What is ChatGPT? Viral OpenAI chatbot taking internet by storm

Connor Bennett
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Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot ChatGPT has been spreading like wildfire across social media, but what exactly is it? Here’s exactly what OpenAI’s ChatGPT does, and how you can use it.

The internet has always been fascinated with AI technology and how it’s been used in a number of different fields. In esports, you have AI technology that’s able to take on some of the best players, while it has been used in influencer culture to help touch up photographs. 

Throughout 2022 and 2023, a handful of new AI trends have popped up. Users have been obsessed with putting themselves on movie posters through Lensa, while TiKTokers have started using an Anime ‘AI’ filter for their videos. 

On top of that, you also have the ChatGPT program, which has been gaining some special attention across the internet as users have been impressed with just how deep it can go, as you provide prompts and it spits out any kind of story or scenario with uncanny accuracy.

How to use ChatGPT from OpenAI

If you’ve had a scroll through Twitter recently and seen somebody on your timeline shocked with a writing prompt developed by an AI, there’s a good chance they’ve been using ChatGPT.

It’s a free-to-use (provided you have an OpenAI account) software where you give it a prompt and it will respond with what you ask for. Some users have utilized it to see if it can type out cease and desist letters like a real lawyer, while others have thrown more wacky ideas at it. 

In most cases, the result is fairly impressive, but in other cases it can produce undesired responses. So, if you want to get involved and try it yourself, follow the steps below.

  1. Head to the ChatGPT site.
  2. Create an OpenAI account, or log in if you already have one.
  3. Type your prompt in the ‘Send a Message‘ box
  4. Press Enter to send the prompt
  5. Watch as the AI provides its response in real-time! 
https://twitter.com/anajuneja/status/1599780667860000768

The program has already racked up well over 1 million users in the short span that it has been live, and it only seems to be growing by the day.

One major downside of ChatGPT is that it’s knowledge only reaches 2021, so anything that has happened since then will be a mystery to it.

OpenAI launch GPT-4

In March 2023, OpenAI launched GPT-4, the latest and most up-to-date version of GPT, “producing safer and more useful responses” than the 3.5 version.

All that means is that they’ve managed to improve ChatGPT’s output, even more, to make it as accurate as possible. In fact, so helpful is it now, that one person claimed that it helped save their dog’s life, providing a diagnosis that medical professionals hadn’t reached, with complete accuracy.

The impressive bit of tech is, though, in a feedback stage, so it will likely go down to be tweaked at some point. So, if you want to get involved, make sure you do so sooner rather than later.