how to make chatgpt write an essay

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How to Get ChatGPT to Write an Essay: Prompts, Outlines, & More

Last Updated: June 2, 2024 Fact Checked

Getting ChatGPT to Write the Essay

Using ai to help you write, expert interview.

This article was co-authored by Bryce Warwick, JD and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Bryce Warwick is currently the President of Warwick Strategies, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area offering premium, personalized private tutoring for the GMAT, LSAT and GRE. Bryce has a JD from the George Washington University Law School. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 51,041 times.

Are you curious about using ChatGPT to write an essay? While most instructors have tools that make it easy to detect AI-written essays, there are ways you can use OpenAI's ChatGPT to write papers without worrying about plagiarism or getting caught. In addition to writing essays for you, ChatGPT can also help you come up with topics, write outlines, find sources, check your grammar, and even format your citations. This wikiHow article will teach you the best ways to use ChatGPT to write essays, including helpful example prompts that will generate impressive papers.

Things You Should Know

• To have ChatGPT write an essay, tell it your topic, word count, type of essay, and facts or viewpoints to include.
• ChatGPT is also useful for generating essay topics, writing outlines, and checking grammar.
• Because ChatGPT can make mistakes and trigger AI-detection alarms, it's better to use AI to assist with writing than have it do the writing.

• Before using the OpenAI's ChatGPT to write your essay, make sure you understand your instructor's policies on AI tools. Using ChatGPT may be against the rules, and it's easy for instructors to detect AI-written essays.
• While you can use ChatGPT to write a polished-looking essay, there are drawbacks. Most importantly, ChatGPT cannot verify facts or provide references. This means that essays created by ChatGPT may contain made-up facts and biased content. [1] X Research source It's best to use ChatGPT for inspiration and examples instead of having it write the essay for you.

• The topic you want to write about.
• Essay length, such as word or page count. Whether you're writing an essay for a class, college application, or even a cover letter , you'll want to tell ChatGPT how much to write.
• Other assignment details, such as type of essay (e.g., personal, book report, etc.) and points to mention.
• If you're writing an argumentative or persuasive essay , know the stance you want to take so ChatGPT can argue your point.
• If you have notes on the topic that you want to include, you can also provide those to ChatGPT.
• When you plan an essay, think of a thesis, a topic sentence, a body paragraph, and the examples you expect to present in each paragraph.
• It can be like an outline and not an extensive sentence-by-sentence structure. It should be a good overview of how the points relate.

• "Write a 2000-word college essay that covers different approaches to gun violence prevention in the United States. Include facts about gun laws and give ideas on how to improve them."
• This prompt not only tells ChatGPT the topic, length, and grade level, but also that the essay is personal. ChatGPT will write the essay in the first-person point of view.
• "Write a 4-page college application essay about an obstacle I have overcome. I am applying to the Geography program and want to be a cartographer. The obstacle is that I have dyslexia. Explain that I have always loved maps, and that having dyslexia makes me better at making them."

Tyrone Showers

Be specific when using ChatGPT. Clear and concise prompts outlining your exact needs help ChatGPT tailor its response. Specify the desired outcome (e.g., creative writing, informative summary, functional resume), any length constraints (word or character count), and the preferred emotional tone (formal, humorous, etc.)

• In our essay about gun control, ChatGPT did not mention school shootings. If we want to discuss this topic in the essay, we can use the prompt, "Discuss school shootings in the essay."
• Let's say we review our college entrance essay and realize that we forgot to mention that we grew up without parents. Add to the essay by saying, "Mention that my parents died when I was young."
• In the Israel-Palestine essay, ChatGPT explored two options for peace: A 2-state solution and a bi-state solution. If you'd rather the essay focus on a single option, ask ChatGPT to remove one. For example, "Change my essay so that it focuses on a bi-state solution."

Pay close attention to the content ChatGPT generates. If you use ChatGPT often, you'll start noticing its patterns, like its tendency to begin articles with phrases like "in today's digital world." Once you spot patterns, you can refine your prompts to steer ChatGPT in a better direction and avoid repetitive content.

• "Give me ideas for an essay about the Israel-Palestine conflict."
• "Ideas for a persuasive essay about a current event."
• "Give me a list of argumentative essay topics about COVID-19 for a Political Science 101 class."

• "Create an outline for an argumentative essay called "The Impact of COVID-19 on the Economy."
• "Write an outline for an essay about positive uses of AI chatbots in schools."
• "Create an outline for a short 2-page essay on disinformation in the 2016 election."

• "Find peer-reviewed sources for advances in using MRNA vaccines for cancer."
• "Give me a list of sources from academic journals about Black feminism in the movie Black Panther."
• "Give me sources for an essay on current efforts to ban children's books in US libraries."

• "Write a 4-page college paper about how global warming is changing the automotive industry in the United States."
• "Write a 750-word personal college entrance essay about how my experience with homelessness as a child has made me more resilient."
• You can even refer to the outline you created with ChatGPT, as the AI bot can reference up to 3000 words from the current conversation. For example: "Write a 1000 word argumentative essay called 'The Impact of COVID-19 on the United States Economy' using the outline you provided. Argue that the government should take more action to support businesses affected by the pandemic."

• One way to do this is to paste a list of the sources you've used, including URLs, book titles, authors, pages, publishers, and other details, into ChatGPT along with the instruction "Create an MLA Works Cited page for these sources."
• You can also ask ChatGPT to provide a list of sources, and then build a Works Cited or References page that includes those sources. You can then replace sources you didn't use with the sources you did use.

Expert Q&A

• Because it's easy for teachers, hiring managers, and college admissions offices to spot AI-written essays, it's best to use your ChatGPT-written essay as a guide to write your own essay. Using the structure and ideas from ChatGPT, write an essay in the same format, but using your own words. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Always double-check the facts in your essay, and make sure facts are backed up with legitimate sources. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you see an error that says ChatGPT is at capacity , wait a few moments and try again. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay may be against your instructor's rules. Make sure you understand the consequences of using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay. Thanks Helpful 1 Not Helpful 0
• ChatGPT-written essays may include factual inaccuracies, outdated information, and inadequate detail. [3] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about completing school assignments, check out our in-depth interview with Bryce Warwick, JD .

• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt
• ↑ https://platform.openai.com/examples/default-essay-outline
• ↑ https://www.ipl.org/div/chatgpt/

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5 ways ChatGPT can help you write an essay

ChatGPT  is capable of doing many different things very well. One of the biggest standout features is its ability to compose all sorts of text within seconds, including songs, poems, bedtime stories, and  essays . 

