What Is ChatGPT? (+ What You Can Use It For)

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot made by OpenAI. It can engage in conversation, solve complex problems, and generate human-like text based on your inputs (known as prompts).

Like this:

ChatGPT can answer questions, remember context during a conversation, improve its output based on your feedback, and help you accomplish different tasks, including:

• Writing emails
• Summarizing reports
• Analyzing data
• Writing code
• Brainstorming ideas 

Users on the paid plans can also use the tool to generate images:

As of the time of publication, ChatGPT users can access four models of GPT-4, each with different capabilities:

• ChatGPT-4o: The current iteration of GPT-4 and OpenAI’s fastest, most intelligent model. It’s likely the model most users interact with automatically and is suitable for complex tasks like generating detailed reports or coding. You can use this model for free, with usage limits.
• ChatGPT-4o with canvas: Lets users work with a split view, where one side is for chatting and the other side is for highlighting sections for ChatGPT to focus on or revise. This makes it handy for rewriting specific sections of text or debugging code.
• ChatGPT-4o Mini: A lighter version of GPT-4, designed to provide faster outputs without using the full capacity of the regular GPT-4 model. It’s ideal for simple, everyday tasks like generating lists or answering questions.
• ChatGPT-4 (legacy model): The initial version of GPT-4 that OpenAI released. It’s more powerful and capable than the previous model (GPT-3.5), with better reasoning and problem-solving skills. But OpenAI is phasing it out as it releases newer versions of GPT-4.

On September 12, 2024, OpenAI released a new series of models, code-named Strawberry (but officially called o1). 

OpenAI’s o1-preview and o1-mini are designed to “spend more time thinking” about your request before responding. Because of this, o1-preview is slower than other GPT-4 models.

Both o1-preview and o1-mini are great for solving complex problems in math, coding, and science. 

Here’s an example of o1-preview in action:

The o1-mini model is also useful for writing and debugging complex code. It’s faster and “80% cheaper than o1-preview,” according to OpenAI. Although that doesn’t always mean you’ll get an answer in less time.

Paid users can access this model for tasks that require complex reasoning, but not broad world knowledge.

Further reading: 15 Benefits of ChatGPT (+8 Disadvantages)

How Does ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT works by interpreting your input, referencing its training, and generating a relevant response. On the spot.

Let’s break down the process:

As a large language model (LLM), ChatGPT has been trained on vast amounts of data—like books, articles, websites, and more. 

OpenAI trained GPT-3 on approximately 45TB of compressed plain text. For context, one TB of storage can hold about 6.5 million document pages, like PDFs and presentations. The GPT-4 models were trained on even larger, more diverse datasets. Including images and audio.

During training, the model learns patterns in language. Like grammar, facts, and how different concepts relate to each other. 

This helps it understand what you’re asking. And come up with relevant responses by predicting the sequence of words that most likely follow each other. 

How You Interact with ChatGPT

Unlike traditional chatbots that rely on pre-programmed answers, ChatGPT generates new responses on the fly based on what it has learned. This makes it a great example of generative AI.

Let’s say you want to learn more about the geography of the U.S. So you ask ChatGPT, “How many states are there in the United States?” This is called your prompt. 

ChatGPT uses the information it was provided and what it was taught during training to respond, “There are 50 states in the United States.”

GPT-4 models also use “Memory” to remember details from previous interactions and provide more personalized responses over time:

If you want to delete a memory, hover over “Memory updated” and click “Manage memories.” Then, select the memory you want ChatGPT to “forget” and click the trash can icon:

If you want to experiment with prompts without the model remembering irrelevant details, consider using the “Temporary Chats” feature. This way, the model won’t retain any information after the session ends.

8 Examples of How You Can Use ChatGPT

ChatGPT can do a lot. It can help you with personal tasks, like understanding a complicated subject and solving math problems. And even professional tasks, like writing an email to your boss or marketing your business.

Here are eight real-world examples of what ChatGPT is used for:

1. Writing Messages

One practical use case of ChatGPT is helping you craft different types of messages. Like a professional email, a casual text, or even a tricky customer response. 

Here are some examples:

Writing a Professional Email

Let’s say you need help drafting a polite email to decline a job offer. 

You can start with a prompt like: 

“Can you help me write a polite email declining a job offer, but also leaving the door open for future opportunities?”

ChatGPT might respond with something like this:

This draft might be a great starting point. But what if you want to add more details?

In that case, you can refine your prompt and give ChatGPT some more information to use. Something like:

“Add a sentence thanking them for the positive interview experience and their time. And mention that they can always reach back out to me through LinkedIn.”

ChatGPT will then revise its output: 

Don’t like the tone? You can ask it to revise the message even further:

Writing a Casual Text Message 

Let’s say you’re planning to meet up with a friend for a birthday lunch. But something unexpected comes up and you have to reschedule. You can ask ChatGPT to help you draft a quick, friendly text message.

You could say something like: 

“Write a short text message to my friend, apologizing for canceling our lunch plans. Keep the tone light and suggest a new time in the first week of November.”

