A writer’s take on ChatGPT

ChatGPT - what is it good for? Some things (when used by an expert in the right way)

I don’t think I’m supposed to like ChatGPT. Fairly often when people ask me what I do for work, they respond with a kind of “oooh, that must be interesting now with ChatGPT…” in a way that really means “well, your days are numbered!”

It’s not badly intentioned, but it does sometimes make me feel like I’m in Jaws and everyone else can see a large shadow looming towards me under the water... 

Which is strange, because actually, I do think that ChatGPT is very interesting. And no, I don’t think I’m going to be a shark victim any time soon.

Why? Because anyone who has ever used generative AI technology knows that it is very useful in lots of ways, and completely ridiculous in others. The challenge is to work out how to apply it.

Like lots of things, the only real way to do this is through experimentation. So here are my thoughts on the technology as it currently stands: how it can help you with your writing, and where it’s not really the right tool for the job.

Supercharge your research

The best thing about ChatGPT is its question and answer model. Unlike search engines, which serve millions of responses that you then need to sift through, if you ask ChatGPT a question it will give you an answer - a concise yet reasonably detailed reply. Need more information? Just ask it to expand.

This is invaluable when researching new or unfamiliar topics. It provides a very quick, basic grounding in a subject which you can then use to dig into more detail around the web, from more in-depth and authoritative sources.

Structure your argument easily

When people ask me to help them with their writing, it’s generally not because they have difficulty in coming up with ideas. Rather, it’s that they struggle to put them in order. 

Wrangling complex concepts into a logical structure is a task which requires a large amount of brain power - it’s the most difficult aspect of writing, and generally not something the modern world is set up to facilitate as it requires time and space free from distractions (No meetings! No phone calls! No notifications!)

However, with ChatGPT on your side you can generate a basic template structure from a mass of ideas (plus the general thread of the argument you’d like to make) which you can then customise. 

If you’re stuck this can be a really useful starting point, although I’d always recommend doing the thinking for yourself if you can. Anything generated by ChatGPT tends to be quite formulaic, so whilst you will get a logically structured template, you’ll need to add your own nuance if you want more than a run of the mill piece.

Quickly spin up SEO content

If you’re in need of content that’s optimised for search rankings then ChatGPT can be a really valuable tool. You can use it to brainstorm relevant keywords, build out topics for blog posts around these keywords, and write the pieces for you - for a particular audience, in a particular tone of voice.

Again, it’s always worth the human touch for better quality, but when I’ve experimented with creating SEO content on ChatGPT it’s been comparable to a lot of what’s already out there (although sometimes that’s not saying much!)

Plug in short snippets of copy

When I built my website through Wix, I had a play around with its open AI text generator tool which works up excerpts of text from short prompts.

On the About page I entered: ‘I am an expert writer, editor and strategist and I work with organisations to help them express their ideas’ 

The AI then generated a headline, a subheading and the following text: 

‘I am an experienced writer, editor, and strategist. My passion lies in helping organizations effectively communicate their ideas and messages. With my expertise, I work closely with clients to create compelling content that engages and resonates with their target audience. Whether it’s crafting engaging articles, editing manuscripts, or developing content strategies, I am dedicated to delivering high-quality work that exceeds expectations.’

Is this good messaging? Not really - it has a convoluted sentence structure which gives a passive, indirect tone - but it’s a starting point. 

At the very least it provides inexperienced website copywriters with an idea for the kinds of things they need to write on each page. I think this is really useful as websites have a lot of content gaps that need filling, and it can be overwhelming figuring out what to write where.

The limitations of ChatGPT

Now we’ve covered some of the benefits of ChatGPT, what about its limitations?

1. It is constricted by its training data: The current free version of ChatGPT is version 3.5, which was last updated in January 2022. This means that anything that has happened since this date is unknown to the program, and won’t be factored into its responses. A word of warning if you’re using it for research.

2. It has no opinion: ChatGPT can’t give an opinion. Not a real one. Not one as nuanced, grounded in experience, (and often contradictory) as a person’s. Drawing conclusions, making judgements, and expressing opinions are fundamentals of good writing, so as long as generative AI tools fail to do this, they will never produce writing that feels authentic.

3. It won’t replace a human editor: Yes - ChatGPT can iterate on different versions of a piece of content as instructed. But it can’t sit down with a writer to finely tune their work, highlighting areas which need more information, restructuring, tweaking the language… all the while explaining why it has made those decisions. As a result it will never help anyone improve their writing skills in the way that a person can.

Know where you stand with ChatGPT

The single most popular narrative around AI is that it is going to replace us. But if you play around with ChatGPT you quickly realise that all it does is reconstitute like for like. This means it replaces bad content with bad, and needs an expert hand to create anything of reasonable quality.

Learning how to prompt the technology is also key, so much so that prompt engineering is now a specialist dark art companies like Google will pay you a lot of money to do… And knowing what prompts to use is in itself a limiting factor in the results you’ll get.

Of course, we don’t know what generative AI will be capable of in a few years’ time. We can be certain it will be much more powerful, and have wide-reaching consequences for the world of work in ways we can’t yet predict or understand. For now, we can rationalise away any AI anxiety reasonably well, and use the technology to take a few shortcuts. Then if the time comes, I suppose we just ask ChatGPT what to do next.