What is ChatGPT and will it change how we work?

By now, it’s very likely that you’ve heard of ChatGPT. Since its launch in late November 2022, the AI chatbot app has garnered much attention. Its conversational and human-like responses to queries are what makes it both intriguing and controversial.  

Less than a week after launching, the app had more than a million users implementing the new technology to write essays, draft emails, create templates, and fix code. Reports of users being sassed and chastised by the chatbot quickly flooded in.  

While many of us have had fun testing the app’s responses to our questions, it has also given rise to a number of ethical and philosophical questions. Namely, how effective is ChatGPT and will it put jobs at risk?  

Before we get too deep, let’s take a step back and look at what ChatGPT really is, how it works, and what its limitations are.  

What is ChatGPT? 

When you pose the question to ChatGPT, this is the response you’ll likely receive:  

ChatGPT is a chatbot designed to assist with customer support, conversation, and information gathering tasks. It uses natural language processing and GPT-3 technology to generate responses that are tailored to the user’s input. ChatGPT can handle a wide range of queries and provide answers in real-time, making it a valuable tool for businesses looking to improve their customer support experience.  

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So, what can we take away from that?  

Quite simply, ChatGPT is a chatbot, not too dissimilar to those you’re used to interacting with on live chat widgets on sites across the web. The main difference is the extent of data ChatGPT taps into to formulate its answers and the way it structures its responses.  

It’s a lot more conversational than previous chatbot iterations thanks to its natural language processing. This results in the human-like responses that have been attracting a great deal of attention.  

How does ChatGPT work? 

Okay, it’s time to get technical. 

The ‘GPT’ in ChatGPT stands for Generative Pre-training Transformer. Transformers are a type of deep learning algorithm that is widely used for natural language processing (NLP). It’s designed to process large sequences of data and learn patterns in that data. Processes vast amounts of text allows ChatGPT to perform various NLP tasks such as text generation and answering questions.  

What are the limitations of ChatGPT? 

While many of us have been impressed by the abilities of ChatGPT, it’s important for you to understand its limitations before choosing to implement the chatbot.  

1. ChatGPT can sometimes write plausible-sounding but incorrect responses 

 According to the company’s website, this is a challenging issue to fix because there is no single source of truth from which that chatbot can source its answers. Training the AI to be more cautious will lead to it declining questions and queries it can answer correctly, causing it to be significantly less effective.  

2. ChatGPT is sensitive to phrasing tweaks 

ChatGPT can sometimes claim to not know the answer to a question when it is submitted. However, a slight rephrasing of the question can lead to the chatbot interpreting the question differently and therefore answering the question correctly. As a result, you may sometimes have to rephrase and tweak your question a couple of times in order to get the response you require.  

3. ChatGPT can be jargon-y or repetitively use certain phrases

Issues can arise from biases in the training data applied to the app. For example, if the trainers prefer long answers that are ladened with industry-specific vocabulary, ChatGPT will likely formulate answers that jargon-heavy and difficult to understand based on patterns it has seen in its training data.  

4. ChatGPT can exhibit biased behavior  

The ChatGPT team at OpenAI have made efforts to teach the chatbot to refuse inappropriate requests using the Moderation API to block unsafe content. Unfortunately, there is still potential for ChatGPT to generate biased responses that contain offensive language if they are present in the text data it was trained on.  

How can marketers use ChatGPT? 

Even with these limitations, it’s clear that the capacity of ChatGPT is huge.  

For many of us, our day-to-day lives can feel like an endless to do list. Marketers are well-known for wearing many hats. AI has frequently been touted as the solution to this, allowing manual tasks to be automated and workflows streamlined to allow marketing teams to more effectively use their time.  

Given ChatGPT’s low-cost content output, it’s no surprise savvy marketers are already putting the app to use. If you’re planning on using it in your marketing, we’ve outlines the best ways you can negate the app’s limitations, while improving your productivity.  

1. Content creation 

ChatGPT is an effective tool for content creation. From blog articles and online content to social media, ChatGPT has already proven itself capable of creating marketing content.  

However, as with all marketing, it’s not that simple.  

There are a number of potential impacts to SEO you need to be aware of. Traditionally, Google has penalized auto-generated content, deeming it low quality according to the company’s spam policy. What’s more, ChatGPT is a competitor to Google leading to speculation that Google may move to penalize any content generated by its competitor.  As a result, your site could be completely removed from Google’s search results.  

So, instead of using ChatGPT to construct complete articles, it would be safer to use the app to build a general outline and have a human member of your team author and fact-check longer-form content. For short-form content that will not affect SEO such as social media posts or email, ChatGPT is here to make your life easier.  

2. Customer queries 

As with many chatbot, ChatGPT can help you create a pleasant and seamless experience for your customers. By delivering quick and accurate responses to customer inquiries, you can free-up you and your team’s time. Your customer support agents will then have more time to focus on more complex queries or time-intensive tasks.  

3. SEO and research  

ChatGPT has the ability to research and curate content from sources across the web. This is much more useful than manually sifting through search engine results. The app can identify timely keywords that are impacting your industry and will significantly reduce time spent researching and planning.  

However, there is still room for errors or omissions, so ensuring your team review and verify information is essential.   

4. Coding  

As well as writing in human-like, conversational language, ChatGPT can write code in a number of languages including C++, JavaScript, and Python, as well as error-check existing code. As a result, creating simple computer programs has become significantly more accessible to marketers of all specialisms. Developing this skill will help you and your team automate routine elements of day-to-day life.  

5. Data analysis  

We all know how important data is. Dotdigital helps you turn data into unforgettable customer experiences with engaging visualizations and dashboards, but what about the data that sits separate to our CXDP?  

ChatGPT can interpret information, dissect text and numerical data, spotting patterns and extracting insights from your datasets. It even has the ability to create charts. Overall, ChatGPT can make identifying trends in customer behavior simpler.  

6. Project management 

Finally, we know launching a new campaign or project is never simple. ChatGPT can be used to streamline the entire process. If you’re not sure about how to put your project into action, you can ask the app to create a step-by-step guide covering everything from what tools and skills are needed to how best to analyze and assess your results.  

Will ChatGPT affect my job?  

There has been a lot of chatter about the extent to which ChatGPT will start replacing people, but it’s safe to say it isn’t ready to take over any of our jobs yet.  

While it can help streamline work and processes, it still requires a lot of guidance and human supervision. Instead, you should see ChatGPT as a way to augment your skills. It’s a tool you should use to make your work life simpler.  

Content marketers can scale-up production and output by turning to the app to produce comprehensive content plans. Marketing managers can present the results of their campaigns in more engaging ways. Email marketers can dedicate more time to creating data-powered, personalized marketing by removing the time-consuming task of generating copy and templates.  

Overall, it’s important you understand what ChatGPT can and can’t do. If you’re planning on adopting the technology, remember that it’s only as good as your team. It still requires a lot of human checks and balances, so don’t expect it to immediately change your life. Simply allow it to improve your current outputs.