The chatbot's writing abilities are not only fun to experiment with but can help provide assistance with everyday tasks. Whether you are a student, a working professional, or just trying to get stuff done, we constantly take time to compose emails, texts, reports, and more. ChatGPT can help you claim some of that time back by helping you brainstorm and even compose any text you need. 

How to use ChatGPT to write: Code | Excel formulas | Resumes  | Cover letters  

Contrary to popular belief, ChatGPT can do much more than write an essay for you from scratch (which would be considered plagiarism). A more useful way to use the chatbot is to have it guide your writing process. 

Below, we show you how to use ChatGPT for both writing and assisting and include some other helpful writing tips. 

How ChatGPT can help you write an essay

If you are looking to use ChatGPT to support or replace your writing, here are five different techniques to explore. 

It is also worth noting before you get started that other AI chatbots can output the same results as ChatGPT or are even better, depending on your needs. For example,  Copilot , Perplexity , and Gemini also have access to the internet and include footnotes linking back to the original source for all of their responses, making the chatbots solid alternatives if you rather skip out on ChatGPT. 

Also:  The best AI chatbots of 2024: ChatGPT and alternatives

Regardless of which AI chatbot you pick, you can use the tips below to get the most out of your prompts and AI assistance.

1. Use ChatGPT to generate essay ideas

Before you start writing an essay, you need to flesh out the idea. When professors assign essays, they generally give students a prompt that gives them leeway for their own self-expression and analysis. 

As a result, students have the task of finding the angle to approach the essay on their own. If you have written an essay recently, you know that finding the angle is often the trickiest part -- and this is where ChatGPT can help. 

Also: How do AI checkers actually work?

All you need to do is input the assignment topic, include as much detail as you'd like -- such as what you're thinking about covering -- and let ChatGPT do the rest. For example, based on a paper prompt I had in college, I asked:

Can you help me come up with a topic idea for this assignment, "You will write a research paper or case study on a leadership topic of your choice." I would like it to include Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid and possibly a historical figure. 

Within seconds, the chatbot produced a response that provided me with the title of the essay, options of historical figures on which to focus my article, insight into what information I could include in my paper, and specific examples of a case study I could use. 

2. Use the chatbot to create an outline

Once you have a solid topic, it's time to start brainstorming what you actually want to include in the essay. To facilitate the writing process, I always create an outline, including all the different points I want to touch upon in my essay. However, the outline-writing process is usually tedious. 

With ChatGPT, all you have to do is ask it to write the outline for you. 

Using the topic that ChatGPT helped me generate in step one, I asked the chatbot to write me an outline by saying: 

Can you create an outline for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Abraham Lincoln through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

Also: How my 4 favorite AI tools help me get more done at work

After a few seconds, the chatbot produced a holistic outline divided into seven sections, with three points under each section. 

This outline is thorough and can be condensed for a shorter essay or elaborated on for a longer paper. If you don't like something or want to tweak the outline further, you can do so either manually or with more instructions to ChatGPT. 

If you want ChatGPT to include links and sources throughout, you can ask it to and it will regenerate the answer using its web-browsing feature , further expediting your essay-writing process. 

3. Use ChatGPT to find sources

Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it's time to find reputable sources for your information. If you don't know where to start, you can ask ChatGPT.

All you need to do is ask the AI to find sources for your essay topic. The biggest thing to remember is to include the type of source you want, whether it be web pages, books, PDFs, research, papers, etc. 

Also:   How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

The specifics are necessary because when you specify web pages, ChatGPT will activate the web browsing feature and include web links in its article. If you use a very general prompt, however, it will likely default to generating its answer from its database, which isn't up to date. 

For example, I asked the following: 

"Examining the Leadership Style of Abraham Lincoln through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

The chatbot outputs links, accessible right at the top of the answer under the drop-down that says "Searched # of sites." Then, within the response, it will answer your prompt conversationally, also including sources with site names and links in parathesis. 

4. Use ChatGPT to write an essay

It is worth noting that if you take the text directly from the chatbot and submit it, your work could be considered plagiarism since it is not your original work. As with any information taken from another source, text generated by an AI should be identified and credited to the chatbot in your work.

In most educational institutions, the penalties for plagiarism are severe, ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from the school. A better use of ChatGPT's writing features would be to create a sample essay to guide your writing. 

Also:  ChatGPT vs. Microsoft Copilot vs. Gemini: Which is the best AI chatbot?

If you still want ChatGPT to create an essay from scratch, enter the topic and the desired length. For example, I input the following text: 

Can you write a five-paragraph essay on the topic, "Examining the Leadership Style of Abraham Lincoln through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

Within seconds, the chatbot gave the exact output I required: a coherent, five-paragraph essay on the topic. You could then use that text to guide your own writing. 

At this point, it's worth remembering how tools like ChatGPT work : they put words together in a form that they think is statistically valid, but they don't know if what they are saying is true or accurate. 

As a result, the output you receive might include invented facts, details, or other oddities. The output might be a useful starting point for your own work but don't expect it to be entirely accurate, and always double-check the content. 

5. Use ChatGPT to co-edit your essay

Once you've written your own essay, you can use ChatGPT's advanced writing capabilities to edit the piece for you. 

You can simply tell the chatbot what you want it to edit. For example, I asked ChatGPT to edit our five-paragraph essay for structure and grammar, but other options could have included flow, tone, and more. 

Also:  How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables

Once you ask the tool to edit your essay, it will prompt you to paste your text into the chatbot. ChatGPT will then output your essay with corrections made. This feature is particularly useful because ChatGPT edits your essay more thoroughly than a basic proofreading tool, as it goes beyond simply checking spelling. 

You can also co-edit with the chatbot, asking it to review a specific paragraph or sentence and rewrite or fix the text for clarity. Personally, I find this feature very helpful. 

How to use ChatGPT to write your resume

Stuck in a rut at work here are 5 great ways to kickstart your career, how to use chatgpt to analyze pdfs (and more) for free.

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How to Use ChatGPT to Write Essays That Impress

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Find and Refine Essay Topics

• Log into the service and type the following prompt into ChatGPT:

• As you can see, ChatGPT gave several good ideas for our essay. If you want to refine the idea further, you can ask the chatbot to cut out some parts of the idea and replace them. Or, you can ask for more context in certain parts. Example – “Expand more on topic number 5 and what it means.”

Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to Construct an Outline

• With the same chat open, type out “ Give me an essay outline for <selected topic>. Make sure to keep it structured as I’ll use it to write my essay .” In this case, I will use topic number 2 since it aligns with what I had in mind.

• As you can see above, we now have a structured outline for our essay. We can use this to write our essay or have ChatGPT do that job. Nonetheless, it’s a good starting point. As always, you can have the AI chatbot cut out parts of the outline or specifically add new ones depending on your requirement.