If you want to adjust the message to sound more casual, you could refine your prompt. And say: 

“Make it sound a bit more relaxed and add a quick apology.”

Responding to a Tricky Customer

Imagine you’re a customer service agent at a B2B manufacturing company. A customer has complained about a delay in their order, and you want to acknowledge their frustration while reassuring them that their issue is being addressed.

You could ask ChatGPT to:

“Write an email response to a customer who's upset about a delay in their order. Acknowledge their frustration, explain the delay (which was due to unforeseen circumstances), and reassure them that the issue is being resolved.”

Want to soften the tone or adjust the level of formality? You could tweak your prompt:

AI-generated content isn’t always perfect. But ChatGPT can give you a starting point to help you speed up the overall process. 

2. Marketing Your Business

Whether you’re a solopreneur trying to break into the industry or you run a large team at an established organization, you can use ChatGPT for marketing. It can help you brainstorm ways to improve your SEO, enhance the quality of your writing, and even develop buyer personas.

Here’s how:

Brainstorming 

ChatGPT can help you get creatively unstuck. Especially if you’re specific with your prompts.

For example, if you're launching a new product, you might ask:

“What are 10 creative social media strategies to promote a new organic skincare line targeted at millennials?”

ChatGPT will respond with a list of ideas like:

If the ideas aren’t detailed enough, refine your prompt by adding more specifics:

You can also use ChatGPT to come up with engaging SEO headlines to boost your articles in search results:

And to brainstorm ideas for a seasonal marketing campaign for your small business:

If you need to create more content for your business’s marketing strategy, the ContentShake AI app uses both ChatGPT’s capabilities and Semrush’s powerful SEO data to help you brainstorm, write, and optimize content. Both for social media and long-form articles.

Simply open the tool, head to the “Generate article using ideas” section, and click “My own idea.” Enter an idea (perhaps one ChatGPT came up with during your brainstorming session).

Then click “Generate article.” 

Next, customize your article by selecting your audience, entering an article title, setting a word count, and entering target keywords if you have them. Or let ContentShake AI automatically suggest some keywords for you.

When you’re ready, click “Create article.”

Once the tool creates your draft, scroll down to the “Customize article” section, and click “Go to editor” to make changes to the text. This is where you can add your own experience and expertise to the draft.

From here, select “Improvements” from the right-hand panel for a list of SEO, readability, and tone recommendations. 

Remember: AI content isn’t guaranteed to be completely original. Since it can sometimes generate phrases or structures similar to existing content due to patterns in its training data. 

Always check your text for plagiarism before publishing to avoid any potential issues with duplicate content or copyright violations. 

When you’re ready, click “Publish.”

You can publish the article directly to your WordPress site, export it to Google Docs, or share a view-only link with your team.

Creating Buyer Personas

Buyer personas (also called consumer or customer profiles) are detailed descriptions of your ideal customer. These personas can include demographics, interests, buying behaviors, and pain points. 

Like this:

Buyer personas help you better understand the people most likely to buy from you. So you can sell to them more easily.

Start by providing ChatGPT with specific details about your customers to generate accurate, detailed buyer personas.

For example, you can adapt the following prompt to your ideal customer: 

“Help me create a customer persona for my online personal training program. It should be for a 30- to 35-year-old busy professional who wants to stay fit but struggles with time management and prefers flexible workout routines.”

ChatGPT might respond with something like:

If the initial persona isn’t detailed enough, refine it by asking more specific questions. 

For example, ask ChatGPT to add more details about your buyer’s pain points and how they impact their choice of fitness programs:

Use this persona as a reference point and compare it to real-world data to validate it. Conduct surveys, review customer feedback, or analyze user behavior data (like your website analytics or social media insights) to validate or refine the persona.

Then, use these personas to match what your business offers with what your customers want or need.

3. Improving Your Writing

You can also use ChatGPT to rephrase and rewrite existing text. This is especially useful when you experience writer’s block. 

Let’s say you have a piece of text that’s too complex. And you want it to use simpler language while retaining the original meaning. 

You could use a prompt like: 

“Pretend you’re an experienced, professional editor in the B2B SaaS industry. 

Rephrase the following sentence to make it simpler and easier to understand while retaining the original message: [insert sentence].”

You can also ask ChatGPT to change the style, tone, and even length of your text. For example:

4. Learning About a New Topic

ChatGPT can simplify tough concepts, answer specific questions, and give you a tailored explanation. It’s like having your own personal tutor.

Because sometimes, researching a topic on your own isn’t enough to fully understand it. Or maybe it’s too complex, so even reading more doesn’t clear things up. 

For example, you can ask ChatGPT to explain data science to you:

If it’s still too complex, ask it to break down the concept into simpler terms. And explain it to you as if you were 10 (or even 5) years old. This prompt makes ChatGPT explain topics using simple language and analogies:

If the explanation is too vague, or you want it to be a certain length, you can readjust your prompt:

5. Translating Text in (Almost) Any Language

ChatGPT can translate text between languages, helping users communicate across language barriers. It’s useful for translating emails, short documents, or quick conversations.

