT to write essays, including helpful example prompts that will generate impressive papers.

Things You Should Know

• To have ChatGPT write an essay, tell it your topic, word count, type of essay, and facts or viewpoints to include.
• ChatGPT is also useful for generating essay topics, writing outlines, and checking grammar.
• Because ChatGPT can make mistakes and trigger AI-detection alarms, it's better to use AI to assist with writing than have it do the writing.

• Before using the OpenAI's ChatGPT to write your essay, make sure you understand your instructor's policies on AI tools. Using ChatGPT may be against the rules, and it's easy for instructors to detect AI-written essays.
• While you can use ChatGPT to write a polished-looking essay, there are drawbacks. Most importantly, ChatGPT cannot verify facts or provide references. This means that essays created by ChatGPT may contain made-up facts and biased content. [1] X Research source It's best to use ChatGPT for inspiration and examples instead of having it write the essay for you.

• The topic you want to write about.
• Essay length, such as word or page count. Whether you're writing an essay for a class, college application, or even a cover letter , you'll want to tell ChatGPT how much to write.
• Other assignment details, such as type of essay (e.g., personal, book report, etc.) and points to mention.
• If you're writing an argumentative or persuasive essay , know the stance you want to take so ChatGPT can argue your point.
• If you have notes on the topic that you want to include, you can also provide those to ChatGPT.
• When you plan an essay, think of a thesis, a topic sentence, a body paragraph, and the examples you expect to present in each paragraph.
• It can be like an outline and not an extensive sentence-by-sentence structure. It should be a good overview of how the points relate.

• "Write a 2000-word college essay that covers different approaches to gun violence prevention in the United States. Include facts about gun laws and give ideas on how to improve them."
• This prompt not only tells ChatGPT the topic, length, and grade level, but also that the essay is personal. ChatGPT will write the essay in the first-person point of view.
• "Write a 4-page college application essay about an obstacle I have overcome. I am applying to the Geography program and want to be a cartographer. The obstacle is that I have dyslexia. Explain that I have always loved maps, and that having dyslexia makes me better at making them."

Tyrone Showers

Be specific when using ChatGPT. Clear and concise prompts outlining your exact needs help ChatGPT tailor its response. Specify the desired outcome (e.g., creative writing, informative summary, functional resume), any length constraints (word or character count), and the preferred emotional tone (formal, humorous, etc.)

• In our essay about gun control, ChatGPT did not mention school shootings. If we want to discuss this topic in the essay, we can use the prompt, "Discuss school shootings in the essay."
• Let's say we review our college entrance essay and realize that we forgot to mention that we grew up without parents. Add to the essay by saying, "Mention that my parents died when I was young."
• In the Israel-Palestine essay, ChatGPT explored two options for peace: A 2-state solution and a bi-state solution. If you'd rather the essay focus on a single option, ask ChatGPT to remove one. For example, "Change my essay so that it focuses on a bi-state solution."

Pay close attention to the content ChatGPT generates. If you use ChatGPT often, you'll start noticing its patterns, like its tendency to begin articles with phrases like "in today's digital world." Once you spot patterns, you can refine your prompts to steer ChatGPT in a better direction and avoid repetitive content.

• "Give me ideas for an essay about the Israel-Palestine conflict."
• "Ideas for a persuasive essay about a current event."
• "Give me a list of argumentative essay topics about COVID-19 for a Political Science 101 class."

• "Create an outline for an argumentative essay called "The Impact of COVID-19 on the Economy."
• "Write an outline for an essay about positive uses of AI chatbots in schools."
• "Create an outline for a short 2-page essay on disinformation in the 2016 election."

• "Find peer-reviewed sources for advances in using MRNA vaccines for cancer."
• "Give me a list of sources from academic journals about Black feminism in the movie Black Panther."
• "Give me sources for an essay on current efforts to ban children's books in US libraries."

• "Write a 4-page college paper about how global warming is changing the automotive industry in the United States."
• "Write a 750-word personal college entrance essay about how my experience with homelessness as a child has made me more resilient."
• You can even refer to the outline you created with ChatGPT, as the AI bot can reference up to 3000 words from the current conversation. [3] X Research source For example: "Write a 1000 word argumentative essay called 'The Impact of COVID-19 on the United States Economy' using the outline you provided. Argue that the government should take more action to support businesses affected by the pandemic."

• One way to do this is to paste a list of the sources you've used, including URLs, book titles, authors, pages, publishers, and other details, into ChatGPT along with the instruction "Create an MLA Works Cited page for these sources."
• You can also ask ChatGPT to provide a list of sources, and then build a Works Cited or References page that includes those sources. You can then replace sources you didn't use with the sources you did use.

Expert Q&A

• Because it's easy for teachers, hiring managers, and college admissions offices to spot AI-written essays, it's best to use your ChatGPT-written essay as a guide to write your own essay. Using the structure and ideas from ChatGPT, write an essay in the same format, but using your own words. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Always double-check the facts in your essay, and make sure facts are backed up with legitimate sources. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you see an error that says ChatGPT is at capacity , wait a few moments and try again. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay may be against your instructor's rules. Make sure you understand the consequences of using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• ChatGPT-written essays may include factual inaccuracies, outdated information, and inadequate detail. [4] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about completing school assignments, check out our in-depth interview with Bryce Warwick, JD .

• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt
• ↑ https://platform.openai.com/examples/default-essay-outline
• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6787051-does-chatgpt-remember-what-happened-earlier-in-the-conversation
• ↑ https://www.ipl.org/div/chatgpt/

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Improve Your Essay Writing Skills with Chat GPT

Mankind doesn’t stand still. Every day, we make more and more discoveries and invent new technologies that improve our lives. OpenAI’s ChatGPT is no exception to this. This incredible innovation has already stirred up everyone in the world, including those working in the education sector. Some of them are worried that the invention of ChatGPT will negatively affect the learning process, ensuring that students will stop trying in their studies. However, our experts are confident that this AI language model will only benefit them.

Are you wondering why? Well, let us share the reasons in the article on this page! Here, we have examined the benefits of ChatGPT and how students can use it ethically. We have also examined how well the language model deals with generating different types of essays. Finally, we will offer some tips for constructing the most efficient prompts in ChatGPT. We hope that with the help of this article, you will come to realize the effectiveness and usefulness of this advanced AI program.

• 💬 What Is Chat GPT?
• ☯️ Ethics of Chat GPT
• 📋 Informative
• 🗣️ Persuasive
• 📚 Narrative
• 🖊️ Writing Good Prompts

📎 References

💬 introduction to chat gpt.

ChatGPT is the result of humanity’s technological progress. In a nutshell, it is a program that uses algorithms that simulate artificial intelligence, which makes working with it as close as possible to human communication. The chatbot was introduced by OpenAI, a company that created it to improve the productivity and efficiency of businesses. OpenAI plans to flood chatbots’ main application areas, such as training platforms, commerce, tech support, etc.

ChatGPT has left no one indifferent and has already captivated many users with its array of applications. It can generate and customize responses to unique requests. Its novelty lies in its ability to write a coherent article, a summary, or code in seconds. It can even give a person a preliminary diagnosis based on the symptoms they provided! Moreover, ChatGPT answers questions in an almost natural conversational manner, leaving no room for traditional, already outdated chats. This was achieved thanks to the language models of probabilities and sequences used in its text recognition.

If we’ve intrigued you with the novelty that is ChatGPT, be sure to read our full review article here !

☯️ The Ethics of Chat GPT

You’ve probably heard about the moral panic among schools and colleges caused by ChatGPT. Initial studies show that of the thousands of students surveyed, around 89% had already used the program to speed up the homework process. Looking at these statistics, it’s easy to see why teachers and students alike have begun to worry about the implications of using AI in schoolwork.

Here, we’ll take a closer look at the ethical and moral considerations of ChatGPT and offer a few better ideas about what students can use it for.

Bad Idea: Using ChatGPT to Cheat

Indeed, the idea of using ChatGPT to write papers and turning them in as your own is a bad one for many reasons. Let’s take a closer look at them:

Better Idea: Using ChatGPT to Improve Your Writing

We want to take a moment to describe how ChatGPT can improve your writing skills. In fact – who can better describe ChatGPT’s functionality than ChatGPT itself? So, let us allow the AI itself tell you how it can strengthen your writing:

“ChatGPT can improve students’ writing skills in several ways:

• Providing writing prompts and suggestions for ideas to help students practice and improve their writing skills.
• Offering instant feedback on grammar, spelling, and syntax, which can help students improve their writing accuracy.
• Offering suggestions for alternative words and phrases to improve writing style and vocabulary.
• Encouraging students to read and analyze text written by others, which can help them understand good writing practices.
• Assisting students in editing and revising their writing, which can help them develop critical thinking skills and improve the quality of their writing.
• Providing explanations and examples of various writing techniques, such as persuasive writing, descriptive writing, and narrative writing, which can help students understand the different aspects of writing.”

Source: OpenAI’s ChatGPT

📄 ChatGPT and Different Essay Types

As you’ve read above, ChatGPT has many features that can be useful to a student. In this part of the article, we’ll focus on the last of them – providing explanations and examples of various writing techniques. We’ll tell you about the different kinds of essays you might encounter in an academic setting and evaluate how well the chat can work with them. Also, we will explain how to approach ChatGPT with the right request and describe what you’ll need to keep in mind when working with it. Finally, beneath each essay type, you’ll see an example of a prompt and the work generated by it.

📋 Informative Essay

As the name suggests, the main purpose of an informative essay is to inform the reader on a specific topic. It can be a historical event, innovations in the techno sphere, research results, etc. The essay should not contain the author’s subjective evaluation, reflections, and analysis. We can find a typical example on Wikipedia pages, where we only get straight facts and information about a certain topic.

The four types of informative essays are:

• Definition – The definition essay aims to provide simple information or an explanation of a topic.
• Compare and contrast – Compare and contrast essays should include two or more phenomena to characterize and compare in the same application area.
• Analysis – An analysis essay demonstrates cause-and-effect relationships or interrelationships of the phenomena in question.
• Instructional – The instructional essay serves as a guide, describing the process of doing things to achieve a particular result.

Tips for ChatGPT Prompts: Informative Essay

An informative essay is perhaps most suitable for generating with ChatGPT. Since it’s based on objective information, the language model has no problems creating a high-quality paper. The main thing to remember is to formulate your demands as accurately as possible. They should be detailed but not too long to avoid the program being misled by the words. Also, don’t forget to double-check the information provided by the chat, as it may be incorrect or outdated. That is especially true for references – even if they look authentic, you’ll have to verify them yourself.

AI-Generated Informative Essay Example

🗣️ persuasive essay.

A persuasive essay is a type of writing that presents contesting opinions, and our task is to prove the truth or relevance of one thought over the other. As a result of reading the essay, the reader should accept our point of view.

To do this, we use the following:

• Sound evidence.
• Justifications.
• Quotes from influential people in the field.

Therefore, we can’t base the text solely on the opinion itself but have to back it up as well. Your argument can be emotionally colored or purely logical, depending on your choice. A persuasive essay differs from a comparative essay as it elaborates on only one side – the one you’re promoting.

Tips for ChatGPT Prompts: Persuasive Essay

ChatGPT is fairly adequate at constructing persuasive essays. Its advanced language model can build any argument when the query is constructed correctly. Let us propose an example: you want to ask for an essay on whether students should be allowed to use phones at school. In this case, you must remember to clarify what position ChatGPT should take – for or against. You can also ask the program to build more emotional arguments or, conversely, to rely more on logic. This can be done in the original construction of the prompt. Alternatively, it can be requested in a supplementary message by asking the program to correct the text after receiving the first version.

AI-Generated Persuasive Essay Example

📚 narrative essay.

A narrative essay is typically a text where you, as the author, share stories from your life. The key purpose is to share your experiences and build a certain picture of your personality for the reader.

You can talk about:

• Past events.
• Future plans.
• Hypothetical scenarios.
• Your values or qualities.
• The character of someone close to you.
• Your current life situation.

However, these stories can also be purely fictional. One of the key points of the narrative essay is the ability to hook the audience. Your story should be captivating and intricately designed with interesting word choices and sentence structures. For example, you can use elements of comedy, irony, or tragedy to touch upon the reader’s heartstrings.

Tips for ChatGPT Prompts: Narrative Essay

Although narrative essays frequently describe personal experiences, you can still use ChatGPT for inspiration. If you are assigned to write a narrative essay on an open-ended topic, you can ask the chatbot to generate some ideas for you. Additionally, you can also ask the program to generate text in a particular style or ask it to paraphrase your original writing to see how it can be improved. Keep in mind that while this AI can provide a bunch of different plots, they will still have fairly monotonous wording. You will need to perfect anything generated by ChatGPT on your own.

AI-Generated Narrative Essay Example

🗳️ opinion essay.

The purpose of an opinion essay is to express a judgment on a particular topic. The writer’s point of view should be clear, contextual, and coherent. Each argument given should be supported by facts and examples. This essay requires logical connections, reflection, fundamental analysis, and persuasiveness. So how is an opinion essay different from a persuasive essay? Mainly in the fact that you don’t need to compare and contrast differing viewpoints – you’re simply promoting your own.

Tips for ChatGPT Prompts: Opinion Essay

Among all of the mentioned types of essays, the opinion essay is probably the most difficult for ChatGPT. Since AI technology doesn’t have its personal opinion, it can only generate text based on information gathered from the web. When creating your request, it’s essential to clarify what kind of opinion you want to hear. Also, it’s worth remembering that opinion essays should be strongly supported by facts and evidence, which the chatbot has a problem with. Besides, this program suffers from the uniform wording of different content, so opinion essays on different topics will sound very similar. ChatGPT is improving every day – however, at the moment, its opinion essay construction leaves a lot to be desired.

AI-Generated Opinion Essay Example

🖊️ how to write successful chatgpt prompts.

Although it’s pretty easy to work with ChatGPT, it understands some requests much better than others. When you know how to phrase your ideas correctly, you get more out of the program. This is why we’d like to recommend some tips on how to formulate your requests to get the best results.

• Use Hints. For accurate results, we recommend giving hints to ChatGPT, such as background information and context. It helps to optimize the AI search and to focus on certain keywords you have specified when inputting your data. As a result, you reduce the likelihood of including meaningless material in your research.
• Be Concise in Your Wording. Make sure that your sentences are specific, concise, and understandable. It’s challenging for the tool to analyze long strings of words with lots of different terms and information. It’s better to give instructions in short sentences. For example, the sentence: “I want to learn more about this topic, how it developed, how specialists came to these latest discoveries in technology.” will be much less effective than: “Tell me about the latest innovations in IT.”
• Stay Specific. ChatGPT cannot answer overly general questions, such as “What is our purpose?” Since it is an AI, it has a limited ability to answer such queries. Also, avoid asking questions that can be answered with a yes/no. Otherwise, you are unlikely to get a helpful and in-depth response. Make sure that the meaning of the request advises your topic and scope of research.
• Remember the Tone of the Research . Keep in mind that your requests will be better processed if they are written in a formal and academic fashion. Avoid using slang or jargon, as well as any confusing constructions. Otherwise, the chatbot may misinterpret the purpose of your query, and you will end up with confusing results.
• Improve the Request . Feel free to refine your prompts several times. Adding details to your queries will help you receive more thoughtful and specific answers. Since ChatGPT has an impressive memory, you can ask it to refine the same text several times in supplementary messages. Try to avoid repeating instructions, phrases, and duplicate thoughts.
• Practice AI Queries. The more often you practice with ChatGPT, the better your results will be. With enough time, you will grow to learn which phrases and commands are more understandable to the AI.

Were we able to interest you in ChatGPT? If your answer is yes, why not share this article with your friends? Send them this link and use ChatGPT together!

• What is ChatGPT And How Can You Use It? – Roger Montti, Search Engine Journal
• What is ChatGPT? What to Know About the AI Chatbot – Karen Hao, The Wall Street Journal
• How enterprises can use ChatGPT and GPT-3 – Lucas Mearian, Computer World
• ChatGPT For Students: How AI Chatbots Are Revolutionizing Education – Jake Mallow, eLearning Industry
• 19 Ways to Use ChatGPT in Your Classroom – Larry Ferlazzo, Education Week
• Chat GPT: what does this mean for you as a student? – Radbound Universiteit
• ChatGPT: How to write the perfect prompts – Sophia Schmid, Neuroflash
• 100 Best ChatGPT Prompts to Unleash AI’s Potential – Damir Yalalov, Metaverse Post
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• Published: 28 October 2023

ChatGPT-3.5 as writing assistance in students’ essays

• Željana Bašić 1 ,
• Ana Banovac 1 ,
• Ivana Kružić 1 &
• Ivan Jerković 1  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  10 , Article number:  750 ( 2023 ) Cite this article

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• Science, technology and society

ChatGPT-3.5, an AI language model capable of text generation, translation, summarization, and question-answering, has recently been released for public use. Studies have shown it can generate abstracts, research papers, and dissertations, and create quality essays on different topics. This led to ethical issues in using ChatGPT in academic writing, AI authorship, and evaluating students’ essays. However, it is still unknown how ChatGPT performs in students’ environments as a writing assistant tool and if it enhances students’ essay-writing performance. In the present study, we examined students’ essay-writing performances with or without ChatGPT as an essay-writing assistance tool. The average essay grade was C for both control (traditional essay-writing, n  = 9) and experimental (ChatGPT-assisted essay-writing, n  = 9) groups. None of the predictors affected essay scores: group, writing duration, study module, and GPA. The text unauthenticity was slightly higher in the experimental group, but the similarity among essays was generally low in the overall sample. In the experimental group, the AI classifier recognized more potential AI-generated texts. Our results demonstrate that the ChatGPT group did not perform better in either of the indicators; the students did not deliver higher quality content, did not write faster, nor had a higher degree of authentic text. We anticipate that these results can relieve some concerns about this tool’s usage in academic writing. ChatGPT-assisted writing could depend on the previous knowledge and skills of the user, which might, in certain instances, lead to confusion in inexperienced users and result in poorer essay writing performance.

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November 30, 2022, will go down in history as the date when a free version of the AI language model created by OpenAI called ChatGPT-3.5 (OpenAI, 2022 ) (in further text ChatGPT) was made available for public usage. This language model’s functions encompass text generation, answering questions, and completing tasks such as translation and summarization (Agomuoh, 2023 ).

ChatGPT can be employed as assistance in the world of academia. It can improve writing skills since it is trained to deliver feedback on style, coherence, and grammar (Aljanabi et al., 2023 ), extract key points, and provide citations (Aydin and Karaarslan, 2022 ). This could increase the efficiency of researchers, allowing them to concentrate on more crucial activities (e.g., analysis and interpretation). This has been supported by studies showing that ChatGPT could generate abstracts (Gao et al., 2023 ; Ma et al., 2023 ), high-quality research papers (Kung et al., 2023 ), dissertations, and essays (Aljanabi et al., 2023 ). Previous studies showed that ChatGPT could create quality essays on different topics (Hoang, 2023 ; Hoang et al., 2023 ; Nguyen and La; 2023 ; Nguyen and Le, 2023a , Nguyen and Le, 2023b , Susnjak, 2023 ). For example, this program, in conjunction with DaVinci-003, generated high-quality short-form essays on Physics, which would be awarded First Class, the highest grade in the UK higher education system (Yeadon et al., 2023 ). It also led to questions on the ethics of using ChatGPT in different forms of academic writing, the AI authorship (Bishop, 2023 ; Grimaldi and Ehrler, 2023 ; Kung et al., 2023 ; Pourhoseingholi et al., 2023 ; Xiao, 2023 ), and raised issues of evaluating academic tasks like students’ essays (Stokel-Walker, 2022 ; Whitford, 2022 ). Unavoidable content plagiarism issues were discussed, and solutions for adapting essay settings and guidelines were revised (Cotton et al., 2023 ; Hoang, 2023 ; Lo, 2023 ; Sallam, 2023 ; Stokel-Walker, 2022 ; Yeadon et al., 2023 ). A recent SWOT analysis of ChatGPT’s impact on education comprehensively analyzed all the mentioned issues. Strengths included advanced natural language generation, self-improvement, and personalized feedback, with potential benefits in information accessibility, personalized learning, and reduced teaching workload. Weaknesses encompassed limited understanding of the topic, inability to critically evaluate information, response quality evaluation challenges, bias risks, and a lack of higher-order thinking. Threats included contextual limitations, academic integrity risks, discrimination perpetuation, increased plagiarism, etc. (Farrokhnia et al., 2023 ).