Step 3: Get ChatGPT to Cite Sources for Your Essay

Even though we have the idea and the outline, we will need to do our research for proof supporting our essay. Thankfully, ChatGPT can be of some help here. Since the chatbot is adept at moderate research, users can get a general idea of where to look for gathering information. Let’s begin doing that.

• Let’s begin asking ChatGPT for sources. With the same chat open, type in the following prompt:

• Now we have a list of 10 sources we can reference from. However, you can also see that ChatGPT mentions the year 2021 in some of them. Therefore, it’s best to use these websites but navigate to the latest pages pertaining to your essay for research. This applies to every topic, so always do it. Also, chatbots like ChatGPT have a habit of hallucinating and making up information, so do be careful.

Step 4: Have ChatGPT Write the Essay

• In the same chat, type the following prompt – “With the topic and outline available to you, generate a 700-word essay. Make sure to keep it structured and concise yet informational. Also, keep in mind my target audience is <Insert target audience> so cater to that accordingly.”
• In the middle of the essay, ChatGPT might stop and not answer. Simply type “ Continue ,” and it will finish the rest of the essay.

Step 5: Edit the Essay with ChatGPT

No matter if you have used ChatGPT to draft a complete essay or have written one yourself, you can use this step to make ChatGPT your co-editor and grammar checker. While your essay might need an initial look from a human, you can definitely use the bot to hash out the tone and add little details.

• Either open up the same chat or have your essay already in the clipboard. With that done, type out the following prompt:

Step 6: Export the Essay for Submission

However, for those who want to export the essay into a more aesthetic format, we have just the thing for you. There is no shortage of best ChatGPT Chrome extensions on the internet right now. We have one such selection linked in our list that can export selective chats onto beautiful image formats if you want to show off your essay. Check it out and let us know how you liked it.

Bonus: ChatGPT and AI Apps to Write Essays

1. writesonic.

Ryter is another helpful AI writing assistant that not only helps with essays but all types of articles. The service is powered by a language model that gives it intelligence. Rytr comes with 40+ different use cases and 20+ writing tones for all types of written material. For those who don’t want to stick to English, it even comes with support for 30+ languages.

Upanishad Sharma

Combining his love for Literature and Tech, Upanishad dived into the world of technology journalism with fire. Now he writes about anything and everything while keeping a keen eye on his first love of gaming. Often found chronically walking around the office.

Im student i want to become financially independent woman in life so I want esay essay write

I am housewife and I want easy essay I want to change my life my husband was job less and I want to work online part time job plz help I am enter pass

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How to Use ChatGPT for Research and Essays

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For better or worse, OpenAI’s ChatGPT has become a big part of our lives. It’s become integral to gathering information, researching topics, and creating written works. And frankly, not using it might put you at a disadvantage academically.

However, this AI is not flawless; there is a method to use it to help with your essays and research. Using it the right way will help you avoid plagiarism issues or inaccurate information. Here, we’ll show you how to use ChatGPT to write an essay ethically, so it comes out as a quality, factual, and original piece.

1. Draw Your Outline Without ChatGPT

Assuming you already have an idea for your project, the first thing you should do before you hop on ChatGPT’s website is to prepare your thesis and outline without using AI. It’s a vital step to making sure the core of your essay actually comes from you.

If you use ChatGPT to prompt an outline for you, it could promote idea laziness, and you will find ChatGPT’s suggestions may have replaced the ones you could have produced on your own. So, get a piece of paper or a blank word processor page and create an outline for your essay.

Also, ChatGPT will avoid controversial topics—even in an outline. Therefore, you might find yourself with an outline missing vital pieces of historical sections if you rely on it. This bias is one of the major problems with OpenAI’s ChatGPT .

2. Prompt ChatGPT to Draw a Parallel Outline

Before you begin this section, if this is your first time using ChatGPT, you should read our guide on how to use ChatGPT . It will help you with creating an account and defining its capabilities. Once that’s out of the way, you can move on to the next step.

Now that you have an original outline, it doesn’t matter how basic it looks; you can use ChatGPT to create another outline. Craft a prompt with this template:

ChatGPT’s result is far more detailed than our outline. Here, you should adopt the parts of ChatGPT’s outline you would like to integrate into your own. Combine the best of the two and flesh out an outline that will guide you best as you write.

3. Create a ChatGPT Prompt for Each Section

Now that you have an outline with sections, you can begin to hack away at it section by section. Start with your introduction, where you will include your thesis statement. Ask ChatGPT to create multiple thesis statements on your idea, and choose the one that best encapsulates the major point you’re trying to communicate in your essay.

You can do something similar for all the other sections as well. Tell the AI to generate written pieces on your section topics. Don’t forget to add that it communicates the point in the tone you want. In most cases, essays should sound academic. Therefore, our prompt for each section looked like this:

Do not just copy and paste the information it generates; the next step is a vital second part of this methodology.

4. Confirm the Information With a Reputable Source

As you begin to write, you must check if the information you’re getting from ChatGPT is indeed correct. You must do this because ChatGPT occasionally hallucinates , coming up with its own facts and making up sources when you ask it to direct you to where it got its information. In some cases, it blatantly refuses to tell you at all where it got its data.

The free version of ChatGPT is not actively connected to the internet and cannot fetch information after September 2021. If you need this functionality, then it could be time to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus —especially if this is a tool you will be using heavily for work or school.

The bottom line is that you should use a reputable source (such as a book from an authority or an official website) to support every important statement you put down. You can also learn how to use Google to fact-check information .

5. Use ChatGPT for Examples and Breakdowns

It’s counterproductive to write about ideas that you don’t even understand yourself. When you reach a part of your essay that you don’t properly understand, you should go to ChatGPT and have it broken down for you.

That’s really the one thing you can count on ChatGPT to do in this process. It has good skill in crafting useful examples and explaining complicated ideas in a form you can easily understand. A popular way of phrasing a prompt to make ChatGPT explain something complicated is adding “explain like I’m five” to your prompt.

Here we used ChatGPT to break down hip and elbow dysplasia conditions in a way that is easier to understand. And it used analogies like jigsaw puzzles to paint a clearer image of what it might look like.

6. Write the Essay Yourself

As we’ve stated earlier, under no condition should you ask ChatGPT to write your whole essay for you. Not only is that lazy and deceitful, but it could also open you up to plagiarism and submitting incorrect information.

Ensure that every line in your essay is typed with your hands. Besides, if you’re writing an academic essay where you must cite sources, you will still need to corroborate all the points you’ve made with a corresponding authority. That means you’ll have to go and fact-check everything ChatGPT has written and find a corroborating source.

