Introduction
The release of ChatGPT has driven tectonic shifts in and outside of the tech industry. What makes it so outstanding?
Mainly, ChatGPT, as a generative AI, produces human-like, readable content. This could change not just how people work, but how we learn, communicate and live our daily lives.
But first, what is generative AI?
Generative AI is an artificial intelligence technology that can create various output types, including text, imagery, audio or other data types.
Before ChatGPT, generative AI has been on the scene for quite a long time. However, if you tried to interact with an AI-powered tool, it was likely a frustrating experience.
ChatGPT has the notable ability to follow a conversation and create a novel output.
In this article, we’ll answer your questions about ChatGPT, including:
- What is ChatGPT?
- What are the capabilities of ChatGPT?
- Is ChatGPT free?
- Is ChatGPT safe?
- How to use ChatGPT?
- How can ChatGPT make my life easier?
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) language model developed by OpenAI, an AI research laboratory. It stands for "Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer." GPT refers to the underlying architecture of the model, which is based on transformers—a type of deep learning model that has proven to be highly effective in natural language processing tasks.
ChatGPT is designed to generate human-like responses in conversational contexts. It has been trained on a vast amount of text data from the internet and is capable of understanding and generating text on a wide range of topics.
To clarify, it’s ChatGPT that has written the two paragraphs above. This is how ChatGPT works—we feed it a question, and it provides a well-written explanation in response.
Now, let’s see what else the tool can do.
ChatGPT capabilities
In a nutshell, ChatGPT can do all things text-related. To be more specific:
- Natural language processing (NLP). First off, ChatGPT understands and interprets your input using NLP algorithms.
- Answering questions. You can ask ChatGPT questions as you would on Google. The difference is, ChatGPT provides a concise answer, not a list of somewhat relevant resources on the topic. You just need to be specific in your question and provide more context to get a clear response.
- Generating texts. ChatGPT can pick up a text from where you stopped and complete it for you.
- Creative writing. From stories to poetry to imaginary languages—ChatGPT is an AI writing tool that creates those creative pieces for you. The more detailed the input, the more artistic the output.
- Multilingual conversations. ChatGPT speaks multiple languages and can support any conversation in the language of the input. It can also translate texts for you.
- Feedback-based training. You won’t always be happy with the results generated by ChatGPT. But you can point out the inconsistencies, and the app will return a more relevant response based on your feedback.
- Analyzing texts and driving conclusions. ChatGPT can be your personal assistant, but without paid time off (PTO). You can use it to summarize texts, perform sentiment analysis, make calculations and complete other tasks that require a thorough analysis of the information provided.
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The example above gives you an example of how ChatGPT can work with a prompt.
Is ChatGPT free?
For the time being, ChatGPT is free to use. But you can subscribe to ChatGPT Plus for $20/month and get priority access to new features, enjoy faster response times and use ChatGPT even during peak hours (free users often have issues with accessing the tool when the demand is too high).
To build a product based on ChatGPT or integrate the technology with your internal tools, you need to access ChatGPT API. Depending on the version of the app, the procedure for accessing its API may look different. At the time of writing, users can access ChatGPT-3.5 API directly through their accounts or join the waitlist for the newest ChatGPT-4 model.
Pricing for the ChatGPT API varies for different versions and models and changes often so you’d better search for the most relevant information on the OpenAI website. But you should know this about OpenAI’s pricing model—API users only pay for tokens, where every 1,000 tokens are about 750 words.
📌 Learn more about the cost of AI tools
Is ChatGPT safe?
Before you rush to implement ChatGPT all over your business processes, there’s one thing you should consider—privacy concerns.
In March 2023, OpenAI confirmed an unintentional data breach — during a nine-hour window, some users saw titles from another active user’s chat history. Also...
“[...] it was possible for some users to see another active user’s first and last name, email address, payment address, credit card type and the last four digits (only) of a credit card number, and credit card expiration date.”
The company announced the bug had been fixed (almost) immediately, but there’s more to it. The world’s biggest enterprises including Apple and Samsung have banned their employees from using ChatGPT at work to prevent the release of confidential information. Yet Amazon’s Adam Montgomery confirms that “Amazon employees are allowed to use ChatGPT or other generative AI tools.”
So should you trust ChatGPT like Amazon or ban it from internal use like Apple? Perhaps you’ll find the answer in OpenAI’s security measures:
- OpenAI complies with GDPR and CCPA and can execute a Data Processing Agreement upon request.
- OpenAI uses encryption both at rest and in transit to protect data both when stored and while being transferred between systems.
- The OpenAI API undergoes annual third-party penetration testing to identify security weaknesses early.
- OpenAI doesn’t use data submitted through the OpenAI API to train OpenAI models. However, it may use the data coming from non-API users.
The verdict? Using ChatGPT API is clearly more secure as opposed to the free version. And to be on the safe side, it’s best to refrain from entering any kind of confidential information into the app.