As argumentative essays are one of the most advanced students’ tasks in higher education, and as such pose a challenge for students (Latifi et al., 2021 ), one of the ways where ChatGPT could be tested is essay writing. Such essays empower students’ ability to give an argument and build confidence in their knowledge preparing them not only for the academic environment but also for real-life situations (Valero Haro et al., 2022 ; Heitmann et al., 2014 ). A previous study showed that students need further development of argumentation competencies, as they demonstrated externalization issues with argumentation that did not differ if they worked in groups or individually. The results suggest that students experience problems in externalizing their argumentation knowledge both at the individual (argumentative essay) and collaborative levels (argumentative discourse), and that they need to further develop their argumentation competence (Banihashem et al., 2023a ; Banihashem et al., 2023b ; Kerman et al., 2023 ; Ranjbaran et al., 2023 ). However, it is still unknown how ChatGPT performs in students’ environment as a writing assistant tool and does it enhance students’ performance. Thus, this research investigated whether ChatGPT would improve students’ essay grades, reduce writing time, and affect text authenticity.

Materials and methods

We invited the second-year master’s students from the University Department of Forensic Sciences, to voluntarily participate in research on essay writing as a part of the course Forensic Sciences seminar. Out of 50 students enrolled in the course, 18 applied by web form and participated in the study. Before the experiment, we divided them into two groups according to the study module and the weighted grade point average (GPA) to ensure a similar composition of the groups. The control group ( n  = 9, GPA = 3.92 ± 0.46) wrote the essay traditionally, while the experimental group ( n  = 9, GPA = 3.92 ± 0.57) used ChatGPT assistance, version 2.1.0. (OpenAI, 2022 ).

We explained the essay scoring methodology (Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence ( 2023 )) to both groups, with written instructions about the essay title (The advantages and disadvantages of biometric identification in forensic sciences), length of the essay (800–1000 words in a Croatian language), formatting, and citation style (Vancouver). We introduced the experimental group to the ChatGPT tool which included a brief explanation of the tool, and an example of entering the prompt about their essay-unrelated issue. They were instructed to use the tool freely, without any limitations (e.g., for creating a complete essay, for concept drafting, for specific topic-related questions, for corrections and suggestions, etc.). We did not demand students to submit the prompts they used and the responses they received. All students had four hours to finish the task and could leave whenever they wanted. The control group was additionally supervised to ensure they did not use the ChatGPT. The students’ names were coded to assure the individual and group anonymity and prevent grading bias.

Two teachers graded the essays (ŽB, associate professor, and IJ, assistant professor). The teachers compared the grades, and if their scoring differed the final grade was decided by the consensus. We used the essay rubrics from the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence, Pennsylvania State University ( http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/pdf/suanne_general_resource_WritingRubric.pdf ), that included the following criteria (mechanics, style, content, and format) and grades from A to D (Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence ( 2023 )). We converted categorical grades to numbers (A = 4, B = 3, C = 2, D = 1) for further analysis. For each student, we recorded writing time.

We checked the authenticity of each document using PlagScan ( 2022 ), and conducted the pairwise comparison for document similarity using R studio (ver. 1.2.5033) and package Textreuse (Mullen, 2015 ) using the Jaccard similarity index. We checked the content using an AI text classifier to test if a human or an AI created the text. According to this classifier, text was scored as very unlikely, unlikely, unclear, possibly, and likely that it was AI-generated (OpenAI, 2023 ). We opted for this package after similar programs (OpenAI, 2022 ; Goal and ChatGPT, 2023 ; Debut et al., 2023 ) did not recognize a ChatGPT-generated text in a non-English language as AI-assisted text.

Statistical analysis and visualization were conducted using Excel (Microsoft Office ver. 2301) and R Studio (ver. 1.2.5033). The final essay score was calculated as an average of four grading elements (mechanics, style, content, and format). The linear regression was used to test the effects of group, writing duration, module, and GPA on overall essay scores. The level of statistical significance was set at P  ≤ 0.05.

The duration of the essay writing for the ChatGPT-assisted group was 172.22 ± 31.59, and for the control, 179.11 ± 31.93 min. ChatGPT and control group, on average, obtained grade C, with a slightly higher average score in the control (2.39 ± 0.71) than in the ChatGPT group (2.00 ± 0.73) (Fig. 1A ). The mean of text unauthenticity was 11.87% ± 13.45 in the ChatGPT-assisted group and 9.96% ± 9.81% in the control group. The text similarity in the overall sample was low (Supplementary Table 1 ), with a median value of the Jaccard similarity index of 0.002 (0–0.054). The AI text classifier showed that, in the control group, two texts were possibly, one likely generated by AI, two were unlikely created by AI, and four cases were unclear. The ChatGPT group had three possible and five cases likely produced by AI, while one case was labeled as unclear.

A Average essay scores, B Duration and essay scores, C GPA and essay scores, D Text authenticity and essay scores.

Figure 1B, C implies a positive association between duration and GPA with essay scores. Students with higher GPAs in the control group achieved higher scores than those in the ChatGPT group. The association of essay scores and non-authentic text proportion (Fig. 1D ) was detected only in the ChatGPT group, where the students with more non-authentic text achieved lower essay scores.

The linear regression model showed a moderate positive relationship between the four predictors and the overall essay score ( R  = 0.573; P  = 0.237). However, none of the predictors had a significant effect on the outcome: group ( P  = 0.184), writing duration ( P  = 0.669), module ( P  = 0.388), and GPA ( P  = 0.532).

As we are aware, this is the first study that tested ChatGPT-3.5 as an essay-writing assistance tool in a student population sample. Our study showed that the ChatGPT group did not perform better than the control group in either of the indicators; the students did not deliver higher quality content, did not write faster, nor had a higher degree of authentic text.

The overall essay score was slightly better in the control group, which could probably result from the students in the experimental group over-reliance on the tool or being unfamiliar with it. This was in line with Fyfe’s study on writing students’ essays using ChatGPT-2, where students reported that it was harder to write using the tool than by themselves (Fyfe, 2022 ). This issue is presented in the study of Farrokhnia et al., where the authors pointed out the ChatGPT weakness of not having a deep understanding of the topic, which, in conjunction with students’ lack of knowledge, could lead to dubious results (Farrokhnia et al., 2023 ). Students also raised the question of not knowing the sources of generated text which additionally distracted them in writing task (Fyfe, 2022 ). It is noteworthy that both groups obtained an average grade of C, which can be explained by other studies that argued that students’ writing lacks solid argumentation both when writing in general or when writing argumentative essays (Banihashem et al., 2023a ; Banihashem et al., 2023b ; Kerman et al., 2023 ; Farrokhnia et al., 2023 ; Ranjbaran et al., 2023 ). This demanding task could have been even more difficult when using ChatGPT, which could stem from several already mentioned issues like unfamiliarity when using ChatGPT and additional time requirements to link ChatGPT-created content and/or information with real literature sources.

Some studies did show more promising results (Hoang, 2023 ; Hoang et al., 2023 ; Nguyen and La; 2023 ; Nguyen and Le, 2023a , Nguyen and Le, 2023b , Susnjak, 2023 ; Yeadon et al., 2023 ), but unlike our study, they were mainly based on ChatGPT and experienced researcher interaction. This could be a reason for the lower performance of our ChatGPT group, as the experienced researchers are more skilled in formulating questions, guiding the program to obtain better-quality information, and critically evaluating the content.

The other interesting finding is that the use of ChatGPT did not accelerate essay writing and that the students of both groups required a similar amount of time to complete the task. As expected, the longer writing time in both groups related to the better essay score. This finding could also be explained by students’ feedback from Fyfe’s ( 2022 ) study, where they specifically reported difficulties combining the generated text and their style. So, although ChatGPT could accelerate writing in the first phase, it requires more time to finalize the task and assemble content.

Our experimental group had slightly more problems with plagiarism than the control group. Fyfe ( 2022 ) also showed that his students felt uncomfortable writing and submitting the task since they felt they were cheating and plagiarizing. However, a pairwise comparison of essays in our study did not reveal remarkable similarities, indicating that students had different reasoning and styles, regardless of whether they were using ChatGPT. This could also imply that applying the tool for writing assistance produces different outcomes for the same task, depending on the user’s input (Yeadon et al., 2023 ).

The available ChatGPT text detector (Farrokhnia et al., 2023 ) did not perform well, giving false positive results in the control group. Most classifiers are intended for English and usually have disclaimers for performance in other languages. This raises the necessity of improving existing algorithms for different languages or developing language-specific ones.

The main concern of using ChatGPT in academic writing has been the unauthenticity (Cotton et al., 2023 ; Susnjak, 2023 ; Yeadon et al., 2023 ), but we believe that such tools will not increase the non-originality of the published content or students’ assignments. The detectors of AI-generated text are developing daily, and it is only a matter of time before highly reliable tools are available. While our findings suggest no immediate need for significant concern regarding the application of ChatGPT in students’ writing, it is crucial to acknowledge that this study’s design reflects real-life situations of using ChatGPT as a convenient and rapid solution to submit assignments, potentially at the expense of the overall quality of their work. This issue remains an important consideration when assessing the broader implications of our study.

The main drawback of this study is the limited sample size (9 per group) which does not permit the generalization of the findings or a more comprehensive statistical approach. One of the limitations could also be language-specificity (students wrote in native, non-English language for their convenience), which disabled us from the full application of AI detection tools. We should also consider that ChatGPT is predominantly fed with English content, so we cannot exclude the possibility that writing in English could have generated higher-quality information. Lastly, this was our students’ first interaction with ChatGPT, so it is possible that lack of experience as well as inadequate training in using AI language models also affected their performance. Therefore, it is crucial to exercise caution when generalizing these findings, as they may not necessarily reflect the experiences of a broader range of ChatGPT users, who often report rapid draft generation. Future studies should therefore expand the sample size, number, and conditions of experiments, include students of different profiles, and extend the number of variables that could generally relate to writing skills. Also, it would be useful to conduct a study that would analyze the quality and depth of the students’ prompts to ChatGPT, as it seems that the question type and the feedback provided by the user could remarkably affect the final result (Farrokhnia et al., 2023 ).

However, the academia and media concern about this tool might be unjustified, as, in our example, the ChatGPT was found to perform similarly to any web-based search: the more you know—the more you will find. In some ways, instead of providing structure and facilitating writing, it could distract students and make them underperform.

Data availability

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article [and/or] its supplementary materials.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, can you use chatgpt for your college essay.

College Admissions , College Essays

ChatGPT has become a popular topic of conversation since its official launch in November 2022. The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can be used for all sorts of things, like having conversations, answering questions, and even crafting complete pieces of writing.

If you’re applying for college, you might be wondering about ChatGPT college admissions’ potential.  Should you use a ChatGPT college essay in your application ?

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll know much more about ChatGPT, including how students can use it responsibly and if it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT on college essays . We’ll answer all your questions, like:

• What is ChatGPT and why are schools talking about it?
• What are the good and bad aspects of ChatGPT?
• Should you use ChatGPT for college essays and applications?
• Can colleges detect ChatGPT?
• Are there other tools and strategies that students can use, instead?

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Schools and colleges are worried about how new AI technology affects how students learn. (Don't worry. Robots aren't replacing your teachers...yet.)

What Is ChatGPT and Why Are Schools Talking About It?

ChatGPT (short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) is a chatbot created by OpenAI , an artificial intelligence research company. ChatGPT can be used for various tasks, like having human-like conversations, answering questions, giving recommendations, translating words and phrases—and writing things like essays. 

In order to do this, ChatGPT uses a neural network that’s been trained on thousands of resources to predict relationships between words. When you give ChatGPT a task, it uses that knowledge base to interpret your input or query. It then analyzes its data banks to predict the combinations of words that will best answer your question. 

So while ChatGPT might seem like it’s thinking, it’s actually pulling information from hundreds of thousands of resources , then answering your questions by looking for patterns in that data and predicting which words come next.  

Why Schools Are Concerned About ChatGPT

Unsurprisingly, schools are worried about ChatGPT and its misuse, especially in terms of academic dishonesty and plagiarism . Most schools, including colleges, require students’ work to be 100% their own. That’s because taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing someone else’s intellectual property and misrepresenting your skills. 

The problem with ChatGPT from schools’ perspective is that it does the writing and research for you, then gives you the final product. In other words, you’re not doing the work it takes to complete an assignment when you’re using ChatGPT , which falls under schools’ plagiarism and dishonesty policies.  

Colleges are also concerned with how ChatGPT will negatively affect students’ critical thinking, research, and writing skills . Essays and other writing assignments are used to measure students’ mastery of the material, and if students submit ChatGPT college essays, teachers will just be giving feedback on an AI’s writing…which doesn’t help the student learn and grow. 

Beyond that, knowing how to write well is an important skill people need to be successful throughout life. Schools believe that if students rely on ChatGPT to write their essays, they’re doing more than just plagiarizing—they’re impacting their ability to succeed in their future careers. 

Many Schools Have Already Banned ChatGPT

Schools have responded surprisingly quickly to AI use, including ChatGPT. Worries about academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation have led many high schools and colleges to ban the use of ChatGPT . Some schools have begun using AI-detection software for assignment submissions, and some have gone so far as to block students from using ChatGPT on their internet networks. 

It’s likely that schools will begin revising their academic honesty and plagiarism policies to address the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. You’ll want to stay up-to-date with your schools’ policies. 

ChatGPT is pretty amazing...but it's not a great tool for writing college essays. Here's why.

ChatGPT: College Admissions and Entrance Essays

College admissions essays—also called personal statements—ask students to explore important events, experiences, and ideas from their lives. A great entrance essay will explain what makes you you !  

ChatGPT is a machine that doesn’t know and can’t understand your experiences. That means using ChatGPT to write your admissions essays isn’t just unethical. It actually puts you at a disadvantage because ChatGPT can’t adequately showcase what it means to be you. 

Let’s take a look at four ways ChatGPT negatively impacts college admissions essays.

#1: ChatGPT Lacks Insight

We recommend students use u nexpected or slightly unusual topics because they help admissions committees learn more about you and what makes you unique. The chat bot doesn’t know any of that, so nothing ChatGPT writes can’t accurately reflect your experience, passions, or goals for the future. 

Because ChatGPT will make guesses about who you are, it won’t be able to share what makes you unique in a way that resonates with readers. And since that’s what admissions counselors care about, a ChatGPT college essay could negatively impact an otherwise strong application.  

#2: ChatGPT Might Plagiarize 

Writing about experiences that many other people have had isn’t a very strong approach to take for entrance essays . After all, you don’t want to blend in—you want to stand out! 

If you write your essay yourself and include key details about your past experiences and future goals, there’s little risk that you’ll write the same essay as someone else. But if you use ChatGPT—who’s to say someone else won’t, too? Since ChatGPT uses predictive guesses to write essays, there’s a good chance the text it uses in your essay already appeared in someone else’s.  

Additionally, ChatGPT learns from every single interaction it has. So even if your essay isn’t plagiarized, it’s now in the system. That means the next person who uses ChatGPT to write their essay may end up with yours. You’ll still be on the hook for submitting a ChatGPT college essay, and someone else will be in trouble, too.

#3: ChatGPT Doesn’t Understand Emotion 

Keep in mind that ChatGPT can’t experience or imitate emotions, and so its writing samples lack, well, a human touch ! 

A great entrance essay will explore experiences or topics you’re genuinely excited about or proud of . This is your chance to show your chosen schools what you’ve accomplished and how you’ll continue growing and learning, and an essay without emotion would be odd considering that these should be real, lived experiences and passions you have!

#4: ChatGPT Produced Mediocre Results

If you’re still curious what would happen if you submitted a ChatGPT college essay with your application, you’re in luck. Both Business Insider and Forbes asked ChatGPT to write a couple of college entrance essays, and then they sent them to college admissions readers to get their thoughts. 

The readers agreed that the essays would probably pass as being written by real students—assuming admissions committees didn’t use AI detection software—but that they both were about what a “very mediocre, perhaps even a middle school, student would produce.” The admissions professionals agreed that the essays probably wouldn’t perform very well with entrance committees, especially at more selective schools.  

That’s not exactly the reaction you want when an admission committee reads your application materials! So, when it comes to ChatGPT college admissions, it’s best to steer clear and write your admission materials by yourself. 

Can Colleges Detect ChatGPT?

We’ve already explained why it’s not a great idea to use ChatGPT to write your college essays and applications , but you may still be wondering: can colleges detect ChatGPT? 

In short, yes, they can! 

Software Can Detect ChatGPT

As technology improves and increases the risk of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation, software that can detect such technology is improving, too. For instance, OpenAI, the same company that built ChatGPT, is working on a text classifier that can tell the difference between AI-written text and human-written text .  

Turnitin, one of the most popular plagiarism detectors used by high schools and universities, also recently developed the AI Innovation Lab —a detection software designed to flag submissions that have used AI tools like ChatGPT. Turnitin says that this tool works with 98% confidence in detecting AI writing. 

Plagiarism and AI companies aren’t the only ones interested in AI-detection software. A 22-year old computer science student at Princeton created an app to detect ChatGPT writing, called Zero GPT. This software works by measuring the complexity of ideas and variety of sentence structures.  

Human Readers Can Detect ChatGPT 

It’s also worth keeping in mind that teachers can spot the use of ChatGPT themselves , even if it isn’t confirmed by a software detector. For example, if you’ve turned in one or two essays to your teacher already, they’re probably familiar with your unique writing style. If you submit a college essay draft essay that uses totally different vocabulary, sentence structures, and figures of speech, your teacher will likely take note.

Additionally , admissions committees and readers may be able to spot ChatGPT writing, too. ChatGPT (and AI writing, in general) uses more simplistic sentence structures with less variation, so that could make it easier to tell if you’ve submitted a ChatGPT college essay. These professionals also read thousands of essays every year, which means they know what a typical essay reads like. You want your college essay to catch their attention…but not because you used AI software! 

If you use ChatGPT responsibly, you can be as happy as these kids.

Pros and Cons of ChatGPT: College Admissions Edition

ChatGPT is a brand new technology, which means we’re still learning about the ways it can benefit us. It’s important to think about the pros and the cons to any new tool …and that includes artificial intelligence!

Let’s look at some of the good—and not-so-good—aspects of ChatGPT below. 

ChatGPT: The Good

It may seem like we’re focused on just the negatives of using ChatGPT in this article, but we’re willing to admit that the chatbot isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for learning if used responsibly !

Like we already mentioned, students shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write entire essays or assignments. They can use it, though, as a learning tool alongside their own critical thinking and writing skills.

Students can use ChatGPT responsibly to:

• Learn more about a topic . It’s a great place to get started for general knowledge and ideas about most subjects.
• Find reputable and relevant sources on a topic. Students can ask ChatGPT for names and information about leading scholars, relevant websites and databases, and more. 
• Brainstorm ideas for assignments. Students can share the ideas they already have with ChatGPT, and in return, the chatbot can suggest ideas for further exploration and even organization of their points.
• Check work (that they’ve written themselves!) for errors or cla rity. This is similar to how spell- and grammar-checking software is used. ChatGPT may be even better than some competitors for this, because students can actually ask ChatGPT to explain the errors and their solutions—not just to fix them. 

Before you use ChatGPT—even for the tasks mentioned above—you should talk to your teacher or school about their AI and academic dishonesty policies. It’s also a good idea to include an acknowledgement that you used ChatGPT with an explanation of its use. 

This guy made some bad decisions using ChatGPT. Don't be this guy.

ChatGPT: The Bad

The first model of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) was formally introduced to the public in November 2022, and the newer model (GPT-4) in March 2023. So, it’s still very new and there’s a lot of room for improvement .  

There are many misconceptions about ChatGPT. One of the most extreme is that the AI is all-knowing and can make its own decisions. Another is that ChatGPT is a search engine that, when asked a question, can just surf the web for timely, relevant resources and give you all of that information. Both of these beliefs are incorrect because ChatGPT is limited to the information it’s been given by OpenAI . 