This could even take more time than just writing it yourself because the AI could have hallucinated some of its facts, leading you on a wild goose chase as you try to find a citation for something that doesn’t exist.

Lastly, ChatGPT doesn’t match the nuanced knowledge of a human professional in heavily specialized fields or journals that need up-to-date information. Reading a book or article by an expert, internalizing it, and writing it in your own words will give you far better results than relying on ChatGPT.

7. Polish the Style and Citation With ChatGPT

After writing, you can paste portions of your essay and ask ChatGPT to shorten, lengthen, or optimize the style. ChatGPT is good at mimicking popular styles, and you can use that to your advantage. If you want your writing to sound a little more professional, it can help rephrase it.

If you’re having trouble with citation styles and how to integrate them into your essay, you can present your essay to ChatGPT, give it your sources, and ask it to weld them together for you.

ChatGPT Is a Tool, Not a Solution

You can’t “ChatGPT” away academic or professional work; you must use it the same way you would use a tool. Take a calculator, for instance; it doesn’t replace the mathematician but improves the mathematician. You should use ChatGPT the same way a mathematician will use a calculator: for the boring, repetitive, rote work.

Let the ideas and story come from you and your experiences. And if you want to keep using ChatGPT as a student, make sure you know what you shouldn't do.

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Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?

Everything high school and college students need to know about using — and not using — ChatGPT for writing essays.

Jessica A. Kent

ChatGPT is one of the most buzzworthy technologies today.

In addition to other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is expected to change the world. In academia, students and professors are preparing for the ways that ChatGPT will shape education, and especially how it will impact a fundamental element of any course: the academic essay.

Students can use ChatGPT to generate full essays based on a few simple prompts. But can AI actually produce high quality work, or is the technology just not there yet to deliver on its promise? Students may also be asking themselves if they should use AI to write their essays for them and what they might be losing out on if they did.

AI is here to stay, and it can either be a help or a hindrance depending on how you use it. Read on to become better informed about what ChatGPT can and can’t do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the benefits of writing your own essays.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial intelligence isn’t a twenty-first century invention. Beginning in the 1950s, data scientists started programming computers to solve problems and understand spoken language. AI’s capabilities grew as computer speeds increased and today we use AI for data analysis, finding patterns, and providing insights on the data it collects.

But why the sudden popularity in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes further than just data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, or a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it sees in the original data.

It’s like the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text makes suggestions of what should come next based on data from past conversations. Similarly, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.

But is generative AI as revolutionary as people think it is, or is it lacking in real intelligence?

The Drawbacks of Generative AI

It seems simple. You’ve been assigned an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a five-paragraph academic essay on the topic you’ve been assigned. You wait a few seconds and it generates the essay for you!

But ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect it to be. Be aware of the drawbacks of having ChatGPT complete your assignments.

It’s not intelligence, it’s statistics

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it has a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and work.

It “hallucinates”

Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even has a warning on its home screen , saying that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data, or because it lacks the ability to verify what it’s generating. 

It doesn’t do research  

If you ask ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they could be inaccurate or even made up.

This is because AI doesn’t know how to look for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — except it likely may not be.

There are data privacy concerns

When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it? 

Prompting ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application. 

JPMorgan has restricted use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”

It is important to be aware of these issues and take steps to ensure that you’re using the technology responsibly and ethically. 

It skirts the plagiarism issue

AI creates content by drawing on a large library of information that’s already been created, but is it plagiarizing? Could there be instances where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and places it into your work without citing it? Schools and universities today are wrestling with this question of what’s plagiarism and what’s not when it comes to AI-generated work.

To demonstrate this, one Elon University professor gave his class an assignment: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and then grade it yourself. 

“Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information,” he writes, adding that he expected some essays to contain errors, but all of them did. 

His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks” and were concerned about how many embraced such a flawed tool.

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How to Use AI as a Tool to Support Your Work

As more students are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.

Generate ideas for essays

Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays. For example, input specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth century novels.” Then, use what it provides as a starting point for your original research.

Generate outlines

You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.

Generate titles for your essays

Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”

The Benefits of Writing Your Essays Yourself

Asking a robot to write your essays for you may seem like an easy way to get ahead in your studies or save some time on assignments. But, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can negatively impact not just your grades, but your ability to communicate and think critically as well. It’s always the best approach to write your essays yourself.

Create your own ideas

Writing an essay yourself means that you’re developing your own thoughts, opinions, and questions about the subject matter, then testing, proving, and defending those thoughts. 

When you complete school and start your career, projects aren’t simply about getting a good grade or checking a box, but can instead affect the company you’re working for — or even impact society. Being able to think for yourself is necessary to create change and not just cross work off your to-do list.

Building a foundation of original thinking and ideas now will help you carve your unique career path in the future.

Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills

In order to test or examine your opinions or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to determine the argument you want to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills aren’t just necessary in school — they’re skills you’ll apply throughout your career and your life.

Improve your research skills

Writing your own essays will train you in how to conduct research, including where to find sources, how to determine if they’re credible, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to do research is another key skill required throughout a wide variety of professional fields.

Learn to be a great communicator

Writing an essay involves communicating an idea clearly to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and making a conclusion that challenges them to think differently about a subject. Effective and clear communication is necessary in every industry.

Be impacted by what you’re learning about : 

Engaging with the topic, conducting your own research, and developing original arguments allows you to really learn about a subject you may not have encountered before. Maybe a simple essay assignment around a work of literature, historical time period, or scientific study will spark a passion that can lead you to a new major or career.

Resources to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills

While there are many rewards to writing your essays yourself, the act of writing an essay can still be challenging, and the process may come easier for some students than others. But essay writing is a skill that you can hone, and students at Harvard Summer School have access to a number of on-campus and online resources to assist them.

Students can start with the Harvard Summer School Writing Center , where writing tutors can offer you help and guidance on any writing assignment in one-on-one meetings. Tutors can help you strengthen your argument, clarify your ideas, improve the essay’s structure, and lead you through revisions. 

The Harvard libraries are a great place to conduct your research, and its librarians can help you define your essay topic, plan and execute a research strategy, and locate sources. 

Finally, review the “ The Harvard Guide to Using Sources ,” which can guide you on what to cite in your essay and how to do it. Be sure to review the “Tips For Avoiding Plagiarism” on the “ Resources to Support Academic Integrity ” webpage as well to help ensure your success.

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The Future of AI in the Classroom

ChatGPT and other generative AI models are here to stay, so it’s worthwhile to learn how you can leverage the technology responsibly and wisely so that it can be a tool to support your academic pursuits. However, nothing can replace the experience and achievement gained from communicating your own ideas and research in your own academic essays.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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This guide outlines the kinds of students who thrive at Harvard Summer School and what the programs offer in return.

