Usages of ChatGPT for Writing: The Ultimate Tool for Content Creation
AI technology seems to be taking over the world! From self-driving cars to virtual assistants (like Alexa and Siri), it has become an integral part of modern-day life. This has become true even in the most creative of fields, the ones that were always thought to need a human touch–such as writing–especially with the appearance of AI tools, including ChatGPT.
This language model proved to make life easier in so many ways, which has made us wonder: what exactly are the benefits of ChatGPT for writing? And is it possible for this AI tool to become the main player in the world of content creation?
To answer these questions, we are going to examine in this article different usages for ChatGPT in the writing field, and some of its shortcomings and alternatives as well.
What Is ChatGPT?
Developed by Open AI, ChatGPT is basically an advanced AI chatbot. It is a large language model that is designed to mimic human language patterns and generate text in a variety of contexts. Based on deep learning techniques, this model has been trained on massive amounts of data, such as books, articles, and other forms of written text. This makes it capable of generating human-like responses to natural language prompts.
ChatGPT is often used in natural language processing (NLP) applications, such as chatbots and virtual assistants, but it has also been useful in the writing field. Its ability to generate text on a wide range of topics and in a variety of styles makes it a valuable resource for writers looking to streamline their writing process, generate new ideas, and improve the quality of their work.
How to Use ChatGPT for Writing
While ChatGPT can have many valuable usages when it comes to writing, it excels in some areas more than others. So let’s take a look at how you, as a writer or an author, can make the best out of this advanced AI chatbot.
1. Coming Up with Ideas
One of the common challenges that many writers face is coming up with fresh ideas to write about. This, in fact, may lead to writer’s block, leaving one unable to write a word for a long period of time. Luckily, ChatGPT can be a good resource when it comes to generating ideas.
Whether you just want a simple topic suggestion or would like to expand on a certain idea, ChatGPT can do it for you. Here’s an example where we asked it to suggest a plot for a mystery novel:
Or if you have a blog and feel a bit stuck in regards to generating ideas for your next articles, try asking ChatGPT for some suggestions and watch what it comes up with. Here’s an example:
The applications here are limitless! Whether you’re a social media specialist looking for something to post in the new year, a marketing professional who is working on a copy for an ad campaign, or a content writer who needs some help with the title of your article, you can use ChatGPT to come up with some unique and creative ideas.
2. Generating Content
Now that you have an idea of what to write about, you can use ChatGPT to help you in the writing process. And while we don’t recommend relying on it completely and taking its AI-generated content as is (for reasons we’ll discuss later in the article), it can still be a good starting point. Here are a few of the many ways types of content it can generate:
- Creative Titles
Having a catchy title is important for any piece of content, be it an article or a book. And that is one of the things that ChatGPT can easily generate for you. Just provide it with the topic of your writing, and it will come up with several options for you to choose from. You can also ask it to make it more casual or formal, to include a certain keyword, or to make it of a certain number of words.
What makes ChatGPT generate really catchy titles is that it can analyze the titles of already published work to determine which have high click-through rates and suggest similar titles based on that analysis. This in turn can help optimize these titles for maximum engagement and impact.
In the following example, we asked ChatGPT to come up with some creative titles for an article about humor in writing, and it didn’t disappoint!
- Article Outline
In today’s world, having a blog is essential for establishing yourself as a subject matter expert and providing valuable content to your readers. The process of creating blog posts can, however, be tedious at times. If you’re looking to create cohesive outlines for your articles without spending hours on research, ChatGPT can help with that! Simply give it the topic that you want to write about and let it generate an outline for you and save yourself some time and effort.
Continuing on the previous example of using humor in writing, we asked ChatGPT to come up with an outline for this article, and here’s what it suggested:
While it is generally advisable to conduct a brief search and review other articles on the given topic, the points mentioned here can make a pretty decent article.
- FAQs
If you have an author website, consider adding an FAQs page to it; this can be a great way to provide valuable information to your readers. ChatGPT can help you generate relevant questions for your FAQs page with ease. Simply provide your website’s URL and ask it to write some FAQs that would be useful for your readers and let it work its magic!
- Social Media Posts
Whether it’s Facebook or any other social media website, having an online presence on these platforms is important for you as a writer. Yet coming up with regular posts to keep your audience engaged can be quite hectic.