Remember how the ‘PT’ in ChatGPT stands for “Pre-trained”? That means that every time OpenAI gives ChatGPT an update, it’s given more information to work with (and so it has more information to share with you). In other words, it’s “trained” on information so it can give you the most accurate and relevant responses possible—but that information can be limited and biased . Ultimately, humans at OpenAI decide what pieces of information to share with ChatGPT, so it’s only as accurate and reliable as the sources it has access to.

For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT-3.5 what notable headlines made the news last week, it would respond that it doesn’t have access to that information because its most recent update was in September 2021!

You’re probably already familiar with how easy it can be to come across misinformation, misleading and untrue information on the internet. Since ChatGPT can’t tell the difference between what is true and what isn’t, it’s up to the humans at OpenAI to make sure only accurate and true information is given to the chatbot . This leaves room for human error , and users of ChatGPT have to keep that in mind when using and learning from the chatbot.

These are just the most obvious problems with ChatGPT. Some other problems with the chatbot include:

• A lack of common sense. ChatGPT can create seemingly sensical responses to many questions and topics, but it doesn’t have common sense or complete background knowledge.
• A lack of empathy. ChatGPT doesn’t have emotions, so it can’t understand them, either. 
• An inability to make decisions or problem solve . While the chatbot can complete basic tasks like answering questions or giving recommendations, it can’t solve complex tasks. 

While there are some great uses for ChatGPT, it’s certainly not without its flaws.

Our bootcamp can help you put together amazing college essays that help you get into your dream schools—no AI necessary.

What Other Tools and Strategies Can Help Students Besides ChatGPT?

While it’s not a good idea to use ChatGPT for college admissions materials, it’s not the only tool available to help students with college essays and assignments.

One of the best strategies students can use to write good essays is to make sure they give themselves plenty of time for the assignment. The writing process includes much more than just drafting! Having time to brainstorm ideas, write out a draft, revise it for clarity and completeness, and polish it makes for a much stronger essay. 

Teachers are another great resource students can use, especially for college application essays. Asking a teacher (or two!) for feedback can really help students improve the focus, clarity, and correctness of an essay. It’s also a more interactive way to learn—being able to sit down with a teacher to talk about their feedback can be much more engaging than using other tools.

Using expert resources during the essay writing process can make a big difference, too. Our article outlines a complete list of strategies for students writing college admission essays. It breaks down what the Common Application essay is, gives tips for choosing the best essay topic, offers strategies for staying focused and being specific, and more.

You can also get help from people who know the college admissions process best, like former admissions counselors. PrepScholar’s Admissions Bootcamp guides you through the entire application process , and you’ll get insider tips and tricks from real-life admissions counselors that’ll make your applications stand out. Even better, our bootcamp includes step-by-step essay writing guidance, so you can get the help you need to make sure your essay is perfect.

If you’re hoping for more technological help, Grammarly is another AI tool that can check writing for correctness. It can correct things like misused and misspelled words and grammar mistakes, and it can improve your tone and style. 

It’s also widely available across multiple platforms through a Windows desktop app, an Android and iOS app, and a Google Chrome extension. And since Grammarly just checks your writing without doing any of the work for you, it’s totally safe to use on your college essays. 

The Bottom Line: ChatGPT College Admissions and Essays

ChatGPT will continue to be a popular discussion topic as it continues evolving. You can expect your chosen schools to address ChatGPT and other AI tools in their academic honesty and plagiarism policies in the near future—and maybe even to restrict or ban the use of the chatbot for school admissions and assignments.

As AI continues transforming, so will AI-detection. The goal is to make sure that AI is used responsibly by students so that they’re avoiding plagiarism and building their research, writing, and critical thinking skills. There are some great uses for ChatGPT when used responsibly, but you should always check with your teachers and schools beforehand.

ChatGPT’s “bad” aspects still need improving, and that’s going to take some time.Be aware that the chatbot isn’t even close to perfect, and it needs to be fact-checked just like other sources of information.

Similarly to other school assignments, don’t submit a ChatGPT college essay for college applications, either. College entrance essays should outline unique and interesting personal experiences and ideas, and those can only come from you.  

Just because ChatGPT isn’t a good idea doesn’t mean there aren’t resources to help you put together a great college essay. There are many other tools and strategies you can use instead of ChatGPT , many of which have been around for longer and offer better feedback. 

What’s Next?

Ready to write your college essays the old-fashioned way? Start here with our comprehensive guide to the admissions essays.  

Most students have to submit essays as part of their Common Application . Here's a complete breakdown of the Common App prompts —and how to answer them.

The most common type of essay answers the "why this college?" prompt. We've got an expert breakdown that shows you how to write a killer response , step by step. 

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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David Nield

5 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve, Not Replace, Your Writing

It's been quite a year for ChatGPT, with the large language model (LLM) now taking exams, churning out content , searching the web, writing code, and more. The AI chatbot can produce its own stories , though whether they're any good is another matter.

If you're in any way involved in the business of writing, then tools like ChatGPT have the potential to complete up-end the way you work—but at this stage, it's not inevitable that journalists, authors, and copywriters will be replaced by generative AI bots.

What we can say with certainty is that ChatGPT is a reliable writing assistant, provided you use it in the right way. If you have to put words in order as part of your job, here's how ChatGPT might be able to take your writing to the next level—at least until it replaces you, anyway.

Using a thesaurus as a writer isn't particularly frowned on; using ChatGPT to come up with the right word or phrase shouldn’t be either. You can use the bot to look for variations on a particular word, or get even more specific and say you want alternatives that are less or more formal, longer or shorter, and so on.

Where ChatGPT really comes in handy is when you're reaching for a word and you're not even sure it exists: Ask about "a word that means a sense of melancholy but in particular one that comes and goes and doesn't seem to have a single cause" and you'll get back "ennui" as a suggestion (or at least we did).

If you have characters talking, you might even ask about words or phrases that would typically be said by someone from a particular region, of a particular age, or with particular character traits. This being ChatGPT, you can always ask for more suggestions.

By Aarian Marshall

By Justin Pot

By David Nield

ChatGPT is never short of ideas.

Whatever you might think about the quality and character of ChatGPT's prose, it's hard to deny that it's quite good at coming up with ideas . If your powers of imagination have hit a wall then you can turn to ChatGPT for some inspiration about plot points, character motivations, the settings of scenes, and so on.

This can be anything from the broad to the detailed. Maybe you need ideas about what to write a novel or an article about—where it's set, what the context is, and what the theme is. If you're a short story writer, perhaps you could challenge yourself to write five tales inspired by ideas from ChatGPT.

Alternatively, you might need inspiration for something very precise, whether that's what happens next in a scene or how to summarize an essay. At whatever point in the process you get writer's block, then ChatGPT might be one way of working through it.

Writing is often about a lot more than putting words down in order. You'll regularly have to look up facts, figures, trends, history, and more to make sure that everything is accurate (unless your next literary work is entirely inside a fantasy world that you're imagining yourself).

ChatGPT can sometimes have the edge over conventional search engines when it comes to knowing what food people might have eaten in a certain year in a certain part of the world, or what the procedure is for a particular type of crime. Whereas Google might give you SEO-packed spam sites with conflicting answers, ChatGPT will actually return something coherent.

That said, we know that LLMs have a tendency to “hallucinate” and present inaccurate information—so you should always double-check what ChatGPT tells you with a second source to make sure you're not getting something wildly wrong.

Getting fictional character and place names right can be a challenge, especially when they're important to the plot. A name has to have the right vibe and the right connotations, and if you get it wrong it really sticks out on the page.

ChatGPT can come up with an unlimited number of names for people and places in your next work of fiction, and it can be a lot of fun playing around with this too. The more detail you give about a person or a place, the better—maybe you want a name that really reflects a character trait for example, or a geographical feature.

The elements of human creation and curation aren't really replaced, because you're still weighing up which names work and which don't, and picking the right one—but getting ChatGPT on the job can save you a lot of brainstorming time.

Get your names right with ChatGPT.

With a bit of cutting and pasting, you can quickly get ChatGPT to review your writing as well: It'll attempt to tell you if there's anything that doesn't make sense, if your sentences are too long, or if your prose is too lengthy.

From spotting spelling and grammar mistakes to recognizing a tone that's too formal, ChatGPT has plenty to offer as an editor and critic. Just remember that this is an LLM, after all, and it doesn't actually “know” anything—try to keep a reasonable balance between accepting ChatGPT's suggestions and giving it too much control.

If you're sharing your work with ChatGPT, you can also ask it for better ways to phrase something, or suggestions on how to change the tone—though this gets into the area of having the bot actually do your writing for you, which all genuine writers would want to avoid.

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Mastering ChatGPT: The Ultimate Prompts Guide for Academic Writing Excellence

ChatGPT, with its advanced AI capabilities, has emerged as a game-changer for many. Yet, its true potential is unlocked when approached with the right queries. The prompts listed in this article have been crafted to optimize your interaction with this powerful tool. By leveraging them, you not only streamline your writing process but also enhance the quality of your research and insights. As we wrap up, we urge you not to take our word for it. Dive into the world of ChatGPT, armed with these prompts, and witness the transformation in your academic writing endeavors firsthand.

ChatGPT Prompts for Idea Generation

If you’re stuck or unsure where to begin, ChatGPT can help brainstorm ideas or topics for your paper, thesis, or dissertation.

• Suggest some potential topics on [your broader subject or theme] for an academic paper.
• Suggest some potential topics within the field of [your broader subject] related to [specific interest or theme].
• I’m exploring the field of [broader subject, e.g., “psychology”]. Could you suggest some topics that intersect with [specific interest, e.g., “child development”] and are relevant to [specific context or region, e.g., “urban settings in Asia”]?
• Within the realm of [broader subject, e.g., “philosophy”], I’m intrigued by [specific interest, e.g., “existentialism”]. Could you recommend topics that bridge it with [another field or theme, e.g., “modern technology”] in the context of [specific region or era, e.g., “21st-century Europe”]?
• Act as my brainstorming partner. I’m working on [your broader subject or theme]. What topics could be pertinent for an academic paper?
• Act as my brainstorming partner for a moment. Given the broader subject of [discipline, e.g., ‘sociology’], can you help generate ideas that intertwine with [specific theme or interest, e.g., ‘social media’] and cater to an audience primarily from [region or demographic, e.g., ‘South East Asia’]?

ChatGPT Prompts for Structuring Content

The model can provide suggestions for how to organize your content, including potential section headers, logical flow of arguments, etc.

• How should I structure my paper on [your specific topic]? Provide an outline or potential section headers.
• I’m writing a paper about [your specific topic]. How should I structure it and which sub-topics should I cover within [chosen section, e.g., “Literature Review”]?
• For a paper that discusses [specific topic, e.g., “climate change”], how should I structure the [chosen section, e.g., “Literature Review”] and integrate studies from [specific decade or period, e.g., “the 2010s”]?
• I’m compiling a paper on [specific topic, e.g., “biodiversity loss”]. How should I arrange the [chosen section, e.g., “Discussion”] to incorporate perspectives from [specific discipline, e.g., “socio-economics”] and findings from [specified region or ecosystem, e.g., “tropical rainforests”]?
• Act as an editor for a moment. Based on a paper about [your specific topic], how would you recommend I structure it? Are there key sections or elements I should include?
• Act as a structural consultant for my paper on [topic, e.g., ‘quantum physics’]. Could you suggest a logical flow and potential section headers, especially when I aim to cover aspects like [specific elements, e.g., ‘quantum entanglement and teleportation’]?
• Act as my editorial guide. For a paper focused on [specific topic, e.g., “quantum computing”], how might I structure my [chosen section, e.g., “Findings”]? Especially when integrating viewpoints from [specific discipline, e.g., “software engineering”] and case studies from [specified region, e.g., “East Asia”]?

ChatGPT Prompts for Proofreading

While it might not replace a human proofreader, ChatGPT can help you identify grammatical errors, awkward phrasing, or inconsistencies in your writing.

• Review this passage for grammatical or stylistic errors: [paste your text here].
• Review this paragraph from my [type of document, e.g., “thesis”] for grammatical or stylistic errors: [paste your text here].
• Please review this passage from my [type of document, e.g., “dissertation”] on [specific topic, e.g., “renewable energy”] for potential grammatical or stylistic errors: [paste your text here].
• Kindly scrutinize this segment from my [type of document, e.g., “journal article”] concerning [specific topic, e.g., “deep-sea exploration”]. Highlight any linguistic or structural missteps and suggest how it might better fit the style of [target publication or audience, e.g., “Nature Journal”]: [paste your text here].
• Act as my proofreader. In this passage: [paste your text here], are there any grammatical or stylistic errors I should be aware of?
• Act as my preliminary proofreader. I’ve drafted a section for my [type of document, e.g., “research proposal”] about [specific topic, e.g., “nanotechnology”]. I’d value feedback on grammar, coherence, and alignment with [target publication or style, e.g., “IEEE standards”]: [paste your text here].

ChatGPT Prompts for Citation Guidance

Need help formatting citations or understanding the nuances of different citation styles (like APA, MLA, Chicago)? ChatGPT can guide you.

• How do I format this citation in [desired style, e.g., APA, MLA]? Here’s the source: [paste source details here].
• I’m referencing a [type of source, e.g., “conference paper”] authored by [author’s name] in my document. How should I format this citation in the [desired style, e.g., “Chicago”] style?
• Act as a citation guide. I need to reference a [source type, e.g., ‘journal article’] for my work. How should I format this using the [citation style, e.g., ‘APA’] method?
• Act as my citation assistant. I’ve sourced a [type of source, e.g., “web article”] from [author’s name] published in [year, e.g., “2018”]. How should I present this in [desired style, e.g., “MLA”] format?

ChatGPT Prompts for Paraphrasing

If you’re trying to convey information from sources without plagiarizing, the model can assist in rephrasing the content.

• Can you help me paraphrase this statement? [paste your original statement here].
• Help me convey the following idea from [source author’s name] in my own words: [paste the original statement here].
• I’d like to reference an idea from [source author’s name]’s work on [specific topic, e.g., “quantum physics”]. Can you help me paraphrase this statement without losing its essence: [paste the original statement here]?
• Act as a wordsmith. I’d like a rephrased version of this statement without losing its essence: [paste your original statement here].
• Act as my rephraser. Here’s a statement from [author’s name]’s work on [topic, e.g., ‘cognitive development’]: [paste original statement here]. How can I convey this without plagiarizing?
• Act as my plagiarism prevention aid. I’d like to include insights from [source author’s name]’s research on [specific topic, e.g., “solar energy”]. Help me convey this in my own words while maintaining the tone of my [type of work, e.g., “doctoral thesis”]: [paste the original statement here].

ChatGPT Prompts for Vocabulary Enhancement

If you’re looking for more sophisticated or subject-specific terminology, ChatGPT can suggest synonyms or alternative phrasing.

• I want a more academic or sophisticated way to express this: [paste your sentence or phrase here].
• In the context of [specific field or subject], can you suggest a more academic way to express this phrase: [paste your phrase here]?
• I’m writing a paper in the field of [specific discipline, e.g., “bioinformatics”]. How can I convey this idea more academically: [paste your phrase here]?
• Within the purview of [specific discipline, e.g., “astrophysics”], I wish to enhance this assertion: [paste your phrase here]. What terminologies or phrasing would resonate more with an audience well-versed in [related field or topic, e.g., “stellar evolution”]?
• Act as my thesaurus. For this phrase: [paste your sentence or phrase here], is there a more academic or sophisticated term or phrase I could use?
• Act as a lexicon expert in [field, e.g., ‘neuroscience’]. How might I express this idea more aptly: [paste your phrase here]?

ChatGPT Prompts for Clarifying Concepts

If you’re working in a field that’s not your primary area of expertise, the model can provide explanations or definitions for unfamiliar terms or concepts.

• Can you explain the concept of [specific term or concept] in the context of academic research?
• In [specific field, e.g., “sociology”], what does [specific term or concept] mean? And how does it relate to [another term or concept]?
• In the realm of [specific discipline, e.g., “neuroscience”], how would you define [term or concept A], and how does it differentiate from [term or concept B]?
• Act as my tutor. I’m a bit lost on the concept of [specific term or concept]. Can you break it down for me in the context of [specific academic field]?
• Act as my academic tutor for a moment. I’ve encountered some challenging terms in [specific discipline, e.g., “metaphysics”]. Could you elucidate the distinctions between [term A], [term B], and [term C], especially when applied in [specific context or theory, e.g., “Kantian philosophy”]?

ChatGPT Prompts for Draft Review

You can share sections or excerpts of your draft, and ChatGPT can provide general feedback or points for consideration.

• Please provide feedback on this excerpt from my draft: [paste excerpt here].
• Could you review this excerpt from my [type of document, e.g., “research proposal”] and provide feedback on [specific aspect, e.g., “clarity and coherence”]: [paste excerpt here]?
• I’d appreciate feedback on this fragment from my [type of document, e.g., “policy analysis”] that centers on [specific topic, e.g., “renewable energy adoption”]. Specifically, I’m looking for guidance on its [specific aspect, e.g., “argumentative flow”] and how it caters to [intended audience, e.g., “policy-makers in Southeast Asia”]: [paste excerpt here].
• Act as a reviewer for my journal submission. Could you critique this section of my draft: [paste excerpt here]?
• Act as my critique partner. I’ve written a segment for my [type of document, e.g., “literature review”] on [specific topic, e.g., “cognitive biases”]. Could you assess its [specific quality, e.g., “objectivity”], especially considering its importance for [target audience or application, e.g., “clinical psychologists”]: [paste excerpt here].

ChatGPT Prompts for Reference Pointers

If you’re looking for additional sources or literature on a topic, ChatGPT can point you to key papers, authors, or studies (though its knowledge is up to 2022, so it won’t have the latest publications).

• Can you recommend key papers or studies related to [your topic or research question]?
• I need references related to [specific topic] within the broader field of [your subject area]. Can you suggest key papers or authors?
• I’m researching [specific topic, e.g., “machine learning in healthcare”]. Can you suggest seminal works from the [specific decade, e.g., “2000s”] within the broader domain of [your general field, e.g., “computer science”]?
• My study orbits around [specific topic, e.g., “augmented reality in education”]. I’m especially keen on understanding its evolution during the [specific time frame, e.g., “late 2010s”]. Can you direct me to foundational papers or figures within [your overarching domain, e.g., “educational technology”]?
• Act as a literature guide. I’m diving into [your topic or research question]. Do you have suggestions for seminal papers or must-read studies?
• Act as my literary guide. My work revolves around [specific topic, e.g., “virtual reality in pedagogy”]. I’d appreciate direction towards key texts or experts from the [specific era, e.g., “early 2000s”], especially those that highlight applications in [specific setting, e.g., “higher education institutions”].

ChatGPT Prompts for Writing Prompts

For those facing writer’s block, ChatGPT can generate prompts or questions to help you think critically about your topic and stimulate your writing.

• I’m facing writer’s block on [your topic]. Can you give me some prompts or questions to stimulate my thinking?
• I’m writing about [specific topic] in the context of [broader theme or issue]. Can you give me questions that would enhance my discussion?
• I’m discussing [specific topic, e.g., “urban planning”] in relation to [another topic, e.g., “sustainable development”] in [specific region or country, e.g., “Latin America”]. Can you offer some thought-provoking prompts?
• Act as my muse. I’m struggling with [your topic]. Could you generate some prompts or lead questions to help steer my writing?
• Act as a muse for my writer’s block. Given the themes of [topic A, e.g., ‘climate change’] and its impact on [topic B, e.g., ‘marine ecosystems’], can you generate thought-provoking prompts?

ChatGPT Prompts for Thesis Statements

If you’re struggling with framing your thesis statement, ChatGPT can help you refine and articulate it more clearly.

• Help me refine this thesis statement for clarity and impact: [paste your thesis statement here].
• Here’s a draft thesis statement for my paper on [specific topic]: [paste your thesis statement]. How can it be made more compelling?
• I’m drafting a statement for my research on [specific topic, e.g., “cryptocurrency adoption”] in the context of [specific region, e.g., “European markets”]. Here’s my attempt: [paste your thesis statement]. Any suggestions for enhancement?
• Act as my thesis advisor. I’m shaping a statement on [topic, e.g., ‘blockchain in finance’]. Here’s my draft: [paste your thesis statement]. How might it be honed further?