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The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

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How to Ethically Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay

You’re here because you want to know how to get ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and I’m here to say you shouldn’t do that outright—but there are ways you can get ChatGPT or other AI services to help with your paper. To put it plainly, ChatGPT can absolutely write a paper for you, but you need to be careful that it matches up with the specific instructions your professor gave you and that it’s not going to get you in trouble for cheating. I won’t proselytize about how getting AI to write your essay is wrong and deprives you of the opportunity to learn, but I will warn you that there are pros and cons to doing it—and to avoid trouble, you may still have to do some work. 

If you want ChatGPT to write your whole essay…

If you’re in a time crunch and really want AI to produce a full paper, it can be done. You’ll enter the essay prompt into ChatGPT and give clear instructions. However, ChatGPT may say no to certain requests. For instance, I inputted, “Write me a 1,500-word essay on the role of aqueducts in ancient Rome’s success as an empire using six outside sources cited in MLA.” The AI refused, then told me it could write an outline and give me the six sources it used for my own research. It did that, which was helpful, but it did not write the whole paper as requested. 

I tried again, thinking maybe its aversion was to my request for an essay: “Write 1,500 words on the role of aqueducts in ancient Rome’s success as an empire using six outside sources cited in MLA.” The software told me doing that would be “too lengthy,” then regurgitated the outline and source suggestions from before. 

Ultimately, I had success working in chunks. I asked for a 100-word introduction to an essay on the topic and for ChatGPT to tell me its sources. Sure enough, I got the introduction, plus the sources it used. You could theoretically go chunk by chunk, asking the AI to create an intro, body paragraphs, and conclusion. You’ll still have to add in your citations manually, but it will give them to you. 

Don’t have ChatGPT write the whole paper, though

Here’s the thing: While you can find a workaround to get ChatGPT to write a whole paper, you’re already still going to be doing the work of adding in citations—and you could easily get busted. Teachers can use free software to detect AI in writing and some of them are even getting crafty, inserting unrelated prompts in white text to catch you copying and pasting the instructions into ChatGPT. For instance, if your professor wants an essay on the decline of local news funding over the last 10 years, they might add white text that says something like, “Include two sentences on Madonna’s impact on popular culture.” You might not notice that when you copy and paste it into ChatGPT and if you don’t read over the work the AI spits back out, you’ll turn in something that inexplicably references the Queen of Pop and your professor will know what you did right away. Even if your professor isn't using tricks like that (and a lot of them are, according to their own posts on social media), a quick scan of your work for words you wouldn't normally use could signal to them that it's time to run your paper through an AI checker.

How to use ChatGPT for help writing a school paper

Your best bet is still to write the paper yourself using ChatGPT’s help, which will still shave a lot of time off your researching and brainstorming process. Where AI really shines when it comes to essays is in creating outlines, as shown above with that Roman aqueducts example. While it wouldn’t generate the whole paper, ChatGPT did provide me with nine different subcategories for exploration, from “historical context of ancient Rome” to “agricultural expansion and economic growth” and “military advantage.” Each of those subcategories came with bullet points of what should be touched on in their associated paragraph, plus ChatGPT pointed out which sources could be used to gather the information. If I followed the outline to the T, I’d easily have a six- or seven-page paper and never have to brainstorm or labor over where I was going with it. Put simply, you should rely on ChatGPT for outlines if you’re struggling to come up with ideas or just don’t have the time to structure a whole paper. 

If you end up asking the software to write a few paragraphs, you can—and should —rewrite them. That will take a little time, yes, but rewriting the paragraphs in your own words will help you look less suspicious and will also teach you about what you’re writing about—and that can only benefit you if your teacher asks a follow-up question or puts some of the content on an upcoming test. 

In conclusion, can you make ChatGPT write an essay? Yes, if you’re patient. Should you make ChatGPT write an essay? No, you should not. 

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• Writing Tips

How to Write Your Essay Using ChatGPT

5-minute read

• 2nd May 2023

It’s tempting, isn’t it? You’ve read about and probably also witnessed how quickly ChatGPT can knock up text, seemingly in any genre or style and of any length, in less time than it takes you to make a cup of tea. However, getting ChatGPT to write your essay for you would be plagiarism . Universities and colleges are alive to the issue, and you may face serious academic penalties if you’re found to have used AI in that way.

So that’s that, right? Not necessarily.

This post is not about how to get ChatGPT to write your essay . It’s about how you can use the tool to help yourself write an essay .

What Is ChatGPT?

Let’s start with the basics. ChatGPT is one of several chatbots that can answer questions in a conversational style, as if the answer were coming from a human. It provides answers based on information it receives in development and in response to prompts you provide.

In that respect, like a human, ChatGPT is limited by the information it has. Where it lacks the information, it has a tendency to fill the gaps regardless . This action is dangerous if you’re relying on the accuracy of the information, and it’s another good reason you should not get ChatGPT to write your essay for you.

How Can You Use ChatGPT to Help With Your Essay?

Forget about the much talked-about writing skills of ChatGPT – writing is your thing here. Instead, think of ChatGPT as your assistant. Here are some ideas for how you can make it work for you.

Essay Prompts

If your task is to come up with your own essay topic but you find yourself staring at a blank page, you can use ChatGPT for inspiration. Your prompt could look something like this:

ChatGPT can offer several ideas. The choice of which one to write about (and you may, of course, still come up with one of your own) will be up to you, based on what interests you and the topic’s potential for in-depth analysis.

Essay Outlines

Having decided on your essay topic – or perhaps you’ve already been given one by your instructor – you may be struggling to figure out how to structure the essay. You can use ChatGPT to suggest an outline. Your prompt can be along these lines:

Just as you should not use ChatGPT to write an essay for you, you should not use it to research one – that’s your job.

If, however, you’re struggling to understand a particular extract, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it or explain it in simpler terms.

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That said, you can’t rely on ChatGPT to be factually accurate in the information it provides, even when you think the information would be in its database, as we discovered in another post. Indeed, when we asked ChatGPT whether we should fact-check its information, the response was:

An appropriate use of ChatGPT for research would be to ask for academic resources for further reading on a particular topic. The advantage of doing this is that, in going on to locate and read the suggested resources, you will have checked that they exist and that the content is relevant and accurately set out in your essay.

Instead of researching the topic as a whole, you could use ChatGPT to generate suggestions for the occasional snippet of information, like this:

Before deciding which of its suggestions – if any – to include, you should ask ChatGPT for the source of the fact or statistic so you can check it and provide the necessary citation.