Here’s where ChatGPT can come in handy. Just tell it about the style of your content in general, the type of audience you have, the length of the post you want it to generate, and what you’d like this post to be about, and you’ll be amazed by what it creates for you. Check this for example:
3. Improving Content
ChatGPT can be a great tool that helps you improve your own writing, and there’s more than one way to do that.
- Editing and Proofreading
ChatGPT can do a pretty decent job when it comes to proofreading and editing. More like Grammarly (which is another AI tool), ChatGPT can detect what’s wrong and why. For shorter texts, it can give you a detailed explanation. Take a look at this example:
Sounds good, right? Except that ChatGPT didn’t consider that there is another correct alternative for the sentence, which is “The girls are sad.” So while the change it made is correct, it isn’t the only one. That’s why it’s important to have a human editor review any changes ChatGPT has made.
Let’s look at its performance when it comes to larger text.
Notice how it gives a list of the changes but without an explanation. There are, however, some changes that it didn’t mention, such as replacing the word “content” in the first sentence with “work” to avoid redundancy.
Now let’s move to the article level. When we tried to submit 2800 words for ChatGPT to proofread, it gave this error message:
We then divided the article into two parts, and at first, it seemed to be doing just fine, but it didn’t go through the whole text that was submitted. Instead, it stopped at 655 words.
So the moral of the story is, if you decide to use ChatGPT to proofread or edit your writing, keep the text you submit short (around 500 words), and always double-check all the changes it makes.
- Expanding on an Idea
Let’s say you have a great novel idea but you’re feeling a bit stuck in writing it. In such a situation, you can use ChatGPT to help you add more details to your story. Here’s an example:
The suggestions given here aren’t half bad. In fact, you can take any of these ideas and ask ChatGPT to further expand on them and give you more details.
- Summarizing and Shortening Passages
Sometimes you need to deliver certain information in as few words as possible but you just aren’t sure how to do it effectively. You can easily achieve this by posting your text into ChatGPT and asking it to make it shorter.
For instance, we asked ChatGPT to write text for a landing page on Kotobee’s website, and here’s what it came up with:
Now that isn’t bad, but it’s a bit long, so we asked to make it shorter. Here’s the result:
Although not perfect (notice for example how it repeats the word “easily” in 2 consecutive sentences), with some tweaking, this text could actually be suitable for use on a website.
- Changing the Tone
Sometimes we want to convey the same message to different audiences, and this requires a change of tone. For instance, the language used to explain a scientific theory to college students is going to be different from the one used in explaining the same theory to people on social media. So to avoid the hassle of rewriting, we can just ask ChatGPT to do the work for us. Take a look at this example:
Quite impressive for an AI tool! And this opens the opportunity to change the tone of any type of writing: making emails more formal, turning academic text into a conversational one for creating video scripts, or even adding a touch of humor to a tragic story.
ChatGPT can also mimic any style or character that you want. Whether you want your story or article to sound like a cartoon character or a lord from the Renaissance era, ChatGPT can imitate almost any character you ask it to. Take a look at this example where we asked it to make part of a dialogue in the voice of a pirate:
Besides, according to The AI Advantage, you can actually teach ChatGPT to apply your own style to the text it produces using the prompt: “Analyze the following text for style and tone of voice. Apply that exact style and tone of voice to all your future responses [Insert your text].” We’ve tried this prompt and provided part of our article on building a strong author brand, and here’s how it analyzed it:
- Paraphrasing
Another useful usage for ChatGPT in writing is paraphrasing. Because let’s face it, we as writers sometimes struggle with word repetition and organizing our thoughts coherently. In such situations, ChatGPT can come in handy by helping us rephrase our text in a clearer and more structured manner.
All you need to do is copy your text to ChatGPT and ask it to paraphrase or improve it. The AI model then uses its language generation capabilities to provide alternative ways of expressing the same idea, using synonyms, changing sentence structure, or using different grammatical constructions. Note that it’s always important to carefully review and edit the text to ensure it conveys the initially intended meaning accurately and effectively.
4. Research and Fact-Checking
Most writing has to be preceded by an extensive amount of research and fact-checking. Whether it’s a news piece, a blog article, or a mid-century-based novel, you have to spend a good amount of time gathering information and maybe even conducting some interviews. This can be exhausting for some writers, especially those who have entered the field for the love of writing itself rather than the research aspect.