How to use ChatGPT
If you’ve never felt tempted to test out the app before, congratulations—you are a rare breed! Jokes aside, here’s how you get started with ChatGPT:
- Create your account. You can create a free account by entering your email and phone number.
- Adjust settings. Specify if you want your chats to be deleted within 30 days or preserved.
- Write your first prompts. Check out the instructions on writing great prompts below.
The step-by-step guide above was made with Scribe in only three minutes!
5 Things to know about writing great ChatGPT prompts
Depending on how you phrase your prompt, you’ll either get an excellent result or the dullest output ever.
The process of writing effective AI questions is called prompt engineering. Don't worry — it’s not as complicated as it sounds. All you need is to follow these simple tips:
1. Always provide context
ChatGPT has been trained on large amounts of data compiled before September 2021, and as of today, the app isn’t connected to the web. To get accurate responses, always add context to your prompts, especially for recent events.
2. Give examples
Want to generate an automated email from a support rep or write a LinkedIn post announcing a product update? Provide ChatGPT with examples of similar content to give it an idea of the style, structure and content length.
3. Include a call to action
ChatGPT isn’t Google (yet?), meaning that you can’t enter one word in the search box and expect to receive all the necessary information on the topic. When writing a prompt, specify the action you want ChatGPT to take.
4. Provide instructions on the tone
When you start, you’ll notice the app returns rather robotic responses. So what’s revolutionary about another AI tool that provides dry, generic information? The thing is, you can achieve unbelievable results by simply guiding ChatGPT on the communication style it should stick to.
5. Make corrections
ChatGPT is prone to mistakes (often, the most ridiculous ones), but it learns fast. When you get an irrelevant answer, explain what’s wrong with that output in your next prompt. This time, ChatGPT will provide a more accurate response (if not, repeat).
6 Ways you can start using ChatGPT
For many businesses and individuals, ChatGPT has become an assistant in their daily tasks and business processes. If you’re ready to save up some time by improving manual processes with AI, these six use cases are a good place to start:
1. AI-powered documentation
Scribe, your automated documentation assistant, has launched an AI feature to help you document knowledge even faster. Scribe integrates with ChatGPT to enable AI-powered step-by-step guide creation whenever you need to add more context to your Scribes (aka Scribe-generated guides).
Confused? Let’s walk you through the process from scratch.
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Once you activate the Scribe ChatGPT extension, it starts capturing the process you’re going through in your browser. When you stop the recording, Scribe provides you with a step-by-step guide, complete with screenshots and captions.
Oftentimes, you’ll want to add more context to those brief captions. That's what Scribe is for. Just write a prompt and watch ChatGPT generate text right in the Scribe interface.
Sign up for Scribe and create high-quality content with the help of ChatGPT.
2. Coding assistant
More and more often, we hear about ChatGPT being used to write and debug code. Indeed, the app can provide code suggestions, debug issues and explain programming concepts, helping users to work with code faster.
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However, this is also the most risky technique from the security perspective. It’s a great helper for non-tech people who need to generate an iframe or install a tracking pixel, but professional developers should be careful with it.
3. Customer support
To use ChatGPT for customer support at scale, you’ll need to connect the app to your customer communication solution via ChatGPT API. This way, you can entrust AI to handle a large volume of inquiries and provide customer support around the clock.
What’s best, ChatGPT's language capabilities enable it to provide customer support in multiple languages. It means you can personalize your communications with a global customer base without increasing headcount.
4. Writing Excel spreadsheets and formulas
Antonio Gabric, Outreach Manager at Hunter.io, shares:
I am not that good with spreadsheets, and it takes quite a time to figure out how to apply complex formulas for reporting.
Before ChatGPT, I'd manually search around Google, try to adjust the formula, and eventually make it work. It takes too much of my time.
Nowadays, I ask ChatGPT to help me get a working formula in a couple of minutes.
You heard it. From now on, you just need to provide text instructions on what you have and what you want to achieve, and ChatGPT will generate that sneaky Excel formula for you.
5. Content creation
ChatGPT can help you streamline the writing process. You can use it to quickly generate first drafts, outline blog posts, brainstorm content ideas and even create product descriptions.
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While it can be a helpful starting point, it's crucial to infuse your own expertise and personal touch into such content.
6. Customer feedback analysis
If you don’t have a dedicated sentiment analysis tool in your tech stack but you need to analyze loads of dust-covered customer feedback, ChatGPT can help.
Feed customer reviews to the tool to have it analyze and summarize feedback, identify patterns and provide you with recommendations on improving your products or services based on the findings.
Use ChatGPT to get things done faster
ChatGPT has made AI accessible to everyone. It has also increased the level of competition in the market by making it easy to automate repetitive, time-consuming asks. Those who don’t pick up on it, risk getting stuck with outdated processes.
We can hardly think of anything eating up as much time as documentation. With Scribe, you can finally optimize your knowledge management process and focus on the actual work. Leave documentation to Scribe and never manually create a step-by-step guide again.