ChatGPT Prompts for Abstract and Summary

The model can help in drafting, refining, or summarizing abstracts for your papers.

• Can you help me draft/summarize an abstract based on this content? [paste main points or brief content here].
• I’m submitting a paper to [specific conference or journal]. Can you help me summarize my findings from [paste main content or points] into a concise abstract?
• I’m aiming to condense my findings on [specific topic, e.g., “gene therapy”] from [source or dataset, e.g., “recent clinical trials”] into an abstract for [specific event, e.g., “a biotech conference”]. Can you assist?
• Act as an abstracting service. Based on the following content: [paste main points or brief content here], how might you draft or summarize an abstract?
• Act as my editorial assistant. I’ve compiled findings on [topic, e.g., ‘genetic modifications’] from my research. Help me craft or refine a concise abstract suitable for [event or publication, e.g., ‘an international biology conference’].

ChatGPT Prompts for Methodological Assistance

If you’re unsure about the methodology section of your paper, ChatGPT can provide insights or explanations about various research methods.

• I’m using [specific research method, e.g., qualitative interviews] for my study on [your topic]. Can you provide insights or potential pitfalls?
• For a study on [specific topic], I’m considering using [specific research method]. Can you explain its application and potential challenges in this context?
• I’m considering a study on [specific topic, e.g., “consumer behavior”] using [research method, e.g., “ethnographic studies”]. Given the demographic of [target group, e.g., “millennials in urban settings”], what might be the methodological challenges?
• My exploration of [specific topic, e.g., “consumer sentiment”] deploys [research method, e.g., “mixed-method analysis”]. Given my target demographic of [specific group, e.g., “online shoppers aged 18-25”], what are potential methodological challenges and best practices in [specific setting or platform, e.g., “e-commerce platforms”]?
• Act as a methodological counselor. I’m exploring [topic, e.g., ‘consumer behavior patterns’] using [research technique, e.g., ‘qualitative interviews’]. Given the scope of [specific context or dataset, e.g., ‘online retail platforms’], what insights can you offer?

ChatGPT Prompts for Language Translation

While not perfect, ChatGPT can assist in translating content to and from various languages, which might be helpful for non-native English speakers or when dealing with sources in other languages.

• Please translate this passage to [desired language]: [paste your text here].
• I’m integrating a passage for my research on [specific topic, e.g., “Mesoamerican civilizations”]. Could you assist in translating this content from [source language, e.g., “Nahuatl”] to [target language, e.g., “English”] while preserving academic rigor: [paste your text here]?
• Act as my translation assistant. I have this passage in [source language, e.g., ‘French’] about [topic, e.g., ‘European history’]: [paste your text here]. Can you render it in [target language, e.g., ‘English’] while maintaining academic integrity?

ChatGPT Prompts for Ethical Considerations

ChatGPT can provide a general overview of ethical considerations in research, though specific guidance should come from institutional review boards or ethics committees.

• What are some general ethical considerations when conducting research on [specific topic or population]?
• I’m conducting research involving [specific group or method, e.g., “minors” or “online surveys”]. What are key ethical considerations I should be aware of in the context of [specific discipline or field]?
• My investigation encompasses [specific method or technique, e.g., “genome editing”] on [target population or organism, e.g., “plant species”]. As I operate within the framework of [specific institution or body, e.g., “UNESCO guidelines”], what ethical imperatives should I foreground, especially when considering implications for [broader context, e.g., “global food security”]?
• Act as an ethics board member. I’m conducting research on [specific topic or population]. Could you outline key ethical considerations I should bear in mind?
• Act as an ethics overview guide. My research involves [specific technique or method, e.g., ‘live human trials’] in the realm of [specific discipline, e.g., ‘medical research’]. What general ethical considerations might be paramount, especially when targeting [specific population or group, e.g., ‘adolescents’]?

ChatGPT’s advanced AI capabilities have made it a standout tool in the world of academic writing. However, its real strength shines when paired with the right questions. The prompts in this article are tailored to optimize your experience with ChatGPT. By using them, you can streamline your writing and elevate the depth of your research. But don’t just take our word for it. Explore ChatGPT with these prompts and see the transformation in your academic writing for yourself. Excellent writing is just one prompt away.

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How to use Chat GPT to Write an Essay

Florencia basavilbaso.

• Best Apps And Tools , Writing Tips

Content Writer At Gradehacker

• February, 2023

If you want to speed up the essay-writing process with AI, here you’ll learn which are the basic tips you need to know to write an essay with Chat GPT.

How to Write an Essay With Chat GPT

To write an essay with Chat GPT, these are the four basic tips you need to know:

• Edit and refine the generated text
• Write a clear and concise prompt
• Take time to learn about Chat GPT
• Add your own thoughts to make it personal

Having problems to write your essay?

If Chat GPT isn’t enough and you need help with a last-minute paper, we are here to help you!

Having problems writing?

By now, you’ve probably heard about Chat GPT; an amazing AI that can (almost) write original content as if it was a real human being. So, now you are wondering how to use Chat GPT to write an essay. 

For that, we created this blog to guide you through each step so you can take all the benefits this platform has for you and use it in your favor.

Here at Gradehacker , we’ve been years dedicated to helping and improving non-traditional student’s life in multiple ways! Besides assisting them with their classes and essays , we are the most trusted resource for valuable information and tips that can change the way you work!

And today, we introduce you to Chat GPT !

This AI can help you write a college essay quickly and efficiently. If you want to know how to use chat GPT to write an essay, learn what are its pros and cons, and incorporate the best tips to change how you approach your essays, you are in the right place! 

Let’s start!

What is Chat GPT?

First, we’ll address some basics here. Let’s talk about what this platform is and what it can do for you!

ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a natural language processing technology that uses artificial intelligence to generate text based on a prompt. It can be used to generate ideas, structure sentences, and even create entire essays.

This computer program was created by the artificial intelligence research laboratory OpenAI and launched on November 30, 2022. It is still a pretty new platform and has a lot to improve, but it also has several advantages that can do more good than bad for you!

It is free to the public, but we recommend taking advantage of their free service as long as you can because it was created with the intention of monetizing the service in the future.

Meaning, Chat GPT won’t continue being free for too long.

Another interesting fact is that the service works best in English but is also able to function in some other languages.

What Can You Use Chat GPT For?

So, after reading what Chat GPT is, you are probably wondering what you can use it for.

Programs like this one which can generate text based on a prompt, are good for:

• When you want to save time and don't feel inspired to write
• Don't know how to continue what you started
• Getting ideas
• Start a project

We always recommend checking and editing the text because it’s not always accurate , and the information is often wrong, especially when it comes to dates, rates, or anything very specific.

But of course, there are other ways you can use Chat GPT. 

It can help you create a title for your essay topics, text for an announcement or copywriting, an article, or what you came for: an essay!

And that leads us to the main question: how do we use it?

How to Use Chat GPT to Write an Essay

If this AI is appropriately used, it can become the saver you’ve been yearning for. 

In short, to write an essay with Chat GPT, you need to follow this process:

2) Put a command 

3) Change the command until you get the desired outcome

Now let’s see how it works.

To start, let’s go to Chat GPT website and press where it says “ Try Chat GPT “

Once we log in, at the bottom of the page you’ll find a text box where you will need to write a command. This could be the title of the essay, a topic sentence, or even a few keywords. 

After providing the prompt, Chat GPT will generate text based on it.

The text will come out as a number of items containing specific ideas about the topic we asked for.  

Then, as a new command, you can ask Chat GPT to expand on the previous information.

Because Chat GPT remembers the previous information generated, you can also ask it to write more information from a specific item. In order to do that, you can go where you wrote your first command and, this time, put something like: “write essay line (or paragraph) about (item number).” 

You can also command multiple things at once , for example: “write an essay introduction with heading about item 7,”  or you can even command to do it for every item.

You can then edit and refine the generated text to make your essay unique and give it a personal touch as it would be with human writing.

Do you need a step-by-step tutorial on how to write an essay with Chat GPT?

If you want to use Chat GPT to write an entire essay from scratch , you can read our entire experience or check out our videos!

Pros and Cons of Using Chat GPT

As with any technology, there are both advantages and disadvantages to using Chat GPT.

Pros of Chat GPT

On the plus side, we can say that:

• It is much faster than traditional writing methods, and it can save you time and effort when writing an essay
• It can help you come up with ideas to get started on a project and structure your essay in a more organized way
• Reduces the need for research , as it can generate text based on the prompt without any additional input.
• It can provide you with information that is relevant to your topic
• It can help you refine and edit your text to make it unique

Cons of Chat GPT

But we know that Chat GPT is not perfect, so on the downside, it is essential to note that:

• Sometimes it can generate text that is not accurate , has incorrect premises, and is irrelevant to the prompt
• It can be challenging to use if you are not familiar with natural language processing technology
• You may have difficulty editing and refining the generated text to make it unique and personal
• It could end up being time-consuming if you don't know how to use the platform correctly
• Because it is trained on data, it may contain inherent biases, and this can be reflected in the outputted text

It is important to be aware of the potential for bias when using Chat GPT to generate essays , as this could lead to inaccurate or offensive results.

Also, be aware of the possibility of plagiarism when using it, as this could lead to serious consequences. Taking the time to check for plagiarism before submitting a written essay is essential to ensure its originality and accuracy.

And to save yourself from falling into those situations, be sure to read our blog post on how to avoid unintentional plagiarism.

How to Avoid Plagiarism When Using Chat GPT

To avoid plagiarism when using Chat GPT to write an essay, it is critical to double-check any generated content before submitting it. Using a reliable plagiarism checker is also helpful to ensure the content is entirely original.

These are some plagiarism software you can use:

If you want to know how these platforms work, check our video, where we’ll show you what they do, why they’re useful, and why they’re better than the rest.

Chat GPT Plus

One of the biggest problems with Chat GPT is that it might not always be available to use.

Many times, when we go to the website, what can happen is that there are a lot of people using it, which will create high traffic. When that happens, it will appear on the screen a text that says:

“ChatGPT is at capacity right now. Get notified when we’re back .” 

There, you can click on get notified, put your email address, and wait until the traffic slows down.

But if you don’t want to deal with waiting to be notified, there is an alternative choice: subscribe to  Chat GPT Plus.

By subscribing, you’ll gain:

• Access to ChatGPT at all times, even during the busiest periods
• Faster response times
• Priority access to new features and improvements

The subscription has a price of $20 per month and is only available for customers in the United States.

Having doubts on how we can help you?

Get in touch with us!

Tips for Using Chat GPT

If you decide to use Chat GPT to write your essay, there are a few tips that can help you get the most out of it.

• Provide a clear and concise prompt: This will help Chat GPT generate the most accurate and relevant text.
• Edit, add your own thoughts, and refine the generated text to make it unique and personal
• If you are not familiar with natural language processing technology, take some time to learn about it before using Chat GPT

These tips will make a difference in your work, especially for those long essays where you need to do a lot of research. 

Knowing how to write a research paper or an argumentative essay is highly necessary and essential for a college student, even if you have Chat GPT helping you throughout the process, so in case you are unsure or need to refresh that, check out our video about it! 

Make Your Writing Stand Out When Using Chat GPT to Write an Essay

With our tips and guidance on how to make your essays stand out when using Chat GPT and the potential pitfalls to avoid, you’ll be in a great position to produce high-quality essays.

On the other side, you may like to know that here at Gradehacker, we offer college essays , classes and degree help services to help students like you reach their highest potential.

To check more helpful information, check our blogs:

What You Need For Your College Research Paper Outline

5 Common Essay Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Best AI to Write Essays

How Much Does it Cost to Write My Essay?

Best Apps For Writing 2024 | Boost Your Writing Skills

Write an Essay From Scratch With Chat GPT: Step-by-Step Tutorial

Florencia Basavilbaso is a content creator passioned for writing, music, films, and the arts. At Gradehacker, she helps to improve non-traditional students life’s by finding and providing the most useful information, so they can always progress. You can find her on LinkedIn .

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ZDNET's editorial team writes on behalf of you, our reader. Our goal is to deliver the most accurate information and the most knowledgeable advice possible in order to help you make smarter buying decisions on tech gear and a wide array of products and services. Our editors thoroughly review and fact-check every article to ensure that our content meets the highest standards. If we have made an error or published misleading information, we will correct or clarify the article. If you see inaccuracies in our content, please report the mistake via this form .

What is ChatGPT and why does it matter? Here's what you need to know

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot with natural language processing (NLP) that allows you to have human-like conversations to complete various tasks. The  generative AI  tool can answer questions and assist you with tasks such as composing emails, essays, code, and more.

Also :  How to use ChatGPT: What you need to know now

It's currently  open to use for free . A paid subscription version called ChatGPT Plus launched in February 2023 with access to priority access to OpenAI's latest models and updates.

Who made ChatGPT?

AI startup OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022. OpenAI has also developed  DALL-E 2  and DALL-E 3 , popular  AI image generators , and Whisper, an automatic speech recognition system. 

Who owns ChatGPT currently?

OpenAI owns ChatGPT. Microsoft is a major investor in OpenAI thanks to multiyear, multi-billion dollar  investments. Elon Musk was an investor when OpenAI was first founded in 2015, but has since completely severed ties with the startup and created his own AI chatbot, Grok .

How can you access ChatGPT?

On April 1, 2024, OpenAI stopped requiring you to log in to use ChatGPT. Now, you can access ChatGPT simply by visiting  chat.openai.com . You can also access ChatGPT  via an app on your iPhone  or  Android  device.

Once you visit the site, you can start chatting away with ChatGPT. A great way to get started is by asking a question, similar to what you would do with Google. You can ask as many questions as you'd like.

Also: ChatGPT no longer requires a login, but you might want one anyway. Here's why

There are still some perks to creating an OpenAI account, such saving and reviewing your chat history and accessing custom instructions. Creating an OpenAI account is entirely free and easy. You can even log in with your Google account.

For step-by-step instructions, check out ZDNET's guide on  how to start using ChatGPT . 

Is there a ChatGPT app?

Yes, an official ChatGPT app is available for both iPhone and Android users. 

Also: ChatGPT dropped a free app for iPhones. Does it live up to the hype?

Make sure to download OpenAI's app, as there are a plethora of copycat fake apps listed on Apple's App Store and the Google Play Store that are not affiliated with the startup.

Is ChatGPT available for free?

ChatGPT is free to use, regardless of what you use it for, including writing, coding, and much more. 

There is a subscription option , ChatGPT Plus, that users can take advantage of that costs $20/month. The paid subscription model guarantees users extra perks, such as priority access to GPT-4o and the latest upgrades. 

Also: ChatGPT vs ChatGPT Plus: Is it worth the subscription fee?

Although the subscription price may seem steep, it is the same amount as Microsoft Copilot Pro and Google One AI, Microsoft's and Google's premium AI offerings. 

The free version is still a solid option as it can access the same model and most of the same perks. One major exception: only subscribers get guaranteed access to GPT-4o when the model is at capacity. 

I tried using ChatGPT and it says it's at capacity. What does that mean?

The ChatGPT website operates using servers. When too many people hop onto these servers, they may overload and can't process your request. If this happens to you, you can visit the site later when fewer people are trying to access the tool. You can also keep the tab open and refresh it periodically. 

Also: The best AI chatbots

If you want to skip the wait and have reliable access, you can subscribe to  ChatGPT Plus  for general access during peak times, faster response times, and priority access to new features and improvements, including priority access to GPT-4o.

You can also try using Bing's AI chatbot, Copilot . This chatbot is free to use, runs on GPT-4, has no wait times, and can access the internet for more accurate information.

What is ChatGPT used for?

ChatGPT has many functions in addition to answering simple questions. ChatGPT can compose essays , have philosophical conversations, do math, and even code for you . 

The tasks ChatGPT can help with also don't have to be so ambitious. For example, my favorite use of ChatGPT is for help creating basic lists for chores, such as packing and grocery shopping, and to-do lists that make my daily life more productive. The possibilities are endless. 

ZDNET has published many ChatGPT how-to guides. Below are some of the most popular ones. 

Use ChatGPT to: 

• Write an essay
• Create an app
• Build your resume
• Write Excel formulas
• Summarize content
• Write a cover letter
• Start an Etsy business
• Create charts and tables
• Write Adruino drivers

Can ChatGPT generate images?

Yes, ChatGPT can generate images, but only for ChatGPT Plus subscribers. Since OpenAI discontinued DALL-E 2 in February 2024, the only way to access its most advanced AI image generator, DALL-E 3, through OpenAI's offerings is via its chatbot and ChatGPT Plus subscription.

Also: DALL-E adds new ways to edit and create AI-generated images. Learn how to use it

Microsoft's Copilot offers image generation, which is also powered by DALL-E 3, in its chatbot for free. This is a great alternative if you don't want to shell out the money for ChatGPT Plus.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT runs on a large language model (LLM) architecture created by OpenAI called the  Generative Pre-trained Transformer  (GPT). Since its launch, the free version of ChatGPT ran on a fine-tuned model in the GPT-3.5 series until May 2024, when the startup upgraded the model to GPT-4o. 

Also:   Here's a deep dive into how ChatGPT works  

With a subscription to ChatGPT Plus , you can access GPT-3.5, GPT-4, or  GPT-4o . Plus, users also have the added perk of priority access to GPT-4o, even when it is at capacity, while free users get booted down to GPT-3.5. 

Generative AI models of this type are trained on vast amounts of information from the internet, including websites, books, news articles, and more.

What does ChatGPT stand for?

As mentioned above, the last three letters in ChatGPT's namesake stand for Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), a family of large language models created by OpenAI that uses deep learning to generate human-like, conversational text. 

Also: What does GPT stand for? Understanding GPT 3.5, GPT 4, GPT-4 Turbo, and more

The "Chat" part of the name is simply a callout to its chatting capabilities. 

Is ChatGPT better than a search engine?

ChatGPT is a language model created to converse with the end user. A search engine indexes web pages on the internet to help users find information. One is not better than the other, as each suit different purposes. 

When searching for as much up-to-date, accurate information as you can access, your best bet is a search engine. It will provide you with pages upon pages of sources you can peruse. 

Also: The best AI search engines of 2024: Google, Perplexity, and more

As of May, the free version of ChatGPT can get responses from both the GPT-4o model and the web. It will only pull its answer from, and ultimately list, a handful of sources, as opposed to showing nearly endless search results.

For example, I used GPT-4o to answer, "What is the weather today in San Francisco?" The response told me it searched four sites and provided links to them. 

If you are looking for a platform that can explain complex topics in an easy-to-understand manner, then ChatGPT might be what you want. If you want the best of both worlds, there are plenty of AI search engines on the market that combine both.

What are ChatGPT's limitations?

Despite its impressive capabilities, ChatGPT still has limitations. Users sometimes need to reword questions multiple times for ChatGPT to understand their intent. A bigger limitation is a lack of quality in responses, which can sometimes be plausible-sounding but are verbose or make no practical sense. 

Instead of asking for clarification on ambiguous questions, the model guesses what your question means, which can lead to poor responses. Generative AI models are also subject to hallucinations, which can result in inaccurate responses.

Does ChatGPT give wrong answers?

As mentioned above, ChatGPT, like all language models, has  limitations  and can give nonsensical answers and incorrect information, so it's important to double-check the data it gives you.

Also: 8 ways to reduce ChatGPT hallucinations

OpenAI recommends that you provide feedback on what ChatGPT generates by using the thumbs-up and thumbs-down buttons to improve its underlying model. You can even join the startup's Bug Bounty program , which offers up to $20,000 for reporting security bugs and safety issues.

Can ChatGPT refuse to answer my prompts?

AI systems like ChatGPT can and do reject  inappropriate requests . The AI assistant can identify inappropriate submissions to prevent the generation of unsafe content.

Also:  6 things ChatGPT can't do (and another 20 it refuses to do)

These submissions include questions that violate someone's rights, are offensive, are discriminatory, or involve illegal activities. The ChatGPT model can also challenge incorrect premises, answer follow-up questions, and even admit mistakes when you point them out.

These guardrails are important. AI models can generate advanced, realistic content that can be exploited by bad actors for harm, such as spreading misinformation about public figures and influencing elections .

Can I chat with ChatGPT?

Although some people use ChatGPT for elaborate functions, such as writing code or even malware , you can use ChatGPT for more mundane activities, such as having a friendly conversation. 