Referencing

Even reading the word above has probably made you groan. As if writing the essay isn’t hard enough, you then have to not only list all the sources you used, but also make sure that you’ve formatted them in a particular style. Here’s where you can use ChatGPT. We have a separate post dealing specifically with this topic, but in brief, you can ask something like this:

Where information is missing, as in the example above, ChatGPT will likely fill in the gaps. In such cases, you’ll have to ensure that the information it fills in is correct.

Proofreading

After finishing the writing and referencing, you’d be well advised to proofread your work, but you’re not always the best person to do so – you’d be tired and would likely read only what you expect to see. At least as a first step, you can copy and paste your essay into ChatGPT and ask it something like this:

You’ve got the message that you can’t just ask ChatGPT to write your essay, right? But in some areas, ChatGPT can help you write your essay, providing, as with any tool, you use it carefully and are alert to the risks.

We should point out that universities and colleges have different attitudes toward using AI – including whether you need to cite its use in your reference list – so always check what’s acceptable.

After using ChatGPT to help with your work, you can always ask our experts to look over it to check your references and/or improve your grammar, spelling, and tone. We’re available 24/7, and you can even try our services for free .

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How To Use Chatgpt To Write An Essay

• Post author By admin
• August 31, 2023

Discover the ultimate guide on how to use Chatgpt to write an essay. Learn step-by-step techniques, tips, and strategies for using ChatGPT as your writing companion. Elevate your essay-writing game today

Hey there, fellow writers and knowledge seekers! Ever wished you had a magical sidekick to help you tackle those tricky essays?

Well, say hello to your new digital writing buddy: ChatGPT! Yep, you heard it right – an AI that’s not just about algorithms and codes, but about making your essay writing life a whole lot smoother.

Essays might have been the bane of your existence, causing eye rolls and sighs, but fear not – ChatGPT is here to turn that frown upside down.

Whether you’re a student juggling assignments or someone who simply wants to express their thoughts eloquently, ChatGPT is about to become your secret weapon.

Get ready to dive into a guide that’s all about demystifying the magic of using ChatGPT for essay writing. No, we won’t bore you with complicated tech talk; we’re here to show you how this AI wizardry can sprinkle a touch of brilliance onto your essays.

From the basics to some nifty tricks, consider this guide your essay-writing potion. So, grab your metaphorical quills, because we’re about to unravel the art of using ChatGPT to write an essay that’ll leave others in awe. Let’s roll!

Table of Contents

Have a close look at the best ways on how to use Chatgpt to write an essay:-

Setting the Stage for Your Essay

1. selecting a topic.

Alrighty, let’s kick things off with the coolest part – picking a topic that’s like catnip for your brain! We’ve all been there, staring at a blank screen, praying for a lightning bolt of inspiration. But guess what? ChatGPT’s got your back!

Get Your Wheels Turning: Say goodbye to those brainstorming blues. ChatGPT is like your idea-generator-in-chief. It can toss out ideas that’ll make your essay stand out from the crowd. Whether it’s for a school assignment or a passion project, this digital whiz can whip up topics that’ll make your heart skip a beat.

2. Research Assistance

Let’s Go on a Web Safari

Alright, so you’ve got a rad topic in mind. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into the sea of knowledge. But wait, who’s got time to sift through a gazillion search results? Not you!

Navigate the Info Jungle: Say hello to ChatGPT, your research guru. It can dig up scholarly articles, books, and websites that are like hidden treasure chests of info.

You’ll be armed with the juiciest facts and insights without spending hours glued to your screen. Go ahead, let ChatGPT be your research sidekick – it’s like having your own personal librarian!

Armed with a killer topic and a treasure trove of research, you’re now ready to conquer the world of essay writing. And guess what? We’re just getting started! Get ready for more ChatGPT magic coming your way. 

3. Structuring the Essay

The Art of Essay Architecture

Imagine your essay as a beautifully constructed building. The foundation? A solid structure. And that’s exactly where ChatGPT comes in, working its magic to ensure your essay is a masterpiece of organization.

Blueprint for Success: ChatGPT isn’t just about words; it’s about creating a blueprint for your essay’s success. With its help, you can craft an outline that maps out a clear path for your readers.

From the grand entrance of the introduction to the eloquent rooms of your body paragraphs and the spectacular exit of the conclusion, ChatGPT ensures every part of your essay has its rightful place.

4. Writing the Introduction

Hello, Attention-Grabber!

Ever heard the saying, “First impressions are everything”? Well, that holds true for essays too. The introduction sets the stage for what’s to come, and ChatGPT can be your director, guiding you in creating an introduction that leaves your readers hungry for more.

Hook, Line, and Sinker: ChatGPT knows how to reel in your readers with attention-grabbing hooks. Whether it’s a fascinating fact, a thought-provoking question, or a captivating anecdote, this AI wordsmith can suggest openings that make your essay impossible to put down.

And let’s not forget the thesis statement – ChatGPT can help you craft a concise yet powerful statement that lays out the essence of your essay.

5. Developing Body Paragraphs

Building Bridges Between Ideas

So, you’ve got the introduction down pat. What’s next? The body paragraphs – the heart and soul of your essay. But fear not, because ChatGPT is your bridge builder, helping you connect ideas seamlessly.

Coherence is Key: ChatGPT is like the architect of coherence. It can assist in expanding on your arguments, providing evidence that supports your claims, and ensuring your paragraphs flow smoothly. No more abrupt transitions or disjointed thoughts – ChatGPT helps you present your ideas in a logical and engaging manner.

6. Adding Citations and References

Avoiding the Plagiarism Pitfall

Citations and references – they might sound like a headache, but they’re the guardians of academic integrity. ChatGPT takes on the role of your citation wizard, making sure your essay stands tall in the face of plagiarism.

Sourcing Superstar: Whether it’s APA, MLA, Chicago, or any other citation style, ChatGPT has got your back. It can generate accurate citations and references, saving you from the labyrinth of formatting rules. With ChatGPT, your sources are credited, and your essay remains a beacon of originality.

With ChatGPT by your side, crafting your essay becomes a creative journey that’s both smooth and exhilarating. Buckle up as we explore the finishing touches and polishing in the upcoming sections!

Polishing Your Essay

7. proofreading and editing.

The Art of Essay Detailing

Once your essay takes shape, it’s time for the fine-tuning. Picture it like polishing a precious gem. ChatGPT can be your trusty magnifying glass, helping you identify and rectify those tiny imperfections.

Grammar Guru: ChatGPT excels at spotting grammar and spelling errors, making it a valuable proofreading companion. However, remember that it’s not infallible. Manual review is essential to ensure your essay shines brightly. Look out for clarity and coherence as you edit – these elements are the jewels of your writing.

8. Improving Style and Tone

The Perfect Finishing Touch

Every essay has its own unique style and tone, and ChatGPT can assist in refining yours to match the academic vibe.