Here’s an example:

ChatGPT-4o can even translate expressions by understanding their meaning and finding equivalent expressions in other languages. Instead of just translating them word for word. (This is useful for SEO localization, where straight translations aren’t enough.)

Like this:

6. Analyzing Data

ChatGPT can help simplify data analysis. Which is especially useful for those who may not have a technical background, but also for anyone that wants to save time while still getting important insights.

While it’s not a replacement for specialized data analysis software, it can help you:

• Break down complex data
• Identify trends
• Make sense of information without diving into complex coding or tools

Imagine you have a dataset of sales figures from the past three months. And you want a quick overview of any trends or patterns.

You could enter a prompt like:

“Help me identify any trends in my sales data for the past three months. Here are the figures: [Insert figures].” 

ChatGPT might even suggest some follow-up questions you can ask it to help you understand your data better. Like “Any advice to boost growth further?” 

Click on the follow-up prompt to continue the conversation.

If you need more specific information, like the percentage growth, you can refine your prompt.

If you have more complex data, like an Excel spreadsheet, upload that data directly to ChatGPT for analysis. The model can help you identify key points or extract information from the dataset.

Want to ensure ChatGPT has actually understood your data?

Ask it to read the contents of your data file and describe its contents to you. This way, you’re sure it understands the data correctly and doesn’t base the analysis on incorrect or incomplete information.

Remember: OpenAI can use what you enter into ChatGPT to train its models. So you should never enter confidential information. 

To make sure OpenAI can’t use the information you include in your prompts for training its models, turn off chat history within the app. From the ChatGPT interface, click on your profile icon, and navigate to settings.

Navigate to the “Data controls” tab, and click “Improve the model for everyone.”

Switch off the toggle switch next to “Improve the model for everyone” to turn off model improvement. Click “Done” when you’re ready.

7. Creating Images

Even if you don’t think of yourself as much of a designer, you can still bring your ideas to life by simply describing them to ChatGPT. This use case is particularly helpful for brainstorming or creating visual references quickly.

To generate images using ChatGPT 4 models, outline what you want in as much detail as possible. Your request then triggers OpenAI’s DALL·E. This is an AI model specifically designed for image generation.

For example, you could enter a prompt like: 

“Generate an image of a sunset over a mountain range with vibrant colors, in the style of Monet.”

If you want to modify the image, just revise the prompt. 

There are some limitations with using ChatGPT for image generation. 

For example, it’s not ideal for anything that requires precise text. Like logos or designs with clear writing. It often produces garbled characters instead of clean typography. 

Like this:

Sometimes ChatGPT might refuse to generate certain images. For example if you ask it to make an image of a copyrighted character. Like Dobby the Elf:

8. Solving Math Problems 

You can use ChatGPT 4 models for basic calculations. Like simple arithmetic, algebra, and geometry problems. 

For example, you can ask ChatGPT 4 to solve a basic equation: 

If your problem is more complex or requires multi-step thinking, use ChatGPT o1-preview. 

Here’s an example of us asking ChatGPT o1-preview to solve an advanced mathematical problem:

The o1-preview model thought through the problem for 173 seconds, solved the problem step by step, and gave an accurate response. Here’s how its thought process might look:

ChatGPT Limitations and Ethical Concerns 

Now, let’s look at some of ChatGPT’s shortcomings:

• Accuracy: ChatGPT sometimes provides incorrect or outdated information. It learns from a vast amount of data, but it doesn’t verify the responses it generates. To avoid inadvertently spreading false information and risking your reputation, always vet AI-generated content.
• Bias: ChatGPT may reflect societal biases from the data it was trained on, possibly reinforcing stereotypes or presenting biased views. In areas like law or hiring, AI tools could unintentionally amplify discrimination or bias. In schools, it might give biased answers to sensitive topics like history, race, or gender.
• Lack of common sense: While ChatGPT can mimic human-like text, it often lacks logical reasoning that humans naturally possess. It doesn’t “think” like humans do and can’t always provide contextually accurate solutions for complex problems.
• Environmental concerns: Training and running large AI models like ChatGPT requires significant resources, which contribute to global carbon emissions.
• Misinformation and manipulation: AI models like ChatGPT can be used to generate misleading or harmful content. This raises concerns about its role in spreading misinformation or being used for unethical purposes. Like generating fake news or deepfakes.

These limitations mean you should use ChatGPT mindfully. And critically evaluate responses you get from ChatGPT. Especially in situations requiring up-to-date or unbiased information.

Start Using Advanced AI Tools to Speed Up Tasks

While AI still requires human supervision, ChatGPT and other AI tools can make building and growing your business easier. They can generate human-like text, answer questions, write code, analyze data, and help you brainstorm ideas.

But there are AI options that extend beyond that to significantly boost your productivity for marketing tasks. Like writing blog posts and creating social content. 

For example:

• ContentShake AI helps you write high-ranking blog content, find topic ideas, and even create social media posts based on your unique brand voice
• AI Writing Assistant provides 70+ AI-powered tools that create content for different mediums in more than 25 languages

Start exploring the power of AI with a free Semrush account.

This post was updated in 2024. Excerpts from the original article by Carlos Silva may remain.