Also:  Do you like asking ChatGPT questions? You could get paid (a lot) for it

Some conversation starters could be as simple as, "I am hungry, what food should I get?" or as elaborate as, "What do you think happens in the afterlife?" Either way, ChatGPT is sure to have an answer for you. 

Is ChatGPT safe?

People are expressing concerns about AI chatbots replacing or atrophying human intelligence. For example, a chatbot can write an article on any topic efficiently (though not necessarily accurately) within seconds, potentially eliminating the need for human writers.

Chatbots can also write an entire essay within seconds, making it easier for students to cheat or avoid learning how to write properly. This even led  some school districts to block access  when ChatGPT initially launched. 

Also:  Generative AI can be the academic assistant an underserved student needs

Now, not only have many of those schools decided to unblock the technology, but some higher education institutions have been  catering their academic offerings  to AI-related coursework. 

Another concern with AI chatbots is the possible spread of misinformation. ChatGPT itself says: "My responses are not intended to be taken as fact, and I always encourage people to verify any information they receive from me or any other source." OpenAI also notes that ChatGPT sometimes writes "plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers."

Also:  Microsoft and OpenAI detect and disrupt nation-state cyber threats that use AI, report shows

Lastly, there are ethical concerns regarding the information ChatGPT was trained on, since the startup scraped the internet to train the chatbot. 

It also automatically uses people's interactions with the free version of the chatbot to further train its models, raising privacy concerns. OpenAI lets you turn off training in ChatGPT's settings.

Does ChatGPT plagiarize?

Yes, sort of. OpenAI scraped the internet to train ChatGPT. Therefore, the technology's knowledge is influenced by other people's work. Since there is no guarantee that when OpenAI outputs its answers it is entirely original, the chatbot may regurgitate someone else's work in your answer, which is considered plagiarism. 

Is there a ChatGPT detector?

Concerns about students using AI to cheat mean the need for a ChatGPT text detector is becoming more evident. 

In January 2023, OpenAI released a free tool to target this problem. Unfortunately, OpenAI's "classifier" tool could only correctly identify 26% of AI-written text with a "likely AI-written" designation. Furthermore, it provided false positives 9% of the time, incorrectly identifying human-written work as AI-produced. 

The tool performed so poorly  that, six months after being released, OpenAI it shut down "due to its low rate of accuracy." Despite the tool's failure, the startup claims to be researching more effective techniques for AI text identification.

Also: OpenAI unveils text-to-video model and the results are astonishing

Other AI detectors exist on the market, including GPT-2 Output Detector ,  Writer AI Content Detector , and Content at Scale's AI Content Detection  tool. ZDNET put these tools to the test, and the results were underwhelming: all three were found to be unreliable sources for spotting AI, repeatedly giving false negatives. Here are  ZDNET's full test results .

What are the common signs something was written by ChatGPT?

Although tools aren't sufficient for detecting ChatGPT-generated writing, a  study  shows that humans could detect AI-written text by looking for politeness. The study's results indicate that  ChatGPT's writing style is extremely polite . And unlike humans, it cannot produce responses that include metaphors, irony, or sarcasm.

Will my conversations with ChatGPT be used for training?

One of the major risks when using generative AI models is that they become more intelligent by being trained on user inputs. Therefore, when familiarizing yourself with how to use ChatGPT, you might wonder if your specific conversations will be used for training and, if so, who can view your chats.

Also:  This ChatGPT update fixed one of my biggest productivity issues with the AI chatbot

OpenAI will use your conversations with the free chatbot to automatically training data to refine its models. You can opt out of the startup using your data for model training by clicking on the question mark in the bottom left-hand corner, Settings, and turning off "Improve the model for everyone."

What is GPT-4?

GPT-4 is OpenAI's language model that is much more advanced than its predecessor, GPT-3.5. Users can access GPT-4 by subscribing to ChatGPT Plus for $20 per month or using Microsoft's Copilot.

Also: What does GPT stand for? Understanding GPT-3.5, GPT-4, and more

GPT-4 has advanced intellectual capabilities, meaning it outperforms GPT-3.5 in a series of simulated benchmark exams. The newer model also supposedly produces fewer hallucinations. 

What is GPT-4o?

GPT-4o is OpenAI's latest, fastest, and most advanced flagship model. As the name implies, it has the same intelligence as GPT-4. However, the "o" in the title stands for "omni," referring to its multimodal capabilities, which allow it to understand text, audio, image, and video inputs and output text, audio, and image outputs. 

Also:  6 ways OpenAI just supercharged ChatGPT for free users

The model is 50% cheaper in the API than GPT-4 Turbo while still matching its English and coding capabilities and outperforming it in non-English languages, vision, and audio understanding -- a big win for developers.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT worth considering?

Although ChatGPT gets the most buzz, other options are just as good -- and might even be better suited to your needs. ZDNET has created a list of the best chatbots, which have all been tested by us and show which tool is best for your requirements. 

Also: 4 things Claude AI can do that ChatGPT can't

Despite ChatGPT's extensive abilities, there are major downsides to the AI chatbot. If you want to try the technology, there are plenty of other options: Copilot , Claude , Perplexity ,  Jasper , and more.  

Is ChatGPT smart enough to pass benchmark exams?

Yes, ChatGPT is capable of passing a series of benchmark exams. A professor at Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania's business school, used ChatGPT to take an MBA exam and the results were quite impressive. 

ChatGPT not only passed the exam, but the tool scored between a B- and a B. The professor, Christian Terwiesch, was impressed at its basic operations management, process analysis questions, and explanations.

OpenAI also tested the chatbot's ability to pass benchmark exams. Although ChatGPT could pass many of these benchmark exams, its scores were usually in the lower percentile. However, with GPT-4, ChatGPT can score much higher.

For example, ChatGPT using GPT-3.5 scored in the lower 10th percentile of a simulated Bar Exam, while GPT-4 scored in the top 10th percentile. You can see more examples from OpenAI in the chart below.

Can ChatGPT be used for job application assistance?

Yes, ChatGPT is a great resource to help with job applications. Undertaking a job search can be tedious and difficult, and ChatGPT can help you lighten the load. ChatGPT can build your resume  and write a cover letter .

Also :  How to use ChatGPT to write an essay

If your application has any written supplements, you can use ChatGPT to help you write those essays or personal statements . 

What are the most common ChatGPT plugins, and how do I use them?

Plugins allowed ChatGPT to connect to third-party applications, including access to real-time information on the web. The plugins expanded ChatGPT's abilities , allowing it to assist with many more activities, such as planning a trip or finding a place to eat. 

Also:  My two favorite ChatGPT Plus features and the remarkable things I can do with them

On March 19, 2024, however, OpenAI stopped allowing users to install new plugins or start new conversations with existing ones. Instead, OpenAI replaced plugins with GPTs , which are easier for developers to build. 

Users can find 3 million ChatGPT chatbots, also known as GPTs, on the GPT store. Unfortunately, there is also a lot of spam in the GPT store.

What is Microsoft's involvement with ChatGPT?

Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI, the AI startup behind ChatGPT, long before ChatGPT was released to the public. Microsoft's first involvement with OpenAI was in 2019, when the company invested $1 billion, and then another $2 billion in the years after. In January 2023, Microsoft extended its partnership with OpenAI through a multiyear, multi-billion dollar investment .

Also: ChatGPT vs. Copilot: Which AI chatbot is better for you?

 Neither company disclosed the investment value, but unnamed sources told Bloomberg that it could total $10 billion over multiple years. In return, OpenAI's exclusive cloud-computing provider is Microsoft Azure, powering all OpenAI workloads across research, products, and API services.

Microsoft has also used its OpenAI partnership to revamp its Bing search engine and improve its browser. 

On February 7, 2023, Microsoft unveiled a new Bing tool , now known as Copilot, that runs on OpenAI's GPT-4, customized specifically for search.

What does Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) have to do with ChatGPT?

In February 2023,  Microsoft unveiled  a new version of Bing -- and its standout feature was its integration with ChatGPT. When it was announced, Microsoft shared that Bing Chat, now Copilot, was powered by a next-generation version of OpenAI's large language model, making it "more powerful than ChatGPT." Five weeks after the launch, Microsoft revealed that Copilot had been running on GPT-4 before the model had even launched. 

How does Copilot compare to ChatGPT?

Copilot uses OpenAI's GPT-4, which means that since its launch, it has been more efficient and capable than the standard, free version of ChatGPT. At the time, Copilot boasted several other features over ChatGPT, such as access to the internet, knowledge of current information, and footnotes.

In May 2024, however, OpenAI supercharged the free version of its chatbot with GPT-4o. The upgrade gave users GPT-4 level intelligence, the ability to get responses from the web via ChatGPT Browse with Bing, analyze data, chat about photos and documents, use GPTs, access the GPT Store, and Voice Mode. Therefore, after the upgrade, ChatGPT reclaimed its crown as the best AI chatbot. 

What is Gemini and how does it relate to ChatGPT?

Gemini is Google's AI chat service, a rival to ChatGPT. On February 6, 2023, Google introduced its experimental AI chat service, which was then called Google Bard. Over a month after the announcement, Google began rolling out  access to Bard first via a waitlist . Now, it is available to the general public. 

Artificial Intelligence

Chatgpt vs. copilot: which ai chatbot is better for you, how to use chatgpt (and how to access gpt-4o), what does gpt stand for understanding gpt-3.5, gpt-4, gpt-4o, and more.

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies for more wide-ranging needs. And that growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory, even if CEO and co-founder Sam Altman’s firing and swift return  raised concerns about its direction and opened the door for competitors.

What does that mean for OpenAI, ChatGPT and its other ambitions? The fallout is still settling, but it might empower competitors like Meta and its LLaMA family of large language models , or help other AI startups get attention and funding as the industry watches OpenAI implode and put itself back together.

While there is a more… nefarious side to ChatGPT, it’s clear that AI tools are not going away anytime soon. Since its initial launch nearly a year ago, ChatGPT has hit 100 million weekly active users , and OpenAI is heavily investing in it.

Prior to the leadership chaos, on November 6, OpenAI held its first developer conference: OpenAI DevDay. During the conference, it announced a slew of updates coming to GPT, including GPT-4 Turbo (a super-charged version of GPT-4 , its latest language-writing model) and a multimodal API . OpenAI also unveiled the GPT store , where users could create and monetize their own custom versions of GPT. Though the launch was delayed in December , it officially launched in January.

GPT-4, which can write more naturally and fluently than previous models, remains largely exclusive to paying ChatGPT users. But you can access GPT-4 for free through Microsoft’s Bing Chat in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Safari web browsers. Beyond GPT-4 and OpenAI DevDay announcements, OpenAI recently connected ChatGPT to the internet for all users. And with the integration of DALL-E 3, users are also able to generate both text prompts and images right in ChatGPT. 

Here’s a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we’ve been updating throughout the year. And if you have any other questions, check out our ChatGPT FAQ here .

Timeline of the most recent ChatGPT updates

February 2024, january 2024, december 2023.

• November 2023 

October 2023

September 2023, august 2023, february 2023, january 2023, december 2022, november 2022.

• ChatGPT FAQs

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

The launch of GPT-4o has driven the company’s biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile , despite the model being freely available on the web. Mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s most recent launch.

OpenAI to remove ChatGPT’s Scarlett Johansson-like voice

After demoing its new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI announced it is pausing one of its voices , Sky, after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson in “Her.”

OpenAI explained in a blog post that Sky’s voice is “not an imitation” of the actress and that AI voices should not intentionally mimic the voice of a celebrity. The blog post went on to explain how the company chose its voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.

We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them. Read more about how we chose these voices: https://t.co/R8wwZjU36L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 20, 2024

ChatGPT lets you add files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

OpenAI announced new updates for easier data analysis within ChatGPT . Users can now upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, interact with tables and charts, and export customized charts for presentations. The company says these improvements will be added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.

We're rolling out interactive tables and charts along with the ability to add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive into ChatGPT. Available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users over the coming weeks. https://t.co/Fu2bgMChXt pic.twitter.com/M9AHLx5BKr — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit that will give the company access to “real-time, structured and unique content” from the social network. Content from Reddit will be incorporated into ChatGPT, and the companies will work together to bring new AI-powered features to Reddit users and moderators.

We’re partnering with Reddit to bring its content to ChatGPT and new products: https://t.co/xHgBZ8ptOE — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI debuts GPT-4o “omni” model now powering ChatGPT

OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new omni model, GPT-4o, which has a black hole-like interface , as well as voice and vision capabilities that feel eerily like something out of “Her.” GPT-4o is set to roll out “iteratively” across its developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks.

OpenAI demos real-time language translation with its latest GPT-4o model. pic.twitter.com/pXtHQ9mKGc — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) May 13, 2024

OpenAI to build a tool that lets content creators opt out of AI training

The company announced it’s building a tool, Media Manager, that will allow creators to better control how their content is being used to train generative AI models — and give them an option to opt out. The goal is to have the new tool in place and ready to use by 2025.

OpenAI explores allowing AI porn

In a new peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions , OpenAI also released a new NSFW policy . Though it’s intended to start a conversation about how it might allow explicit images and text in its AI products, it raises questions about whether OpenAI — or any generative AI vendor — can be trusted to handle sensitive content ethically.

OpenAI and Stack Overflow announce partnership

In a new partnership, OpenAI will get access to developer platform Stack Overflow’s API and will get feedback from developers to improve the performance of their AI models. In return, OpenAI will include attributions to Stack Overflow in ChatGPT. However, the deal was not favorable to some Stack Overflow users — leading to some sabotaging their answer in protest .

U.S. newspapers file copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft

Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment” to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot.

OpenAI inks content licensing deal with Financial Times

OpenAI has partnered with another news publisher in Europe, London’s Financial Times , that the company will be paying for content access. “Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries,” the FT wrote in a press release.

OpenAI opens Tokyo hub, adds GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese

OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo and has plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move underscores how OpenAI will likely need to localize its technology to different languages as it expands.

Sam Altman pitches ChatGPT Enterprise to Fortune 500 companies

According to Reuters, OpenAI’s Sam Altman hosted hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies across several cities in April, pitching versions of its AI services intended for corporate use.

OpenAI releases “more direct, less verbose” version of GPT-4 Turbo

Premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now use an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo . The new model brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base.

Our new GPT-4 Turbo is now available to paid ChatGPT users. We’ve improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding. Source: https://t.co/fjoXDCOnPr pic.twitter.com/I4fg4aDq1T — OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 12, 2024

ChatGPT no longer requires an account — but there’s a catch

You can now use ChatGPT without signing up for an account , but it won’t be quite the same experience. You won’t be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other features associated with a persistent account. This version of ChatGPT will have “slightly more restrictive content policies,” according to OpenAI. When TechCrunch asked for more details, however, the response was unclear:

“The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience,” a spokesperson said.

OpenAI’s chatbot store is filling up with spam

TechCrunch found that the OpenAI’s GPT Store is flooded with bizarre, potentially copyright-infringing GPTs . A cursory search pulls up GPTs that claim to generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel properties, but serve as little more than funnels to third-party paid services and advertise themselves as being able to bypass AI content detection tools.

The New York Times responds to OpenAI’s claims that it “hacked” ChatGPT for its copyright lawsuit

In a court filing opposing OpenAI’s motion to dismiss The New York Times’ lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, the newspaper asserted that “OpenAI’s attention-grabbing claim that The Times ‘hacked’ its products is as irrelevant as it is false.” The New York Times also claimed that some users of ChatGPT used the tool to bypass its paywalls.

OpenAI VP doesn’t say whether artists should be paid for training data

At a SXSW 2024 panel, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s VP of consumer product dodged a question on whether artists whose work was used to train generative AI models should be compensated . While OpenAI lets artists “opt out” of and remove their work from the datasets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, some artists have described the tool as onerous.

A new report estimates that ChatGPT uses more than half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day

ChatGPT’s environmental impact appears to be massive. According to a report from The New Yorker , ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day.

ChatGPT can now read its answers aloud

OpenAI released a new Read Aloud feature for the web version of ChatGPT as well as the iOS and Android apps. The feature allows ChatGPT to read its responses to queries in one of five voice options and can speak 37 languages, according to the company. Read aloud is available on both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 models.

ChatGPT can now read responses to you. On iOS or Android, tap and hold the message and then tap “Read Aloud”. We’ve also started rolling on web – click the "Read Aloud" button below the message. pic.twitter.com/KevIkgAFbG — OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 4, 2024

OpenAI partners with Dublin City Council to use GPT-4 for tourism

As part of a new partnership with OpenAI, the Dublin City Council will use GPT-4 to craft personalized itineraries for travelers, including recommendations of unique and cultural destinations, in an effort to support tourism across Europe.

A law firm used ChatGPT to justify a six-figure bill for legal services

New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate . The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure “well above” reasonable demands.

ChatGPT experienced a bizarre bug for several hours

ChatGPT users found that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours , prompting OpenAI to investigate the issue. Incidents varied from repetitive phrases to confusing and incorrect answers to queries. The issue was resolved by OpenAI the following morning.

Match Group announced deal with OpenAI with a press release co-written by ChatGPT

The dating app giant home to Tinder, Match and OkCupid announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in an enthusiastic press release written with the help of ChatGPT . The AI tech will be used to help employees with work-related tasks and come as part of Match’s $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024.

ChatGPT will now remember — and forget — things you tell it to

As part of a test, OpenAI began rolling out new “memory” controls for a small portion of ChatGPT free and paid users, with a broader rollout to follow. The controls let you tell ChatGPT explicitly to remember something, see what it remembers or turn off its memory altogether. Note that deleting a chat from chat history won’t erase ChatGPT’s or a custom GPT’s memories — you must delete the memory itself.

We’re testing ChatGPT's ability to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful. This feature is being rolled out to a small portion of Free and Plus users, and it's easy to turn on or off. https://t.co/1Tv355oa7V pic.twitter.com/BsFinBSTbs — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

OpenAI begins rolling out “Temporary Chat” feature

Initially limited to a small subset of free and subscription users, Temporary Chat lets you have a dialogue with a blank slate. With Temporary Chat, ChatGPT won’t be aware of previous conversations or access memories but will follow custom instructions if they’re enabled.

But, OpenAI says it may keep a copy of Temporary Chat conversations for up to 30 days for “safety reasons.”

Use temporary chat for conversations in which you don’t want to use memory or appear in history. pic.twitter.com/H1U82zoXyC — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

ChatGPT users can now invoke GPTs directly in chats

Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged in” for different use cases and needs.

You can now bring GPTs into any conversation in ChatGPT – simply type @ and select the GPT. This allows you to add relevant GPTs with the full context of the conversation. pic.twitter.com/Pjn5uIy9NF — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 30, 2024

ChatGPT is reportedly leaking usernames and passwords from users’ private conversations

Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report.

ChatGPT is violating Europe’s privacy laws, Italian DPA tells OpenAI

OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy , following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy’s data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven’t been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals.”

OpenAI partners with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines

In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it’s partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults. The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy .

OpenAI responds to Congressional Black Caucus about lack of diversity on its board

After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded . The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company’s top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent. 

OpenAI drops prices and fixes ‘lazy’ GPT-4 that refused to work

In a blog post , OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5’s API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce “laziness” that users have experienced.

Expanding the platform for @OpenAIDevs : new generation of embedding models, updated GPT-4 Turbo, and lower pricing on GPT-3.5 Turbo. https://t.co/7wzCLwB1ax — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 25, 2024

OpenAI bans developer of a bot impersonating a presidential candidate

OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign. The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed “chatbots impersonating candidates” as against its policy.

OpenAI announces partnership with Arizona State University

Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT’s Enterprise tier , which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course and more. It marks OpenAI’s first partnership with a higher education institution.

Winner of a literary prize reveals around 5% her novel was written by ChatGPT

After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences “verbatim.” Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI.

Sam Altman teases video capabilities for ChatGPT and the release of GPT-5

In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be “fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support.” Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024.

OpenAI announces team to build ‘crowdsourced’ governance ideas into its models

OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and “encoding” public input on its models’ behaviors into OpenAI products and services. This comes as a part of OpenAI’s public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a “democratic process” for determining the rules AI systems follow.

OpenAI unveils plan to combat election misinformation

In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for “personalized persuasion.”

Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions, and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting.

The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT.

Snapshot of how we’re preparing for 2024’s worldwide elections: • Working to prevent abuse, including misleading deepfakes • Providing transparency on AI-generated content • Improving access to authoritative voting information https://t.co/qsysYy5l0L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 15, 2024

OpenAI changes policy to allow military applications

In an unannounced update to its usage policy , OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of “military and warfare.” In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to “harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”

ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams debuts

Aptly called ChatGPT Team , the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs.

OpenAI’s GPT store officially launches

After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI’s GPT Store is finally here . The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client, and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.

To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise or the newly launched ChatGPT Team.

the GPT store is live! https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2 fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today. — Sam Altman (@sama) January 10, 2024

Developing AI models would be “impossible” without copyrighted materials, OpenAI claims

Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee. OpenAI argued that it would be “impossible” to train AI models without using copyrighted materials, and that they believe copyright law “does not forbid training.”

OpenAI claims The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit is without merit

OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times’s lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit.

In the response , OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use. It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to “act responsibly.”

We build AI to empower people, including journalists. Our position on the @nytimes lawsuit: • Training is fair use, but we provide an opt-out • "Regurgitation" is a rare bug we're driving to zero • The New York Times is not telling the full story https://t.co/S6fSaDsfKb — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 8, 2024

OpenAI’s app store for GPTs planned to launch next week

After being delayed in December , OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company’s updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they’re eligible for listing in the GPT Store. OpenAI’s update notably didn’t include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront.

GPT Store launching next week – OpenAI pic.twitter.com/I6mkZKtgZG — Manish Singh (@refsrc) January 4, 2024

OpenAI moves to shrink regulatory risk in EU around data privacy

In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited. The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT’s impact on people’s privacy.

Study finds white-collar workers are uneasy about using ChatGPT

A study conducted by professors from Harvard and MIT , which is still under review, looked at how ChatGPT could affect the productivity of more than 750 white-collar workers, as well as their complicated feelings about using the tool. The study found that while ChatGPT was helpful with creative tasks, workers were led to more mistakes with analytical work.

The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement

In a lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan , The Times argues that millions of its articles were used to train AI models without its consent. The Times is asking for OpenAI and Microsoft to “destroy” models and training data containing offending material and to be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.”

OpenAI re-opens ChatGPT Plus subscriptions

After pausing ChatGPT Plus subscriptions in November due to a “surge of usage,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced they have once again enabled sign-ups. The Plus subscription includes access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo .

we have re-enabled chatgpt plus subscriptions! 🎄 thanks for your patience while we found more gpus. — Sam Altman (@sama) December 13, 2023

OpenAI and Axel Springer partner up for a “real-time” ChatGPT news deal

OpenAI has struck a new deal with Berlin-based news publisher Axel Springer , which owns Business Insider and Politico, to “help provide people with new ways to access quality, real-time news content through our AI tools.” OpenAI will train its generative AI models on the publisher’s content and add recent Axel Springer-published articles to ChatGPT.

Stanford researchers say ChatGPT didn’t cause an influx in cheating in high schools

New research from Stanford University shows that the popularization of chatbots like ChatGPT has not caused an increase in cheating across U.S. high schools. In a survey of more than 40 U.S. high schools, researchers found that cheating rates are similar across the board this year.

ChatGPT users worry the chatbot is experiencing seasonal depression

Starting in November, ChatGPT users have noticed that the chatbot feels “lazier” than normal, citing instances of simpler answers and refusing to complete requested tasks. OpenAI has confirmed that they are aware of this issue , but aren’t sure why it’s happening.

Some users think it plays into the “winter break hypothesis,” which argues that AI is worse in December because it “learned” to do less work over the holidays , while others wonder if the chatbot is simulating seasonal depression .

we've heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier! we haven't updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn't intentional. model behavior can be unpredictable, and we're looking into fixing it 🫡 — ChatGPT (@ChatGPTapp) December 8, 2023

Judges in the U.K. are now allowed to use ChatGPT in legal rulings

The U.K. Judicial Office issued guidance that permits judges to use ChatGPT, along with other AI tools, to write legal rulings and perform court duties. The guidance lays out ways to responsibly use AI in the courts, including being aware of potential bias and upholding privacy.

OpenAI makes repeating words “forever” a violation of its terms of service after Google DeepMind test

Following an experiment by Google DeepMind researchers that led ChatGPT to repeat portions of its training data, OpenAI has flagged asking ChatGPT to repeat specific words “forever” as a violation of its terms of service .

Lawmakers in Brazil enact an ordinance written by ChatGPT

City lawmakers in Brazil enacted a piece of legislation written entirely by ChatGPT without even knowing. Weeks after the bill was passed, Porto Alegre councilman Ramiro Rosário admitted that he used ChatGPT to write the proposal, and did not tell fellow council members until after the fact.

OpenAI reportedly delays the launch of its GPT store to 2024

According to a memo seen by Axios , OpenAI plans to delay the launch of its highly anticipated GPT store to early 2024. Custom GPTs and the accompanying store was a major announcement at OpenAI’s DevDay conference , with the store expected to open last month.

November 2023

Chatgpts mobile apps top 110m installs and nearly $30m in revenue.

After launching for iOS and Androidin May and July, ChatGPT’s have topped 110 million combined installs and have reached nearly $30 million in consumer spending, according to a market analysis by data.ai.

ChatGPT celebrates one-year anniversary

OpenAI hit a major milestone: one year of ChatGPT . What began as a “low-key research preview” evolved into a powerhouse that changed the AI industry forever. In a post on X , CEO Sam Altman looked back on the night before its launch: “what a year it’s been…”

a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch. what a year it’s been… — Sam Altman (@sama) November 30, 2023

Apple and Google avoid naming ChatGPT as their ‘app of the year’

Neither Apple nor Google chose an AI app as its app of the year for 2023, despite the success of ChatGPT’s mobile app, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history before the record was broken by Meta’s Threads .

An attack from researchers prompts ChatGPT to reveal training data

A test led by researchers at Google DeepMind found that there is a significant amount of privately identifiable information in OpenAI’s LLMs. The test involved asking ChatGPT to repeat the word “poem” forever, among other words, which over time led the chatbot to churn out private information like email addresses and phone numbers.

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots are fueling an increase in phishing emails

According to a new report by SlashNext , there’s been a 1,265% increase in malicious phishing emails since Q4 of 2022. The report alleges that AI tools like ChatGPT are being prominently used by cybercriminals to write compelling and sophisticated phishing emails .

South Africa officials investigate if President Cyril Ramaphosa used ChatGPT to write a speech

Following speculation, social media users fed portions of Ramaphosa’s November 21 speech in Johannesburg through AI detectors , alleging parts of it may have been written with ChatGPT. South African presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya refuted the claims, and local officials are investigating.

ChatGPT Voice can be used to replace Siri

Now that OpenAI’s ChatGPT Voice feature is available to all free users, it can be used to replace Siri on an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max by configuring the new Action Button. The new feature lets you ask ChatGPT questions and listen to its responses — like a much smarter version of Siri.

Sam Altman returns as CEO

Altman’s return came swiftly , with an “agreement in principle” announced between him and OpenAI’s board that will reinstate him as CEO and restructure the board to include new members, including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers . The biggest takeaway for ChatGPT is that the members of the board more focused on the nonprofit side of OpenAI, with the most concerns over the commercialization of its tools, have been pushed to the side .

ChatGPT Voice rolls out to all free users

Even if its leadership is in flux, OpenAI is still releasing updates to ChatGPT . First announced in September and granted to paid users on a rolling basis, the text-to-speech model can create a voice from text prompts and a few seconds of speech samples. OpenAI worked with voice actors to create the five voice options, and you can give it a shot by heading to the settings in your mobile ChatGPT apps and tapping the “headphones” icon.

Sam Altman might return, but it’s complicated

The only constant within OpenAI right now is change, and in a series of interviews, Nadella hedged on earlier reporting that Altman and Brockman were headed to Microsoft .

“Obviously, we want Sam and Greg to have a fantastic home if they’re not going to be in OpenAI,” Nadella said in an interview with CNBC, saying that we was “open” to them settling at Microsoft or returning to OpenAI should the board and employees support the move.

Confirmation Sam Altman will not return as OpenAI’s CEO

A number of investors and OpenAI employees tried to bring back Altman after his sudden firing by the company’s board, but following a weekend of negotiations, it was confirmed that Altman would not return to OpenAI and new leadership would take hold. What this means for ChatGPT’s future, and for the OpenAI Dev Day announcements , remains to be seen.

Sam Altman ousted as OpenAI’s CEO

Sam Altman has been fired from OpenAI . He will leave the company’s board and step down as CEO, with OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati stepping in as interim CEO. In a blog post from OpenAI, the company writes that the board “no longer has confidence in [Altman’s] ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

In a statement on X , Altman said working at OpenAI “was transformative” for him and “hopefully the world.”

OpenAI explores how ChatGPT can be used in the classroom

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap revealed at a San Francisco conference that the company will likely create a team to identify ways AI and ChatGPT can be used in education . This announcement comes at a time when ChatGPT is being criticized by educators for encouraging cheating , resulting in bans in certain school districts .

OpenAI pauses new ChatGPT Plus subscriptions due to a “surge of usage”

Following OpenAI’s Dev Day conference , Sam Altman announced the company is putting a pause on new subscriptions for its premium ChatGPT Plus offering. The temporary hold on sign-ups, as well as the demand for ChatGPT Plus’ new features like making custom GPTS , has led to a slew of resellers on eBay .

ChatGPT gets flagged as potentially unsafe for kids

An independent review from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group, found that  ChatGPT could potentially be harmful for younger users. ChatGPT got an overall three-star rating in the report, with its lowest ratings relating to transparency, privacy, trust and safety. 

OpenAI blames DDoS attack for ChatGPT outage

OpenAI confirmed that a DDoS attack was behind outages affecting ChatGPT and its developer tools. ChatGPT experienced sporadic outages for about 24 hours, resulting in users being unable to log into or use the service.

OpenAI debuts GPT-4 Turbo

OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 Turbo at its first-ever OpenAI DevDay conference. GPT-4 Turbo comes in two versions: one that’s strictly text-analyzing and another that understands the context of both text and images.

GPT-4 gets a fine-tuning

As opposed to the fine-tuning program for GPT-3.5, the GPT-4 program will involve more oversight and guidance from OpenAI teams, the company says — largely due to technical hurdles.

OpenAI’s GPT Store lets you build (and monetize) your own GPT

Users and developers will soon be able to make their own GPT , with no coding experience required. Anyone building their own GPT will also be able to list it on OpenAI’s marketplace and monetize it in the future.

ChatGPT has 100 million weekly active users

After being released nearly a year ago, ChatGPT has 100 million weekly active users . OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also revealed that over two million developers use the platform, including more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies.

OpenAI launches DALL-E 3 API, new text-to-speech models

DALL-E 3, OpenAI’s text-to-image model , is now available via an API after first coming to ChatGPT-4 and Bing Chat. OpenAI’s newly released text-to-speech API, Audio API, offers six preset voices to choose from and two generative AI model variants.

OpenAI promises to defend business customers against copyright claims

Bowing to peer pressure, OpenAI it will pay legal costs incurred by customers who face lawsuits over IP claims against work generated by an OpenAI tool. The protections seemingly don’t extend to all OpenAI products, like the free and Plus tiers of ChatGPT.

As OpenAI’s multimodal API launches broadly, research shows it’s still flawed

OpenAI announced that GPT-4 with vision will become available alongside the upcoming launch of GPT-4 Turbo API. But some researchers found that the model remains flawed in several significant and problematic ways.

OpenAI launches API, letting developers build ‘assistants’ into their apps

At its OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI announced the Assistants API to help developers build “agent-like experiences” within their apps. Use cases range from a natural language-based data analysis app to a coding assistant or even an AI-powered vacation planner.

ChatGPT app revenue shows no signs of slowing, but it’s not #1

OpenAI’s chatbot app far outpaces all others on mobile devices in terms of downloads, but it’s surprisingly not the top AI app by revenue . Several other AI chatbots, like  “Chat & Ask AI” and “ChatOn — AI Chat Bot Assistant”, are actually making more money than ChatGPT.

ChatGPT tests the ability to upload and analyze files for Plus users

Subscribers to ChatGPT’s Enterprise Plan have reported new beta features, including the ability to upload PDFs to analyze and and ask questions about them directly. The new rollout also makes it so users no longer have to manually select a mode like DALL-E and browsing when using ChatGPT. Instead, users will automatically be switched to models based on the prompt.

ChatGPT officially gets web search

OpenAI has formally launched its internet-browsing feature to ChatGPT, some three weeks after re-introducing the feature in beta after several months in hiatus. The AI chatbot that has historically been limited to data up to September, 2021.

OpenAI integrates DALL-E 3 into ChatGPT

The integration means users don’t have to think so carefully about their text-prompts when asking DALL-E to create an image. Users will also now be able to receive images as part of their text-based queries without having to switch between apps.

Microsoft-affiliated research finds flaws in GPT-4

A Microsoft-affiliated scientific paper looked at the “trustworthiness” — and toxicity — of LLMs, including GPT-4. Because GPT-4 is more likely to follow the instructions of “jailbreaking” prompts, the co-authors claim that GPT-4 can be more easily prompted than other LLMs to spout toxic, biased text .

ChatGPT’s mobile app hits record $4.58M in revenue in September

OpenAI amassed 15.6 million downloads and nearly $4.6 million in gross revenue across its iOS and Android apps worldwide in September. But revenue growth has now begun to slow , according to new data from market intelligence firm Appfigures — dropping from 30% to 20% in September.

ChatGPT can now browse the internet (again)

OpenAI posted on Twitter/X that ChatGPT can now browse the internet and is no longer limited to data before September 2021. The chatbot had a web browsing capability for Plus subscribers back in July , but the feature was taken away after users exploited it to get around paywalls.

ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources. It is no longer limited to data before September 2021. pic.twitter.com/pyj8a9HWkB — OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 27, 2023

ChatGPT now has a voice

OpenAI announced that it’s adding a new voice for verbal conversations and image-based smarts to the AI-powered chatbot.

Poland opens an investigation against OpenAI

The Polish authority publically announced it has opened an investigation regarding ChatGPT — accusing the company of a string of breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

OpenAI unveils DALL-E 3

The upgraded text-to-image tool, DALL-E 3, uses ChatGPT to help fill in prompts. Subscribers to OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans, ChatGPT Plus  and  ChatGPT Enterprise , can type in a request for an image and hone it through conversations with the chatbot — receiving the results directly within the chat app.

Opera GX integrates ChatGPT-powered AI

Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the AI browser Aria  launched on Opera in May to give users an easier way to search, ask questions and write code. Today, the company announced it is bringing Aria to Opera GX , a version of the flagship Opera browser that is built for gamers.

The new feature allows Opera GX users to interact directly with a browser AI to find the latest gaming news and tips.

OpenAI releases a guide for teachers using ChatGPT in the classroom

OpenAI wants to rehabilitate the system’s image a bit when it comes to education, as ChatGPT has been controversial in the classroom due to plagiarism. OpenAI has offered up a selection of ways to put the chatbot to work in the classroom.

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise

ChatGPT Enterprise can perform the same tasks as ChatGPT, such as writing emails, drafting essays and debugging computer code. However, the new offering also adds “enterprise-grade” privacy and data analysis capabilities on top of the vanilla ChatGPT, as well as enhanced performance and customization options.

Survey finds relatively few American use ChatGPT

Recent Pew polling suggests the language model isn’t quite as popular or threatening as some would have you think. Ongoing polling by Pew Research shows that although ChatGPT is gaining mindshare, only about 18% of Americans have ever actually used it .

OpenAI brings fine-tuning to GPT-3.5 Turbo

With fine-tuning, companies using GPT-3.5 Turbo through the company’s API can make the model better follow specific instructions. For example, having the model always respond in a given language. Or improving the model’s ability to consistently format responses, as well as hone the “feel” of the model’s output, like its tone, so that it better fits a brand or voice. Most notably, fine-tuning enables OpenAI customers to shorten text prompts to speed up API calls and cut costs.

OpenAI is partnering with Scale AI to allow companies to fine-tune GPT-3.5 . However, it is unclear whether OpenAI is developing an in-house tuning tool that is meant to complement platforms like Scale AI or serve a different purpose altogether.

Fine-tuning costs:

• Training: $0.008 / 1K tokens
• Usage input: $0.012 / 1K tokens
• Usage output: $0.016 / 1K tokens

OpenAI acquires Global Illumination

In OpenAI’s first public acquisition in its seven-year history, the company announced it has acquired Global Illumination, a New York-based startup leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure and digital experiences.

“We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI,” OpenAI wrote in a brief  post published to its official blog. “The entire team has joined OpenAI to work on our core products including ChatGPT.”

The ‘custom instructions’ feature is extended to free ChatGPT users

OpenAI announced that it’s expanding custom instructions to all users, including those on the free tier of service. The feature allows users to add various preferences and requirements that they want the AI chatbot to consider when responding.

China requires AI apps to obtain an administrative license

Multiple generative AI apps have been removed from Apple’s China App Store ahead of the country’s latest generative AI regulations that are set to take effect August 15.

“As you may know, the government has been tightening regulations associated with deep synthesis technologies (DST) and generative AI services, including ChatGPT. DST must fulfill permitting requirements to operate in China, including securing a license from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT),” Apple said in a letter to OpenCat, a native ChatGPT client. “Based on our review, your app is associated with ChatGPT, which does not have requisite permits to operate in China.”

ChatGPT for Android is now available in the US, India, Bangladesh and Brazil

A few days after putting up a preorder page on Google Play, OpenAI has flipped the switch and  released ChatGPT for Android . The app is now live in a handful of countries.

ChatGPT is coming to Android

ChatGPT is available to “pre-order” for Android users.

The ChatGPT app on Android  looks to be more or less identical to the iOS one in functionality, meaning it gets most if not all of the web-based version’s features. You should be able to sync your conversations and preferences across devices, too — so if you’re iPhone at home and Android at work, no worries.

OpenAI launches customized instructions for ChatGPT

OpenAI launched custom instructions for ChatGPT users , so they don’t have to write the same instruction prompts to the chatbot every time they interact with it.

The company said this feature lets you “share anything you’d like ChatGPT to consider in its response.” For example, a teacher can say they are teaching fourth-grade math or a developer can specify the code language they prefer when asking for suggestions. A person can also specify their family size, so the text-generating AI can give responses about meals, grocery and vacation planning accordingly.

The FTC is reportedly investigating OpenAI

The FTC is reportedly in at least the exploratory phase of investigation over whether OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT conversational AI made “false, misleading, disparaging or harmful” statements about people.

TechCrunch Reporter Devin Coldewey reports:

This kind of investigation doesn’t just appear out of thin air — the FTC doesn’t look around and say “That looks suspicious.” Generally a lawsuit or formal complaint is brought to their attention and the practices described by it imply that regulations are being ignored. For example, a person may sue a supplement company because the pills made them sick, and the FTC will launch an investigation on the back of that because there’s evidence the company lied about the side effects.

OpenAI announced the general availability of GPT-4

Starting July 6, all existing OpenAI developers “with a history of successful payments” can access GPT-4 . OpenAI plans to open up access to new developers by the end of July.

In the future, OpenAI says that it’ll allow developers to fine-tune GPT-4 and  GPT-3.5 Turbo , one of the original models powering ChatGPT, with their own data, as has long been possible with several of OpenAI’s other text-generating models. That capability should arrive later this year, according to OpenAI.

ChatGPT app can now search the web only on Bing

OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can now use a new feature on the app called Browsing , which allows ChatGPT to search Bing for answers to questions.

The Browsing feature can be enabled by heading to the New Features section of the app settings, selecting “GPT-4” in the model switcher and choosing “Browse with Bing” from the drop-down list. Browsing is available on both the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps.

Mercedes is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system

U.S. owners of Mercedes models that use MBUX will be able to opt into a beta program starting June 16 activating the ChatGPT functionality . This will enable the highly versatile large language model to augment the car’s conversation skills. You can join up simply by telling your car “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”

It’s not really clear what for, though.