Crafting the Right Tone: Maintaining an academic tone is key, and ChatGPT knows how to help. It can suggest improvements to sentence structure, vocabulary, and overall style to ensure your essay strikes the right chord with your readers.

So, whether you need to sound more scholarly or simply want to add a touch of sophistication, ChatGPT has your back.

As you put the final gloss on your essay, remember that ChatGPT is your ally in achieving that professional polish. The next steps? Citations, references, and final checks. We’re almost there!

9. Creating a Title

The Art of the Perfect Title

Picture this: Your essay is like a beautifully wrapped gift, and the title is the bow on top. It’s the first thing your readers see, so it better be enticing! Luckily, ChatGPT is your title maestro, ready to compose a captivating title that’s the cherry on the cake.

Catchy Titles 101: ChatGPT can generate titles that are not only catchy but also perfectly aligned with your essay’s content. It’s like having a marketing guru brainstorming attention-grabbing headlines.

So, wave goodbye to those generic titles and get ready to hook your readers from the get-go.

10. Writing a Conclusion

The Grand Finale

Every great essay deserves a grand finale, and that’s precisely what the conclusion is all about. It’s your chance to leave a lasting impression, and ChatGPT can be your wordsmith for this crucial task.

Summarize and Impress: Crafting a strong conclusion requires summarizing your essay’s main points concisely and eloquently. ChatGPT can assist in creating that memorable closing paragraph, ensuring that your readers are left with a sense of fulfillment and insight.

With the title shining bright and the conclusion sealing the deal, your essay is now a complete masterpiece. But before you hit that submit button, let’s not forget one last essential step: citations and references. Let’s wrap things up!

Can you use ChatGPT for essays?

Absolutely! ChatGPT is your ultimate wingman when it comes to essay writing. It’s like having a super-smart buddy who’s always ready to assist you. Here’s how ChatGPT can be your go-to for essays:

Topic Generation: Stuck on what to write about? ChatGPT can be your idea generator. It’s like brainstorming with a genius friend who knows your interests and field of study.

Outline Creation: Ever heard that “organization is the key to success”? Well, ChatGPT helps you create a roadmap for your essay. Think of it as your GPS for the essay-writing journey.

Introduction Crafting: First impressions matter, right? ChatGPT can help you kickstart your essay with a bang. It’s your secret source for attention-grabbing openings.

Body Paragraph Development: Need to elaborate on your ideas? ChatGPT is your expansion expert. It can help you add meat to your arguments and ensure your essay flows smoothly.

Citations and References: Don’t let the plagiarism monster haunt your essay. ChatGPT can magically generate those tricky citations in different styles.

Proofreading and Editing: Grammar gremlins, beware! ChatGPT can spot those sneaky errors. But remember, it’s not infallible, so give your essay a once-over for clarity.

Style and Tone Enhancement: Want your essay to sound pro? ChatGPT can be your writing coach, suggesting tweaks for that academic vibe.

Title and Conclusion Assistance: Need a catchy title or a killer ending? ChatGPT’s got your back. It’s like having a brainstorming session with a wordsmith friend.

Remember, while ChatGPT is a fantastic tool, your voice and ideas are what make your essay unique. Think of ChatGPT as your trusty sidekick, here to assist and enhance your writing adventures. So, go ahead, let your creativity flow, and make those essays shine!

How do you write a paper on ChatGPT?

Have a close look at the steps to write a paper on Chatgpt.

Choose a Captivating Angle

Start by picking an exciting aspect of ChatGPT that sparks your curiosity. Whether it’s its evolution, real-world applications, ethical dilemmas, or impact on industries, find an angle that truly interests you.

Dive into Research

Begin your adventure by diving headfirst into the world of ChatGPT research. Scout academic journals, books, research papers, and reliable online sources. Imagine you’re hunting for treasures of knowledge!

Craft a Roadmap

Plot your journey by creating an outline. Think of it as your treasure map with key locations:

Introduction

Exploring the chatgpt landscape.

• The Method Behind the Magic (if you’re conducting experiments)

Unearthing Findings

The grand reveal: what it all means.

• Your Research Legacy
• Open your paper with an engaging backstory about ChatGPT.
• State your research question or thesis like it’s the ultimate treasure hunt.
• Explain why your quest is vital for the world to know.
• Summarize what adventurers before you have discovered about ChatGPT.
• Analyze the different maps and compasses they used.
• Spot gaps in their explorations that you’re determined to fill.

The Method Behind the Magic (If Applicable)

• Share your secret methods if you embarked on a unique journey – conducting experiments, surveys, or analyzing data.
• Show off your equipment, aka the tools and software you used.
• Present your treasures – the findings and analysis of your expedition.
• Explain what these discoveries mean for the world of ChatGPT adventurers.
• Reveal the ancient artifacts (data) you uncovered.
• Summarize your epic journey.
• Remind everyone of the grand quest you set out on.
• Leave clues for other adventurers about where to explore next.

The Final Frontier: Conclusion

• Sum up your findings in an epic way.
• Recapture the essence of your journey and why it was worth every challenge.
• Inspire others to embark on their own quests in the world of ChatGPT.

Credits to Your Fellow Explorers: References

• Give credit to the explorers whose maps you followed.
• Create a treasure inventory – a list of all the sources you used, following a specific citation style (like APA or MLA).

Polishing Your Treasure Chest: Editing and Proofreading

• Go back to your treasure chest (your paper) and make sure everything shines.
• Check for grammar and readability .
• Ensure your paper flows seamlessly, like an explorer’s journal.

Peer Review

• Share your treasure map (paper) with a fellow explorer for their insights and suggestions.
• Sometimes, another pair of eyes can spot hidden gems you missed.

Launching Your Expedition: Submission

• Get ready to unveil your discoveries to the world.
• Follow the submission guidelines of the academic journal, conference, or platform where you plan to share your paper.

Remember, your paper is your expedition journal, and every section is a step in your adventure. So, gear up, and let your journey into the world of ChatGPT unfold on the pages of your paper!

How do you use ChatGPT to improve writing?

Have a close look at the tips to use Chatgpt to improve writing.

Polish Your Clarity and Structure

• Write your initial draft naturally, just as your thoughts flow.
• Imagine ChatGPT as your friendly editor. Ask it to help you make sentences smoother or reorganize paragraphs for better flow.

Banish Grammar and Spelling Gremlins

• After writing a section, give it a once-over for grammar and spelling glitches.
• Ask ChatGPT to be your vigilant proofreader. It can spot those sneaky mistakes you might have missed.

Sprinkle Some Vocabulary Magic

• If your writing feels repetitive, ChatGPT can be your wizard of words.
• Request some fancy synonyms or fresh phrasings to add flavor to your content.

