What is ChatGPT and how worried should we be?

Picture this… It’s September 2022 and after years of dreaming, planning, and honing my skills I am finally ready to announce to the company, to which I have been loyal for 17 years, my intention to quit my comfortable and successful job to become a bonified Freelance Copywriter (*confetti *fanfare *abject terror).

I have absolute confidence in my decision, my business plan is in place, I know that my writing will bring value to my clients, and I am certain there is a lot of work out there for a copywriter like me.

Then in November ‘22 ChatGPT is released to the public and begins to make waves. This is an application that can be used to:

‘Create engaging and informative content, such as blog posts, social media posts, and email newsletters which not only saves time and resources but also ensures that the content is relevant and engaging, resulting in increased customer engagement and conversions.’

Oh no! That quote could have been lifted directly from my own business plan!

By January 2023, just 2 months after launch, it is estimated to have reached 100 million users making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever to have been launched, an incredible number that took TikTok nine months and Instagram more than two years. By the beginning of February ChatGPT is at capacity and its servers have crashed. Those waves have become a tsunami.

So, what is it? ChatGPT is a Chatbot, an artificial intelligence language model created by OpenAI a private research laboratory backed by Microsoft. It uses advanced machine learning algorithms and deep neural networks to understand and generate human-like responses to natural language inputs. Essentially it is designed to talk and respond like a human, and as with all AI the more interaction it has the better it becomes - and it is certainly getting a lot of interaction (Skynet anyone?)

With its ability to understand and engage with customers in real time, deliver personalized content, and automate certain tasks, ChatGPT had already been making a real impact in the field of customer service. The technology has been around for a few years, we’ve all become used to interacting with customer service Chatbots when our washing machine breaks down and we need some troubleshooting support, when we are looking to see when our delivery will arrive – or when we are trying to get through to the right department on one of those automated voice systems!

This is only the tip of the iceberg. With its deep learning algorithms, ChatGPT can analyse customer data and behaviour to understand their interests, preferences, and purchasing habits. This information can then be used to deliver targeted and personalized content, such as product recommendations and promotions which has the potential to greatly increase customer engagement and satisfaction, as well as boost conversion rates and revenue.

More importantly, it promises to save you time, the commodity that none of us seems to have enough of and hold on a minute – it’s also free! Why bother with a copywriter at all?

There is no question that it is fast, the response times are impressive, and it can give you content in pretty much any form you need. Are you looking for a series of inspirational quotes for Instagram? Sure, here are 20. Looking for a 500-word blog on ‘a subject’? great. But it does tend to be repetitive, and machine-like in its replies. Things can be improved by finessing the ‘prompts’ you ask, but that takes some skill and understanding of machine learning.

As for free, well it is right now, but OpenAI already has a paid premium model to give you priority access – handy when the website is often at capacity.

It also has the potential to be used as a search engine, it will search millions of data points, and has already been ‘trained’ on over 10 billion words from 8 million documents, but can it replace Google? My view is that it’s unlikely, although Google’s share price took a dive recently when its newly rushed-out challenger ‘Bard’ gave a wrong answer in its promotional video.

Am I worried it’ll take my job in the future, in short, no. I have absolute confidence in the human brain's ability to far exceed AI.

Despite its benefits, some experts have raised concerns about the implications of ChatGPT and whether we should be worried about its impact on society. These concerns are primarily centred around the potential for job loss and the ethics surrounding AI-powered systems. There are growing questions about privacy and data protection. As ChatGPT and other AI systems collect and process vast amounts of customer data, there is a risk that this information could be misused or hacked which could result in serious privacy and security breaches, with far-reaching consequences for individuals and businesses.

Unlike a search engine, ChatGPT is designed to present you with a single response - you can ask it for a short or a longer-form answer, but the output is presented as fact. There is potential for bias and discrimination which could have serious implications for vulnerable groups and marginalised communities. Take that one step further and in the wrong hands you have a powerful tool that can be used to create fake news and propaganda. There are safeguards in place to offer some protection and it won’t deliberately produce content that promotes misinformation. I asked it to give me a response from the viewpoint of a ‘Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist’ and I got the following:

I'm sorry, but I cannot generate content that promotes paranoia, conspiracy theories, or misinformation. This type of content is harmful and undermines the trust in science and technology. OpenAI's goal is to ensure that artificial intelligence is developed and used in a responsible and ethical manner, and generating content that promotes conspiracy theories and misinformation goes against this goal.

Ethical concerns aside it is only as good as the prompts it is given, with its output changing depending on these prompts, there is a real danger of inconsistency with the tone of voice and branding – which can damage your all-important brand authenticity.  It does have a place in marketing and content creation, not least to get you started from a blank page to an edited piece. Used well it has the potential to enhance the creative process, used without the creativity of a human brain it will create content that is derivative, uninspired, and boring. In short, lacking all the things that make your brand unique.

The question is, can we learn to get along?