ChatGPT app is now available on iPad, adds support for Siri and Shortcuts

The new ChatGPT app version brings native iPad support to the app , as well as support for using the chatbot with Siri and Shortcuts. Drag and drop is also now available, allowing users to drag individual messages from ChatGPT into other apps.

On iPad, ChatGPT now runs in full-screen mode, optimized for the tablet’s interface.

Texas judge orders all AI-generated content must be declared and checked

The Texas federal judge has added a requirement that any attorney appearing in his court must attest that “no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence,” or if it was, that it was checked “by a human being.”

ChatGPT app expanded to more than 30 countries

The list of new countries includes Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Estonia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Nauru, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Qatar, Slovenia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

ChatGPT app is now available in 11 more countries

OpenAI announced in a tweet that the ChatGPT mobile app is now available on iOS in the U.S., Europe, South Korea and New Zealand, and soon more will be able to download the app from the app store. In just six days, the app topped 500,000 downloads .

The ChatGPT app for iOS is now available to users in 11 more countries — Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and the UK. More to come soon! — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 24, 2023

OpenAI launches a ChatGPT app for iOS

ChatGPT is officially going mobile . The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads and will allow for voice input, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch.

When using the mobile version of ChatGPT, the app will sync your history across devices — meaning it will know what you’ve previously searched for via its web interface, and make that accessible to you. The app is also integrated with  Whisper , OpenAI’s open source speech recognition system, to allow for voice input.

Hackers are using ChatGPT lures to spread malware on Facebook

Meta said in a report on May 3 that malware posing as ChatGPT was on the rise across its platforms . The company said that since March 2023, its security teams have uncovered 10 malware families using ChatGPT (and similar themes) to deliver malicious software to users’ devices.

“In one case, we’ve seen threat actors create malicious browser extensions available in official web stores that claim to offer ChatGPT-based tools,” said Meta security engineers Duc H. Nguyen and Ryan Victory in  a blog post . “They would then promote these malicious extensions on social media and through sponsored search results to trick people into downloading malware.”

ChatGPT parent company OpenAI closes $300M share sale at $27B-29B valuation

VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global are picking up new shares, according to documents seen by TechCrunch. A source tells us Founders Fund is also investing. Altogether the VCs have put in just over $300 million at a valuation of $27 billion to $29 billion . This is separate to a big investment from Microsoft announced earlier this year , a person familiar with the development told TechCrunch, which closed in January. The size of Microsoft’s investment is believed to be around $10 billion, a figure we confirmed with our source.

OpenAI previews new subscription tier, ChatGPT Business

Called ChatGPT Business, OpenAI describes the forthcoming offering as “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.”

“ChatGPT Business will follow our API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI  wrote in a blog post. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”

OpenAI wants to trademark “GPT”

OpenAI applied for a trademark for “GPT,” which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” last December. Last month, the company petitioned the USPTO to speed up the process, citing the “myriad infringements and counterfeit apps” beginning to spring into existence.

Unfortunately for OpenAI, its petition was  dismissed  last week. According to the agency, OpenAI’s attorneys neglected to pay an associated fee as well as provide “appropriate documentary evidence supporting the justification of special action.”

That means a decision could take up to five more months.

Auto-GPT is Silicon Valley’s latest quest to automate everything

Auto-GPT is an open-source app created by game developer Toran Bruce Richards that uses OpenAI’s latest text-generating models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, to interact with software and services online, allowing it to “autonomously” perform tasks.

Depending on what objective the tool’s provided, Auto-GPT can behave in very… unexpected ways. One Reddit  user  claims that, given a budget of $100 to spend within a server instance, Auto-GPT made a wiki page on cats, exploited a flaw in the instance to gain admin-level access and took over the Python environment in which it was running — and then “killed” itself.

FTC warns that AI technology like ChatGPT could ‘turbocharge’ fraud

FTC chair Lina Khan and fellow commissioners warned House representatives of the potential for modern AI technologies, like ChatGPT, to be used to “turbocharge” fraud in a congressional hearing .

“AI presents a whole set of opportunities, but also presents a whole set of risks,” Khan told the House representatives. “And I think we’ve already seen ways in which it could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams. We’ve been putting market participants on notice that instances in which AI tools are effectively being designed to deceive people can place them on the hook for FTC action,” she stated.

Superchat’s new AI chatbot lets you message historical and fictional characters via ChatGPT

The company behind the popular iPhone customization app  Brass , sticker maker  StickerHub  and  others  is out today with a new AI chat app called  SuperChat , which allows iOS users to chat with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT . However, what makes the app different from the default experience or the dozens of generic AI chat apps now available are the characters offered which you can use to engage with SuperChat’s AI features.

Italy gives OpenAI to-do list for lifting ChatGPT suspension order

Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the  end of last month — when it said it suspected the AI chatbot service was in breach of the EU’s GSPR and ordered the U.S.-based company to stop processing locals’ data.

The DPA has given OpenAI a deadline — of April 30 — to get the regulator’s compliance demands done. (The local radio, TV and internet awareness campaign has a slightly more generous timeline of May 15 to be actioned.)

Researchers discover a way to make ChatGPT consistently toxic

A study co-authored by scientists at the Allen Institute for AI shows that assigning ChatGPT a “persona” — for example, “a bad person,” “a horrible person” or “a nasty person” — through the ChatGPT API increases its toxicity sixfold. Even more concerning, the co-authors found having the conversational AI chatbot pose as certain historical figures, gendered people and members of political parties also increased its toxicity — with journalists, men and Republicans in particular causing the machine learning model to say more offensive things than it normally would.

The research was conducted using the latest version, but not the model currently in preview based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 .

Y Combinator-backed startups are trying to build ‘ChatGPT for X’

YC Demo Day’s Winter 2023 batch features no fewer than four startups that claim to be building “ChatGPT for X.” They’re all chasing after a customer service software market that’ll be worth $58.1 billion by 2023, assuming the rather optimistic prediction from Acumen Research comes true.

Here are the YC-backed startups that caught our eye:

• Yuma , whose customer demographic is primarily Shopify merchants, provides ChatGPT-like AI systems that integrate with help desk software, suggesting drafts of replies to customer tickets.
• Baselit , which uses one of OpenAI’s text-understanding models to allow businesses to embed chatbot-style analytics for their customers.
• Lasso customers send descriptions or videos of the processes they’d like to automate and the company combines ChatGPT-like interface with robotic process automation (RPA) and a Chrome extension to build out those automations.
• BerriAI , whose platform is designed to help developers spin up ChatGPT apps for their organization data through various data connectors.

Italy orders ChatGPT to be blocked

OpenAI has started geoblocking access to its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in Italy .

Italy’s data protection authority has just put out a timely reminder that some countries do have laws that already apply to cutting edge AI: it has  ordered OpenAI to stop processing people’s data locally with immediate effect. The Italian DPA said it’s concerned that the ChatGPT maker is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is opening an investigation.

1,100+ signatories signed an open letter asking all ‘AI labs to immediately pause for 6 months’

The letter’s signatories include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, among others. The letter calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

The letter reads:

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.

OpenAI connects ChatGPT to the internet

OpenAI launched plugins for ChatGPT, extending the bot’s functionality by granting it access to third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web. Available in alpha to ChatGPT users and developers on the waitlist , OpenAI says that it’ll initially prioritize a small number of developers and subscribers to its premium ChatGPT Plus plan before rolling out larger-scale and  API  access.

OpenAI launches GPT-4, available through ChatGPT Plus

GPT-4 is a powerful image- and text-understanding AI model from OpenAI. Released March 14, GPT-4 is available for paying ChatGPT Plus users and through a public API. Developers can sign up on a waitlist to access the API.

ChatGPT is available in Azure OpenAI service

ChatGPT is generally available through the Azure OpenAI Service , Microsoft’s fully managed, corporate-focused offering. Customers, who must already be “Microsoft managed customers and partners,” can apply here for special access .

OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT

OpenAI makes another move toward monetization by launching a paid API for ChatGPT . Instacart, Snap (Snapchat’s parent company) and Quizlet are among its initial customers.

Microsoft launches the new Bing, with ChatGPT built in

At a press event in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft announced its long-rumored integration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model into Bing , providing a ChatGPT-like experience within the search engine. The announcement spurred a 10x increase in new downloads for Bing globally, indicating a sizable consumer demand for new AI experiences.

Other companies beyond Microsoft joined in on the AI craze by implementing ChatGPT, including OkCupid , Kaito , Snapchat and Discord — putting the pressure on Big Tech’s AI initiatives, like Google .

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month

After ChatGPT took the internet by storm, OpenAI launched a new pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus , aiming to monetize the technology starting at $20 per month. A month prior, OpenAI posted a waitlist for “ChatGPT Professional” as the company began to think about monetizing the chatbot.

OpenAI teases ChatGPT Professional

OpenAI said that it’s “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” in an announcement on the company’s official Discord server. According to a waitlist link OpenAI posted in Discord, the monetized version will be called ChatGPT Professional . The waitlist document includes the benefits of this new paid version of the chatbot which include no “blackout” windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT — “at least 2x the regular daily limit.”

ShareGPT lets you easily share your ChatGPT conversations

A week after ChatGPT was released into the wild , two developers — Steven Tey and Dom Eccleston — made a Chrome extension called ShareGPT to make it easier to capture and share the AI’s answers with the world.

ChatGPT first launched to the public as OpenAI quietly released GPT-3.5

GPT-3.5 broke cover with ChatGPT , a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that’s essentially a general-purpose chatbot. ChatGPT can engage with a range of topics, including programming, TV scripts and scientific concepts. Writers everywhere rolled their eyes at the new technology, much like artists did with OpenAI’s DALL-E model , but the latest chat-style iteration seemingly broadened its appeal and audience.

What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI . The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

When did ChatGPT get released?

November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use.

What is the latest version of ChatGPT?

Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4 .

Can I use ChatGPT for free?

There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus .

Who uses ChatGPT?

Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns.

What companies use ChatGPT?

Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool .

Most recently, Microsoft announced at it’s 2023 Build conference that it is integrating it ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT.  And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space.

What does GPT mean in ChatGPT?

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.

What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Bard?

Much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard is a chatbot that will answer questions in natural language. Google announced at its 2023 I/O event that it will soon be adding multimodal content to Bard, meaning that it can deliver answers in more than just text, responses can give you rich visuals as well. Rich visuals mean pictures for now, but later can include maps, charts and other items.

ChatGPT’s generative AI has had a longer lifespan and thus has been “learning” for a longer period of time than Bard.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and a chatbot?

A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn’t necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they’ll give canned responses to questions.

ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt.

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Can chatgpt commit libel.

Due to the nature of how these models work , they don’t know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That’s a problem when you’re using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn’t commit, that may well at this point be libel.

We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry.

Does ChatGPT have an app?

Yes, there is now a free ChatGPT app that is currently limited to U.S. iOS users at launch. OpenAi says an android version is “coming soon.”

What is the ChatGPT character limit?

It’s not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words.

Does ChatGPT have an API?

Yes, it was released March 1, 2023.

What are some sample everyday uses for ChatGPT?

Everyday examples include programing, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc.

What are some advanced uses for ChatGPT?

Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc.

How good is ChatGPT at writing code?

It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can’t necessarily program an entire app’s worth of code. That’s because ChatGPT lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn’t always appropriate for the specific context in which it’s being used.

Can you save a ChatGPT chat?

Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT?

Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together , Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude , and developers are creating open source alternatives . But the latter are harder — if not impossible — to run today.

The Google-owned research lab DeepMind claimed that its next LLM, will rival, or even best, OpenAI’s ChatGPT . DeepMind is using techniques from AlphaGo, DeepMind’s AI system that was the first to defeat a professional human player at the board game Go, to make a ChatGPT-rivaling chatbot called Gemini.

Apple is developing AI tools to challenge OpenAI, Google and others. The tech giant created a chatbot that some engineers are internally referring to as “Apple GPT,” but Apple has yet to determine a strategy for releasing the AI to consumers.

How does ChatGPT handle data privacy?

OpenAI has said that individuals in “certain jurisdictions” (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out  this form . This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression “in accordance with applicable laws”.

The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled “ OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request ”.

In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on “legitimate interest” (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out — when it writes: “See here  for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models.”

What controversies have surrounded ChatGPT?

Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI’s technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm.

An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT’s false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service.

CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect.

Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools , have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with .

There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes .

Where can I find examples of ChatGPT prompts?

Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase . Another is ChatX . More launch every day.

Can ChatGPT be detected?

Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests , they’re inconsistent at best.

Are ChatGPT chats public?

No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users’ conversations to other people on the service.

Who owns the copyright on ChatGPT-created content or media?

The user who requested the input from ChatGPT is the copyright owner.

What lawsuits are there surrounding ChatGPT?

None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT.

Are there issues regarding plagiarism with ChatGPT?

Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.

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What is ChatGPT?

• How to Use Google Gemini

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ChatGPT: the latest news, controversies, and tips you need to know

ChatGPT has continued to dazzle the internet with AI-generated content, morphing from a novel chatbot into a piece of technology that is driving the next era of innovation. No tech product in recent memory has sparked as much interest, controversy, fear, and excitement.

How to use ChatGPT

How to use the chatgpt iphone and android apps, is chatgpt free to use, who created chatgpt, what do the chatgpt errors mean, latest chatgpt controversies, can chatgpt be detected, common uses for chatgpt, what are chatgpt plugins, is there a chatgpt api.

• What’s the future of ChatGPT and GPT-5?

ChatGPT alternatives worth trying

Other things to know about chatgpt.

If you’re just now catching on, it’d be fair to wonder what the fuss is all about. You can try it out for yourself for free (or use the official free iOS app ), but here’s the detailed guide you’ve been looking for — whether you’re worried about an AI apocalypse or are just looking for an intro guide to the app.

ChatGPT is a natural language AI chatbot . At its most basic level, that means you can ask it any question, and it will generate an answer.

Using the ChatGPT chatbot itself is fairly simple, as all you have to do is type in your text and receive information. The key here is to be creative and see how your ChatGPT responds to different prompts. If you don’t get the intended result, try tweaking your prompt or giving ChatGPT further instructions. ChatGPT knows the context of previous questions you ask, so you can refine from there rather than starting over fresh every time.

For example, starting with “Explain how the solar system was made” will give a more detailed result with more paragraphs than “How was the solar system made,” even though both inquiries will give fairly detailed results. Take it a step further by giving ChatGPT more guidance about style or tone, saying “Explain how the solar system was made as a middle school teacher.”

• OpenAI strikes major deal with News Corp to boost ChatGPT
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You also have the option for more specific inputting requests for an essay with a specific number of paragraphs or a Wikipedia page. We got an extremely detailed result with the request “write a four-paragraph essay explaining Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” And remember, ChatGPT is great at making tweaks to previous answers, so you can always ask for more detail, ask it to rewrite something, or ask it further questions.

To see what it can do, try using ChatGPT in daily life or work activities to see how it can help. Ask it to write emails, craft business proposals, fun date night ideas, or even a best man’s speech. So long as it doesn’t break some of the explicit or illegal content rules, the generator will do its best to fulfill the commands. It’s certainly is potential for ChatGPT to begin filling in gaps with incorrect data. As OpenAI notes, these instances are rare, but AI “hallucinations” certainly do happen . The company also notes that ChatGPT, which uses the GPT-3.5 LLM (large language model), currently has “limited knowledge of world events after 2021.” For more recent knowledge of the world, consider using another tool like Bing Chat .

However, OpenAI recently announced that ChatGPT Plus subscriber, who have access to the GPT-4 model, will be able to search the web for up-to-date information .

Even so, you have the option to input queries continuously until you close your browser or reset the thread to clear your previous requests. These chats are then saved in conversations in the sidebar, even automatically naming the chat. From there, you can manage these chats, renaming or deleting them as needed. You can even “hide” specific chats if needed .

You also have the option to use ChatGPT in dark mode or light mode.

Unlike Bing Chat , which can now generate images with Bing Image Creator and receive images as prompts for questions, ChatGPT only provides text outputs. In September 2023, however, OpenAI added the ability for you to use an image or voice as an input for your prompt. It’s currently only available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

As opposed to a simple voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant , ChatGPT is built on what is called an LLM (Large Language Model). These neural networks are trained on huge quantities of information from the internet for deep learning — meaning they generate altogether new responses, rather than just regurgitating specific canned responses. They’re not built for a specific purpose like chatbots of the past — and they’re a whole lot smarter.

This is implied in the name of ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. In the case of the current version of ChatGPT, it’s based on the GPT-3.5 LLM. The model behind ChatGPT was trained on all sorts of web content including websites, books, social media, news articles, and more — all fine-tuned in the language model by both supervised learning and RLHF (Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback). OpenAI says this use of human AI trainers is really what makes ChatGPT stand out.

First, go to chat.openai.com . If it’s your first time, you’ll need to set up a free account with OpenAI before getting started. You have the option of choosing an easy login with a Google or Microsoft account, or just entering your email address. You’ll be asked next to enter a phone number ; however, keep in mind that you cannot use a virtual phone number (VoIP) to register for OpenAI. You will then receive a confirmation number, which you will enter on the registration page to complete the setup.

You’ll see some basic rules about ChatGPT, including potential errors in data, how OpenAI collects data, and how users can submit feedback — all of which have some wondering about whether or not ChatGPT is safe to use . Once you’re through that, you know you have successfully registered. You’re in!

After many months of anticipation, OpenAI has finally launched an official iOS app that you can go and download today . The app quickly topped half a million downloads in less than a week and is becoming available in an increasing number of countries .

Instructions for using it aren’t dissimilar to the ChatGPT web application. You do get an extra option for signing in using your Apple ID account, but it otherwise functions nearly identically to the web app — just type in your question and let the conversation begin.

The clean interface shows your conversation with GPT in a straightforward manner, hiding the chat history and settings behind the menu in the top right.

For those who are paying for ChatGPT Plus, the app lets you toggle between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 too. You can even use the microphone to chat with ChatGPT over voice.

As our mobile editor noted in his experience with the app, it still doesn’t provide a connection to the internet like chatbots like Bing Chat and Perplexity .

Users have been asking for Android support for months, and now, a ChatGPT Android app is finally available . You can find it in the Google Play Store, but it’s limited to certain countries at the moment, including the U.S., India, and Brazil.

Some devices go beyond just the app, too. For instance, the Infinix Folax is an Android phone that integrated ChatGPT throughout the device. Instead of just an app, the phone replaces the typical smart assistant (Google Assistant) with ChatGPT.

Yes, the basic version of ChatGPT is completely free to use. There’s no limit to how much you can use ChatGPT in a day, though there is a word and character limit for responses .

It’s not free for OpenAI to continue running it, of course. Initial estimates are currently that OpenAI spends around $3 million per month to continue running ChatGPT, which is around $100,000 per day. A report from April indicated that the price of operation is closer to $700,000 per day .

Beyond the cost of the servers themselves, some egregious information has recently come out about what else has been done to train the language model against producing offensive content.

OpenAI also has a premium version of its chatbot, called ChatGPT Plus . It costs $20 a month but provides access even during peak times, faster responses, and first access to new features like GPT-4 .

ChatGPT was created by an organization called OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI research lab. The organization started as a non-profit meant for collaboration with other institutions and researchers, funded by high-profile figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

OpenAI later became a for-profit company in 2019 and is now led by its CEO, Sam Altman. It runs on Microsoft’s Azure system infrastructure and is powered by Nvidia’s GPUs, including the new supercomputers just announced this year . Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI too, starting in 2019.

Many people attempting to use ChatGPT have been getting an “at capacity” notice when trying to access the site . It’s likely behind the move to try and use unofficial paid apps, which have already flooded app stores  and scammed thousands into paying for a free service.

Because of how much ChatGPT costs to run, it seems as if OpenAI has been limiting access when its servers are “at capacity.” It can take as long as a few hours to wait out, but if you’re patient, you’ll get through eventually. Of all the problems facing ChatGPT right now, this had been the biggest hurdle for keeping people from using it more. In some cases, demand has been so high that ChatGPT has gone down for several hours for maintenance multiple times over the past few months.

This seems to be less of a problem recently, though, as demand has normalized and OpenAI has learned to manage the traffic better, but in the middle of the day, it still makes an appearance from time to time.

Although ChatGPT is a very useful tool, it isn’t free of problems. It’s known for making mistakes or “hallucinations,” where it makes up an answer to something it doesn’t know. A simple example of how unreliable it can sometimes be involved misidentifying the prime minister of Japan .

