ChatGPT: A primer for writers and others

It’s a new year and the high level of interest about ChatGPT and justifiable fears of it impacting certain areas of employment will be a growing story. OpenAI’s ChatGPT beta was just released for public inspection and use in late November.

Since then, college professors have started jumping out of 4th floor windows, copy and content writers (yes, there is a difference) are searching for real estate sales opportunities and researchers are, well, researching what the future holds for them.

Okay, it’s not that bad yet, but the writing is on the wall for changes in the not-too-distant-future for people working in these and other areas.

What does ChatGPT actually do?

ChatGPT is a variant of the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) language model that is specifically designed for generating human-like text in a conversational context. It has been trained on a large dataset of human conversations and can generate responses to input text that are coherent and appropriate in the context of a conversation. (This paragraph is a quote from ChatGPT.)

In essence, you enter a prompt or a conversation starter, and it will generate a response. You can then continue the conversation by providing additional input, and ChatGPT will generate a response to that input as well.

You’ll discover ChatGPT can “understand” and maintain consistency within a conversation, even if the conversation goes off in different directions or covers a variety of topics.

Like the name points out, ChatGPT is a chatbot on steroids that is an evolution within the GPT-3 development model. It understands questions asked as long as they relate to topics in existence up to the middle of 2021. It almost instantly attempts to answer them from its immense data reference points.

The earlier GPT-3 content output apps available online for the last 18 months or so operate on a one-way street. You set them up to do your bidding and they provide you with content. Then wash and repeat as needed.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, attempts to have a “conversation” with you. This step and the sizeable increase in data provide the measurable leap the technology is taking.

Where ChatGPT exists in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) universe.

So, ChatGPT is a step in the evolution of GPT-3. It is unofficially being labeled GPT-3.5. GPT-3 has already given us a raft of online apps that help people – both writers and, somewhat unfortunately, non-writers – to create content at the push or two of a button.

Now it must be pointed out that much of this “content” is not much more than “word salad” in the hands of people simply looking for love from Google. These are folks dumping 5-to-15 thousand words a day on an affiliate blog or media outlet without attempting to provide real value or clarity.

However, most of these AI content apps require the user to utilize or create prompts and templates to provide unique, creative and effective communications. In this way, they can help a writer truly connect with the needs, desires and interests of an audience. The writer then adds, subtracts or edits this content to provide valuable and helpful content with personality and a human touch. This is the way AI writing tools help provide a creative spark and offer options for the writer.

ChatGPT in 2023

At first blush, ChatGPT delivers something that feels like pure magic. While there are built-in limitations, it is ready to communicate with you without fear or favor. It tries to tell it like it knows it. However, the content it shares generally reads like a brochure, without much color or flair in its current iteration. That said, you can tune it up a bit with follow-up prompts.

Right now, anyone can take it for a test drive and nearly two million folks are doing so. It is being used to write and create blog posts, feature stories, YouTube videos, social media posts, research documents, college exams, dating site pages, recipes, movie scripts, marketing plans, and the best way to develop or fix coding. The list goes on from there. ?

There is a reality to consider when attempting to determine how much of a problem or benefit ChatGPT will deliver, and at what speed. There will come a day – probably in the first half of 2023 – when OpenAI will close the doors on free use.

Based on history, the technology will then likely be provided at a negotiated cost to a select number of companies believed to have the expertise to make the best use of it. Current GPT-3 writing tools charge most customers between $30 to $250 per seat/per month for access, depending on usage. You can expect similar and possibly higher charges for ChatGPT. Processing this amount of data continuously burns a lot of investor cash.

2023 is going to be active and interesting from an AI perspective. Rumors have it that GPT-4 could make its public appearance by the 3rd quarter of the year. What it will deliver isn’t too hard to imagine.

Microsoft is the majority investor in in Open AI. You can bet Google, Apple, Meta, Amazon and supporting players like StabilityAI and Aleph Alpha are going to be showing us what is new and unique behind their silicon curtains.

Writers face a need-to-know moment in 2023

If you have not already done so, the rollout of ChatGPT offers an ideal time for you start playing with and learning about AI. There are hundreds of thousands of writers and others who have already plugged into GPT-3 AI content apps over the past 18 months. ChatGPT was not a total surprise to this audience, so you are already slightly behind the curve.

It’s a critical time for writers to grasp the basics of Artificial Intelligence. This is true even if you ultimately determine not to use this technology in your work and creative activities. It will be a substantial part of life and marketplace dialogue in 2023 and throughout the next decade.

The need to know expands if you work in a marketing agency or corporate communication environment. At a minimum, you need to be able to offer insights and recommendations about these new AI processes and their potential impacts on your workplace.

For the rest of you, it’s indeed time to get out there and play around with ChatGPT before it gets pulled back behind the free curtain.