While we don’t recommend relying completely on ChatGPT for information (because sometimes it makes up sources), it can still be a useful tool if used correctly. For instance, you can utilize it to verify basic facts, such as whether Pluto is still considered a planet.
Going back to the mid-century-based novel example, let’s ask ChatGPT for some help with the attire that women wore in mid-century England:
While the information it provided is accurate to some extent, it isn’t enough. So you can either take this information as a starting point and add more information to your prompt. For example, try being more specific with your questions, “Please provide some information on the fashion ensembles worn by women in mid-century England for a novel I’m working on. I’m particularly interested in the types of dresses, accessories, and hairstyles that were popular during that era.” Or you can do some extra research outside ChatGPT to find precisely what you are looking for.
Now let’s try to find out some sources on what the latest academic papers say about exercise and its positive effects on mental health. :
Not bad at all, especially since it provided various reputable papers! But let’s say you don’t have the time to go through all of these sources and read each one of them. You can simply paste the URL to ChatGPT and ask it to give you the summary and main headlines of each article.
Drawbacks and Limitations of ChatGPT
The fact that an AI tool can do all the things we’ve mentioned so far is mindblowing. However, there are multiple limitations and drawbacks to ChatGPT that makes adding the human touch necessary. Here are some of them:
1. Inaccurate Information
As mentioned earlier, relying solely on ChatGPT as your source of information is not advisable. While it is a powerful tool that aims to generate immediate responses to your inputs, it’s important to keep in mind that the information it provides may not always be accurate. As a language model, it draws on patterns from its training rather than relying on information from its database.
2. Outdated Data
It’s important to note that ChatGPT, including its latest version (ChatGPT 4), may lack knowledge of recent events. Open AI has stated that even though ChatGPT 4 was released in March 2023, the data it was trained on dates back to September 2021. While this may not be an issue for some types of writing, it’s important to be cautious when using information from ChatGPT.
3. Lack of Human Touch
This could be one of the major reasons content generated by ChatGPT can be easily detected as AI content. And it doesn’t take a special tool to figure out the fact that a certain piece of content lacks the human touch; from the repetition of certain words to sometimes weird sentence structure, those with sharp eyes can easily notice such discrepancies.
4. Shallow Content
In an article published on Business Insider, professors from Furman University were able to detect the essays written by ChatGPT because it was “really fluffy. There’s no context, there’s no depth or insight.” And while it can produce some good text, as the professor clarifies, “word by word it was a well-written essay,” still when examined more closely, it made no sense.
5. Ethical Concerns
While ChatGPT can be a helpful writing tool, it also raises ethical considerations when used irresponsibly. Since it cannot be fully relied upon as a source of information, presenting its output without proper fact-checking can mislead readers. Additionally, ChatGPT may draw from existing content, potentially leading to unintentional plagiarism.
Other Useful AI Tools
Even though ChatGPT can be a powerful tool in the world of writing and content creation, it isn’t the only one. There are other tools that can help you refine and improve the content you generate from ChatGPT, and others that can produce equally high-quality content.
Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that tells you if your content sounded more like an AI or a human-generated one? Well, Writer.com can do that for you. This will allow you to edit your content and make it sound more like you.
This is a great tool for any writer looking to improve their content. It can do this by suggesting alternative word choices and phrasing. It can be used to rewrite sentences, restructure paragraphs, and adjust tone and style.
Moreover, it can give examples, expand on certain ideas, provide a counterargument, or present statistical facts. And the great news is, it is available as a browser extension to use on various writing platforms, such as Microsoft Word, Google Docs, and Slack.
This is another great paraphrasing tool. With the premium option, you can choose to expand or shorten certain text, make it more creative, causal or formal, or simplify it. You can also choose the level of synonym it uses while paraphrasing (as more synonyms make it sound less natural).
If you decide to use ChatGPT-generated text without editing, at least make sure this content isn’t previously published. This plagiarism checker tool will tell you the percentage of plagiarised text, and provide you with the source. The free version of this tool can check only 1000 words at a time, which isn’t bad for shorter pieces of writing.
Read more: Best AI Writing Software in 2022
Concluding Thoughts
ChatGPt has certainly revolutionized the way we do our work. It can quickly and efficiently improve your writing and content, help you come up with ideas, or give you important feedback and information. While it’s not a replacement for human creativity and expertise, it can provide valuable assistance to writers of all levels, from students and professionals to casual writers and bloggers.
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