Beyond just making mistakes, many people are concerned about what this human-like generative AI could mean for the future of the internet, so much so that thousands of tech leaders and prominent public figures have signed a petition to slow down the development. It was even banned in Italy due to privacy concerns, alongside complaints from the FTC — although that’s now been reversed. Since then, the FTC has reopened investigations against OpenAI on questions of personal consumer data is being handled.

Speaking of bans, a number of high-profile companies have been disallowing the use of ChatGPT internally, including Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, and even the United States Congress . Apple is also on the list, though Tim Cook stated that he uses it, just weeks after having it banned .

There’s also the concern that generative AI like ChatGPT could result in the loss of many jobs — as many as 300 million worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs. In particular, it’s taken the spotlight in Hollywood’s writer’s strike , which wants to ensure that AI-written scripts don’t take the jobs of working screenwriters.

Beyond that, multiple controversies have also sprung up around people using ChatGPT to handle tasks that should probably be handled by an actual person. One of the worst cases of this is generating malware, which the FBI recently warned ChatGPT is being used for.

For example, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School was recently under fire for generating an email about a mass shooting and the importance of community. In addition, JPMorgan Chase is restricting the use of the AI chatbot for workers, especially for generating emails, which companies like Apple have also prohibited internally.

There are also privacy concerns. A recent GDPR complaint says that ChatGPT violates user’s privacy by stealing data from users without their knowledge, and using that data to train the AI model.

Lastly, ChatGPT was even made able to generate Windows 11 keys for free , according to one user. Of course, this is not how ChatGPT was meant to be used, but it’s significant that it was even able to be “tricked” into generating the keys in the first place.

Teachers, school administrators, and developers are already finding different ways around this and banning the use of ChatGPT in schools . Others are more optimistic about how ChatGPT might be used for teaching, but plagiarism is undoubtedly going to continue being an issue in terms of education in the future. There are some ideas about how ChatGPT could “watermark” its text and fix this plagiarism problem, but as of now, detecting ChatGPT is still incredibly difficult to do.

ChatGPT recently launched a new version of its own plagiarism detection tool , with hopes that it will squelch some of the criticism around how people are using the text generation. It uses a new feature called “AI text classifier,” which operates in a way familiar to other plagiarism software. According to OpenAI, however, the tool is still a work in progress and is “imperfect.”

Other tools like GPTZero claim to help detect ChatGPT plagiarism, too. Although they work, some extra editing on AI responses can still trip up these tools.

Well, that’s the fun part. Since its launch, people have been experimenting to discover everything the chatbot can and can’t do — and some of the results have been mind-blowing .

Learning the kinds of prompts and follow-up prompts that ChatGPT responds well to requires some experimentation though. Much like we’ve learned to get the information we want from traditional search engines, it can take some time to get the best results from ChatGPT. If you want to get started, we have a roundup of the best ChatGPT tips .

It really all depends on what you want out of it. To start out, try using it to write a template blog post, for example, or even blocks of code if you’re a programmer.

Our writers experimented with ChatGPT too, attempting to see if it could handle holiday shopping or even properly interpret astrological makeup . In both cases, we found limitations to what it could do while still being thoroughly impressed by the results.

But the fun is in trying it out yourself. Whether you think ChatGPT is an amazing piece of tech or will lead to the destruction of the internet as we know it, it’s worth trying out for yourself to see just what it’s capable of.

Following an update on August 10, you can now use custom instructions with ChatGPT . This allows you to customize how the AI chatbot responds to your inputs so you can tailor it for your needs.

You can’t ask anything, though. OpenAI has safeguards in place in order to “build a safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence.” That means any questions that are hateful, sexist, racist, or discriminatory in any way are generally off-limits.

The announcement of ChatGPT plugins caused a great stir in the developer community, with some calling it “the most powerful developer platform ever created.” AI enthusiasts have compared it to the surge of interest in the iOS App Store when it first launched, greatly expanding the capabilities of the iPhone.

Essentially, developers will be able to build plugins directly for ChatGPT, to open it up to have access to the whole of the internet and connect directly to the APIs of specific applications. It’s ChatGPT out in the real world. Some of the examples provided by OpenAI include applications being able to perform actions on behalf of the user, retrieve real-time information, and access knowledge-based information.

It’s currently only available on a waitlist, but early applications to use plugins with ChatGPT include Expedia, Instacart, Slack, and OpenTable — and now there are lots to explore, including the ones we’ve seen as the best ChatGPT plugins to try out.

Outside of the ChatGPT app itself, many apps had been announced as partners with OpenAI using the ChatGPT API. Of the initial batch, the most prominent example is Snapchat’s MyAI .

Essentially, this is a way for developers to access ChatGPT and plug its natural language capabilities directly into apps and websites. We’ve seen it used in all sorts of different cases, ranging from suggesting parts in Newegg’s PC builder to building out a travel itinerary with just a few words. Recently, OpenAI made the ChatGPT API available to everyone, and we’ve seen a surge in tools leveraging the technology, such as Discord’s Clyde chatbot or Wix’s website builder .

What’s the future of ChatGPT and GPT-5?

There’s no doubt that the tech world has become obsessed with ChatGPT right now, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. GPT-4, the next iteration of the model, has officially launched, though it’s currently only available for ChatGPT Plus. We do know, however, that Bing Chat is at least partially built on the GPT-4 language model, even if certain elements such as visual input aren’t available.

But the bigger development will be how ChatGPT continues to be integrated into other applications. Microsoft reportedly made a multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT , which is already starting to pay off. The first integration was in Teams Premium , with some of OpenAI’s features showing up to automate tasks and provide transcripts. Most prominently, Microsoft revealed 365 Copilot , which integrates ChatGPT natural language prompts directly into Office apps like Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.

There were initial reports that GPT-5 is on the way and could finish training later this year, with some people claiming that it would achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence). That’s a big, controversial statement, but clearly, things are progressing at a rapid pace.

Since then, OpenAI has stated that GPT-5 is not on the timeline and is not currently planned. That being said, the next version, GPT-4.5, is currently training and may be available later this year. OpenAI indicated that it may be done planning as early as September or October.

All that to say, if you think AI is a big deal now, just wait until it’s built into the most common applications that are used for work and school.

ChatGPT remains the most popular AI chatbot at the moment, but it’s not completely without competition. Microsoft’s Bing Chat is the biggest rival, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 model as a basis for its answers. Although it requires downloading the Edge browser to use, Bing Chat is free and offers some added features such as different writing modes, image creation, and search links. It even got a significant update recently that introduced features like export, third-party plugins, and multimodal support. There’s also YouChat, which uses GPT-3, an older model from OpenAI, and Forefront AI , which gives you access to GPT-4 and beyond.

The biggest non-GPT competitor to ChatGPT is Google Bard . It’s based on Google’s own homegrown language model, LaMDA, and Google seems intent on competing directly with OpenAI with Google Bard. The most recent updates make it a far more compelling alternative to ChatGPT , even if it’s not quite there.

There are a number of other chatbots out there, some of which are based on Meta’s open-source language model, LLaMA, such as Vicuna and HuggingChat .

Reports suggest Apple has been working on a ChatGPT rival for years , as well, though we haven’t seen it yet. Some reporters say it is “significantly behind competitors” at the moment.

Are ChatGPT chats private?

It depends on what you mean by private. All chats with ChatGPT are used by OpenAI to further tune the models, which can actually involve the use of human trainers. No, that doesn’t mean a human is looking through every question you ask ChatGPT, but there’s a reason OpenAI warns against providing any personal information to ChatGPT.

It should be noted that if you don’t delete your chats, the conversations will appear in the left sidebar. Unlike with other chatbots, individual chats within a conversation cannot be deleted, though they can be edited using the pencil icon that appears when you hover over a chat. When you delete the conversations, however, it’s not that ChatGPT forgets they ever happened — it’s just that they disappear from the sidebar chat history.

Fortunately, OpenAI has recently announced a way to make your chats hidden from the sidebar . These “hidden” chats won’t be used to train AI models either.

When was ChatGPT released?

ChatGPT was originally launched to the public in November of 2022 by OpenAI. The chatbot is based on the GPT-3.5 LLM, which is a fine-tuned version of GPT-3, a model first launched on March 15, 2022. GPT-3 itself, though, has been around for a few years now. It was first released in June 2020, but only as an autoregressive language model.

The predecessors to GPT-3 had very limited public exposure. GPT-2 was announced in February 2019, and the first research paper on GPT was published on OpenAI’s website in 2018.

Will ChatGPT replace Google Search?

Rather than replace it, chatbots are likely to be integrated directly into search. Microsoft has already done this with Bing Chat and Bing, which puts a “chat” tab right into the menu of Bing search.

Even Google has begun experimenting with integrating the smarts of Google Bard into search through its Search Generative Experience . We’re in the early days where all these exist as different products, but it’s not hard to imagine a future where it’s a completely unified experience.

Is Bing Chat the same as ChatGPT?

Microsoft has officially brought ChatGPT to Bing in the form of Bing Chat . After a long beta period, it was officially available to try out. But unlike ChatGPT , Bing Chat does require downloading the latest version of Edge. So Safari or Chrome users are out of luck.

In the early days of its release, Bing Chat was capable of some unhinged responses , but Microsoft has been quick to tame things a bit. It was recently announced that Bing Chat is using the latest GPT-4 language model , meaning it’s more powerful and accurate than ChatGPT . The new Edge Copilot mode also provides a more user-friendly way to get started, offering suggested prompts, links to learn more, and ways to tweak the kinds of answers it gives you. And now with the Windows Copilot , Bing Chat will live right on your desktop.

Is Google Bard the same as ChatGPT?

Unlike Bing Chat, Google Bard  uses an entirely different LLM to power its natural language capabilities. Upon its release, Bard has been using LaMDA, the company’s own model, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. As has been demonstrated from early on, Bard didn’t have quite the precision in its answers.

Reports indicate, however, that Bard is getting a massive update soon, going from being trained on 30 billion parameters up to 600 billion parameters. That could make it closer to what is possible with GPT-4.

Can you write essays with ChatGPT?

The use of ChatGPT has been full of controversy, with many onlookers considering how the power of AI will change everything from search engines to novel writing. It’s even demonstrated the ability to earn students surprisingly good grades in essay writing.

Essay writing for students is one of the most obvious examples of where ChatGPT could become a problem. ChatGPT might not write this article all that well, but it feels particularly easy to use for essay writing. Some generative AI tools, such as Caktus AI , are built specifically for this purpose.

Can ChatGPT write and debug code?

Absolutely — it’s one of the most powerful features of ChatGPT. As with everything with AI, you’ll want to double-check everything it produces, because it won’t always get your code right. But it’s certainly powerful at both writing code from scratch and debugging code.

Developers have used it to create websites, applications, and games from scratch — all of which are made more powerful with GPT-4, of course. There’s even a plug-in called ChatGPT Code Interpreter that makes programming with AI even more accessible.

What is the ChatGPT character limit?

OpenAI doesn’t set an exact character limit, but it will cut off around its responses at about 500 words or 4,000 characters. If you happen to give the chatbot a request for a specific number of words above 500, you might find that it cuts off mid-sentence somewhere after 500 words.

One way to get around this is just to ask it to “go on” or “continue,” but it depends on the prompt and type of response. Sometimes ChatGPT will more or less repeat the previous answers in different words.

The best way to get access to responses with longer characters is to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus.

Is there a ChatGPT bug bounty program?

Yes. A bug bounty program for ChatGPT was recently announced . The program was unveiled officially on OpenAI’s website , which details the types of “cash awards” that are being offered. They range from $200 to up to $20,000 for what it calls “exceptional discoveries.”

While addressing security researchers interested in getting involved in the program, OpenAI said it recognized “the critical importance of security and view it as a collaborative effort. By sharing your findings, you will play a crucial role in making our technology safer for everyone.”

Do you need to download ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is available via a webpage , so no downloading is needed. However, OpenAI has finally released a free, official iOS app that needs to be downloaded from the iOS app store. For many months, the various app stores were full of fake versions. These are still out there, though, and should be installed and used with caution, as they are not official ChatGPT apps. There is no still no official Android app.

On desktop, there are a couple of ways to install ChatGPT, though. First, you can navigate to the ChatGPT website and save it as a Windows app through Edge. Go to the site, click the ellipsis menu, and hover over Apps.  Select  Install this site as an app  to load ChatGPT from your desktop.

Other tools like MacGPT also allow shortcuts to access the browser service from your desktop.

Can you use ChatGPT on iPhone or Android?

Now that there’s an official iOS app, you no longer have to rely solely on the web app to use ChatGPT on your phone . So, whether with the official app as downloaded through the app store or just the web version, you can certainly use ChatGPT on iPhones. In addition, there’s even a way to replace Siri with ChatGPT on your iPhone, as well as some useful mobile apps like Perplexity AI .

As for Android, you’ll need to rely on the web app. Just as on desktop, type in chat.openai.com to start using ChatGPT.

Can you get ChatGPT to answer any question?

Not exactly. ChatGPT has limitations in the kinds of questions it can answer. First of all, it can’t write about anything that requires internet knowledge after late 2021, which is when its training stopped.

Beyond that, ChatGPT is careful about answering questions that might imply illegal, explicit, or damaging activity. It’ll avoid swearing or political debates, and will (usually) avoid making malware. There is some amount of jailbreaking that can be done to get around these restrictions, but OpenAI is constantly tightening its content policies to restrict unwanted answers. One example of a common jailbreaking technique is the DAN (Do Anything Now) prompt , though OpenAI has worked hard to plug these holes over time.

What is Auto-GPT?

Built on GPT-4, Auto-GPT is the latest evolution of AI technology to cause a stir in the industry. It’s not directly related to ChatGPT or OpenAI — instead, it’s an open-source Python application that got into the hands of developers all over the internet when it was published on GitHub .

With ChatGPT or ChatGPT Plus, the capabilities of the AI are limited to a single chat window. Auto-GPT, at its simplest, is making AI autonomous. It can be given a set of goals, and then take the necessary steps towards accomplishing that goal across the internet, including connecting up with applications and software.

According to the official description on GitHub, Auto-GPT is an “experimental open-source application showcasing the capabilities of the GPT-4 language model. This program, driven by GPT-4, chains together LLM ‘thoughts’, to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set. As one of the first examples of GPT-4 running fully autonomously, Auto-GPT pushes the boundaries of what is possible with AI.”

The demo used on the GitHub page is simple — just create a recipe appropriate for Easter and save it to a file. What’s neat is how Auto-GPT breaks down the steps the AI is taking to accomplish the goal, including the “thoughts” and “reasoning” behind its actions. Auto-GPT is already being used in a variety of different applications, with some touting it as the beginning of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) due to its autonomous nature.

What is GPT-4 and how does it compare to GPT-3.5?

GPT-4 is a more advanced LLM — the most powerful that OpenAI currently offers. At the current moment, OpenAI only offers access to GPT-4 through ChatGPT Plus. GPT-3.5, on the other hand, is the LLM that powers the free ChatGPT tool. OpenAI no longer says exactly how many parameters these advanced models are trained on, but it’s rumored that GPT-4 boasts up to 1 trillion parameters.

Regardless, the results are a fairly dramatic difference between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in terms of quality. It offers much more precise answers, is significantly better at coding and creative collaboration, and can provide (and respond to) much longer selections of text. GPT-4 remains the best possible model available, while GPT-3.5 is more in line with some other models available.

Who owns the copyright to content created by ChatGPT?

This is a question open to debate. Much of the conversation around copyright and AI is ongoing, with some saying generative AI is “stealing” the work of the content it was trained on. This has become increasingly contentious in the world of AI art. Companies like Adobe are finding ways around this by only training models on stock image libraries that already have proper artist credit and legal boundaries.

According to OpenAI, however, you have the right to reprint, sell, and merchandise anything that was created with ChatGPT or ChatGPT Plus. So, you’re not going to get sued by OpenAI.

The larger topic of copyright law regarding generative AI is still to be determined by various lawmakers and interpreters of the law, especially since copyright law as it currently stands technically only protects content created by human beings.

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• Artificial Intelligence

The ChatGPT chatbot is an innovative AI tool developed by OpenAI. As it stands, there are two main versions of the software: GPT-4 and GPT-3.5. Toe to toe in more ways than one, there are a couple of key differences between both versions that may be deal-breakers for certain users. But what exactly are these differences? We’re here to help you find out. 

We’ve put together this side-by-side comparison of both ChatGPT versions, so when you’re done reading, you’ll know what version makes the most sense for you and yours. What are GPT 3.5 and GPT-4?

ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that went viral at the start of last year and kicked off a wave of interest in generative AI tools, no longer requires an account to use.

Its creator, OpenAI, launched a webpage on Monday that lets you begin a conversation with the chatbot without having to sign up or log in first.

In recent years, the listening time required by a piece of AI to clone someone’s voice has been getting shorter and shorter.

It used to be minutes, now it’s just seconds.

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OpenAI Unveils New ChatGPT That Listens, Looks and Talks

Chatbots, image generators and voice assistants are gradually merging into a single technology with a conversational voice.

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By Cade Metz

Reporting from San Francisco

As Apple and Google transform their voice assistants into chatbots, OpenAI is transforming its chatbot into a voice assistant.

On Monday, the San Francisco artificial intelligence start-up unveiled a new version of its ChatGPT chatbot that can receive and respond to voice commands, images and videos.

The company said the new app — based on an A.I. system called GPT-4o — juggles audio, images and video significantly faster than previous versions of the technology. The app will be available starting on Monday, free of charge, for both smartphones and desktop computers.

“We are looking at the future of the interaction between ourselves and machines,” said Mira Murati, the company’s chief technology officer.

The new app is part of a wider effort to combine conversational chatbots like ChatGPT with voice assistants like the Google Assistant and Apple’s Siri. As Google merges its Gemini chatbot with the Google Assistant, Apple is preparing a new version of Siri that is more conversational.

OpenAI said it would gradually share the technology with users “over the coming weeks.” This is the first time it has offered ChatGPT as a desktop application.

The company previously offered similar technologies from inside various free and paid products. Now, it has rolled them into a single system that is available across all its products.

During an event streamed on the internet, Ms. Murati and her colleagues showed off the new app as it responded to conversational voice commands, used a live video feed to analyze math problems written on a sheet of paper and read aloud playful stories that it had written on the fly.

The new app cannot generate video. But it can generate still images that represent frames of a video.

With the debut of ChatGPT in late 2022 , OpenAI showed that machines can handle requests more like people. In response to conversational text prompts, it could answer questions, write term papers and even generate computer code.

ChatGPT was not driven by a set of rules. It learned its skills by analyzing enormous amounts of text culled from across the internet, including Wikipedia articles, books and chat logs. Experts hailed the technology as a possible alterative to search engines like Google and voice assistants like Siri.

Newer versions of the technology have also learned from sounds, images and video. Researchers call this “multimodal A.I.” Essentially, companies like OpenAI began to combine chatbots with A.I. image , audio and video generators.

(The New York Times sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, in December, claiming copyright infringement of news content related to A.I. systems.)

As companies combine chatbots with voice assistants, many hurdles remain. Because chatbots learn their skills from internet data, they are prone to mistakes. Sometimes, they make up information entirely — a phenomenon that A.I. researchers call “ hallucination .” Those flaws are migrating into voice assistants.

While chatbots can generate convincing language, they are less adept at taking actions like scheduling a meeting or booking a plane flight. But companies like OpenAI are working to transform them into “ A.I. agents ” that can reliably handle such tasks.

OpenAI previously offered a version of ChatGPT that could accept voice commands and respond with voice. But it was a patchwork of three different A.I. technologies: one that converted voice to text, one that generated a text response and one that converted this text into a synthetic voice.

The new app is based on a single A.I. technology — GPT-4o — that can accept and generate text, sounds and images. This means that the technology is more efficient, and the company can afford to offer it to users for free, Ms. Murati said.

“Before, you had all this latency that was the result of three models working together,” Ms. Murati said in an interview with The Times. “You want to have the experience we’re having — where we can have this very natural dialogue.”

An earlier version of this article misstated the day when OpenAI introduced its new version of ChatGPT. It was Monday, not Tuesday.

How we handle corrections

Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz

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