Speed up your desk research game with these GPTs
Written by Eric S. Arcidiacono , Director of Strategy at Kettle
The unsung hero of research methods
Almost a? year ago I wrote about how AI can help with your research and strategy work flows. It was a bit of an overview of the main AI use cases we saw for our Strategy team, ways a Strategist could leverage various AI tools in their day to day, including how ChatGPT could help with desk research.
Ahh, desk research. The unsung hero of research methods. A method that not only our Strategy team uses, but one that almost all of our teams lean on at some point in their project work flows. Especially in the initial stages of a project or pitch. But, in our data-obsessed world, quantifiable metrics and hard data can often get top billing in conversations about research, and desk research can sometimes be underappreciated. This is especially true when we consider how valuable desk research can be for connecting dots and uncovering insights about consumers, creative trends and technology, culture, or your client’s category.
Well, suffice it to say that we do appreciate and value desk research, but it does, or can, take up a good bit of time. So when OpenAI rolled out GPTs, of course we had to continue experimenting. Could GPTs fine tune what we had been experimenting with? Could it speed up our…desk research?
Yes. Yes it could. And that’s what this article is about. In a bit we’ll dive into the specific GPTs we’ve created for exactly that, but first let’s cover some basics about GPTs.
What are GPTs, and who can create them?
GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT that you can create for a specific purpose. The variations of GPTs are almost limitless, and anyone who has access to ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise can create or use them.? To create one you just have to think of a specific use case. No coding is needed, you just use natural language to tell it what you want it to do, and how you want the task done. In some cases you’ll want to upload additional knowledge (PDFs, etc) as well. Et voilà—you have a new GPT.
Why you might care
Common tasks done just the way you like. If you’ve ever felt like ChatGPT was helpful, but always needed your custom touch to get it just right, a custom GPT could help. Once you give it custom instructions, it will always remember how you'd want a task done. In this way, GPTs can automate repetitive tasks that eat into your day, freeing you up for bigger tasks, or deeper thinking.
Goodbye extensive prompts. By now I’m sure you’ve gotten great at writing prompts for ChatGPT or Claude, but is that really how you want to spend your time? Probably not. With a GPT, once you set it up with custom instructions (similar to an extensive prompt), a few words are enough to get a task under way, the way you want it done.
Real world tasks via Actions. The Actions feature allows you to connect a GPT to external APIs and third party tools like Zapier to perform real world tasks for you. For example, connect your GPT to a database, or plug it into your Gmail. It's like having an AI assistant, or what are now called AI agents. You can learn more about Actions here.
Create one or find one
You can create a custom GPT, which is actually kind of fun, and an interesting process, or if you don’t have the time there are thousands of GPTs in the GPT store now. For example, if you wanted a GPT to speed up your desk research process, there might already be a GPT for that.
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GPTs to speed up your desk research game
And to that point, at Kettle we have a couple of GPTs in use right now, both designed to aid in our desk research efforts. We’ve set them up to make the process faster, easier, and to provide outputs in the format our teams would want to see them in. But, anyone who does desk research would likely find them useful. One is for swiftly analyzing editorial articles, and the other is specialized for analyzing research PDFs. And without further ado, here they are.
TL;DR Article Analyst GPT
The TLDR Article Analyst GPT is designed to analyze text from online articles. Just copy the text of an article, paste it into the chat, and with almost no instruction it will automatically summarize the article into bullet points, pull out key stats, and pull key quotes from people quoted in articles. If you want to know more about something in the summary, just ask in your next? prompt. And to really dig deeper, ask it to use ChatGPT’s general knowledge base to start connecting dots for you in whatever way you think makes sense for the project. If you’ve got ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise, feel free to try it out here.
It also works with a PDF report if you need it to, but our second GPT is specialized for that.
Desk Research Intern GPT
The Desk Research Intern GPT can analyze a research report PDF that you upload–in about 1 to 2 minutes. Once it’s uploaded, just hit enter and it will automatically give you an overview of the report, the key findings, important statistics, and implications you might draw from the report. If you have a specific type of analysis you want it to do, just include that in your initial prompt. The preset conversation starters are a good place to look if you need ideas, too. Once the initial analysis is complete, you can also ask it to do a deep dive on a certain aspect. Play around with it. If you have a report PDF on hand, give it a shot.
Always verify!
You’ll likely find something useful, but ChatGPT is not perfect, yet. So, before citing findings in any official work I recommend you cross reference the original sources to 1) verify their existence, and 2) understand the context they were mentioned in. The real value here is sifting through long articles or 30 page reports in about 1-2 minutes to see if they contain something you can use. You still have to think critically, but this is like the fast lane on the desk research highway. You get there faster, but you still have to keep your hands on the wheel to get there safely.
And for the record, our safeguards
Just in case you were wondering, we absolutely do not share any sensitive information during these processes. For peace of mind, for us and for you, here are the internal safeguards we live by to make sure we are not crossing any legal or ethical boundaries, and we suggest that you follow suit.?
We do not:
If you end up using one of these GPTs and have an idea on how to make it better, or have questions on how to get the most out of them, shoot me a note on my LinkedIn profile.
Strategy Leader & Entrepreneur
6 个月Our teammates have found them super useful. If you’re curious, give them a whirl. And now with OpenAI’s recent update everyone with an account (not just paid users) can use GPTs.