Trim the Verbose

• If you tend to get a bit wordy, ask ChatGPT to help you trim the fat without losing the meat.
• Think of it as your writing gym buddy, guiding you to more concise sentences.

Craft the Perfect Tone and Style

• Describe the vibe you want – casual, formal, academic, persuasive – ChatGPT can adapt!
• Chat with it about your preferred tone, and it can sprinkle that magic dust on your writing.

Masterful Introductions and Conclusions

• Write your introduction and conclusion to tell a story, set the scene, or sum up your points.
• Imagine ChatGPT as your storytelling coach. It can help you craft those captivating beginnings and memorable endings.

Seamless Transitions and Cohesion

• Ensure your ideas glide smoothly from one to the next.
• Chat with ChatGPT about creating those magical bridges that keep your readers engaged.

Ask for Writing Wisdom

• Treat ChatGPT as your writing guru. Ask it questions like, “How can I make this clearer?” or “What’s a better way to say this?”
• Use its wisdom to elevate your writing game.

Practice Makes Perfect

• Keep chatting with ChatGPT regularly. It’s like having a writing buddy who’s always ready for a brainstorming session.
• Experiment with different styles and genres to keep your writing skills evolving.

Share with Friends

• Show your work to your writing pals and gather their thoughts.
• Consult ChatGPT to address specific feedback or ideas your friends offer.

Revise and Refine

• When you’re done, chat with ChatGPT one more time for the final polish.
• Trust your instincts, but let ChatGPT be your finishing touch.

Track Your Growth

• Keep tabs on your progress and see how your writing improves over time.
• It’s like leveling up in a writing video game with ChatGPT as your trusty sidekick.

With ChatGPT as your writing companion, improving your writing becomes a dynamic and engaging journey. It’s like having a talented friend who helps you bring out the best in your words. Happy writing!

Ta-da! You’ve officially unlocked the secrets of using ChatGPT to rock your essay game. From finding the coolest topics to crafting intros that grab attention and wrapping up with killer conclusions – you’ve got it all covered, my friend.

But wait up, don’t think for a second that ChatGPT is the star of the show. Nope, that’s all you! See, writing isn’t just about throwing words together; it’s about showcasing your style, your thoughts, and your uniqueness.

So, now what? It’s time to channel your newfound wisdom. Dive into your essay writing armed with ChatGPT’s tricks and your awesome ideas. Let those sentences flow, those paragraphs shine, and those ideas dance across the page.

With ChatGPT in your corner, every essay becomes a chance to dazzle, educate, and maybe even change a few minds. So, off you go, essay rockstar! Your journey to crafting top-notch essays starts now, and with ChatGPT as your co-pilot, it’s bound to be an epic one. Happy writing and keep rocking those essays!

Frequently Asked Questions

Is chatgpt suitable for all types of essays.

Yes, ChatGPT can help with a wide range of essay types, from research papers to creative writing.

Can I trust ChatGPT for accurate citations?

ChatGPT can generate citations, but it’s important to cross-check them for accuracy.

Is ChatGPT suitable for academic essays?

Absolutely! ChatGPT is a valuable tool for academic writing, aiding in research, organization, and writing.

How can I integrate ChatGPT into my writing process?

You can access ChatGPT through its web interface or use APIs to integrate it into your applications or software.

Is ChatGPT user-friendly for beginners?

Yes, ChatGPT’s user-friendly interface makes it accessible to writers of all skill levels.

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Recent Posts

How to use ChatGPT for writing

AI can make you a better writer, if you know how to get the best from it

Summarizing other works

Worldbuilding, creating outlines, building characters, how to improve your chatgpt responses.

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm in a very short period of time, as users continue to test the boundaries of what the AI chatbot can accomplish. And so far, that's a lot. 

Some of it is negative, of course: for instance Samsung workers accidentally leaking top-secret data while using ChatGPT , or the AI chatbot being used for malware scams . Plagiarism is also rampant, with the use of ChatGPT for writing college essays a potential problem.

However, while ChatGPT can and has been used for wrongdoing, to the point where the Future of Life Institution released an open letter calling for the temporary halt of OpenAI system work , AI isn’t all bad. Far from it.

For a start, anyone who writes something may well have used AI to enhance their work already. The most common applications, of course, are the grammar and spelling correction tools found in everything from email applications to word processors. But there are a growing number of other examples of how AI can be used for writing. So, how do you bridge the gap between using AI as the tool it is, without crossing over into plagiarism city?

In fact, there are many ways ChatGPT can be used to enhance your skills, particularly when it comes to researching, developing, and organizing ideas and information for creative writing. By using AI as it was intended - as a tool, not a crutch - it can enrich your writing in ways that help to better your craft, without resorting to it doing everything for you. 

Below, we've listed some of our favorite ways to use ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots for writing. 

A key part of any writing task is the research, and thanks to the internet that chore has never been easier to accomplish. However, while finding the general sources you need is far less time-consuming than it once was, actually parsing all that information is still the same slog it’s always been. But this is where ChatGPT comes in. You can use the AI bot to do the manual labor for you and then reap the benefits of having tons of data to use for your work.

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The steps are slightly different, depending on whether you want an article or book summarized . 

For the article, there are two ways to have ChatGPT summarize it. The first requires you to type in the words ‘TLDR:’ and then paste the article’s URL next to it. The second method is a bit more tedious, but increases the accuracy of your summary. For that, you’ll need to copy and paste the article itself into the prompt . 

Summarizing a book is much easier, as long as it was published before 2021. Simply type into the prompt ‘summarize [book title]’ and it should do the rest for you.

This should go without saying, but for any articles or books, make sure you read the source material first before using any information presented to you. While ChatGPT is an incredibly useful tool that can create resources meant for future reference, it’s not a perfect one and is subject to accidentally inserting misinformation into anything it gives you.

One of the most extensive and important tasks when crafting your creative work is to properly flesh out the world your characters occupy. Even for works set in a regular modern setting, it can take plenty of effort to research the various cultures, landmarks, languages, and neighborhoods your characters live in and encounter. 

Now, imagine stories that require their own unique setting, and how much more work that entails in terms of creating those same details from scratch. While it’s vital that the main ideas come from you, using ChatGPT can be a great way to streamline the process, especially with more tedious details.

For instance, if you need certain fictional words without wanting to create an entirely fictional language, you can prompt ChatGPT with the following : “Create a language including an alphabet, phonetics, grammar, and the most common 100 words. Base it on [insert real-life languages here]” and it will give you some good starting points. However, it’s imperative that you take these words and look them up, to ensure you aren’t appropriating sensitive terms or using offensive real-life words.

Another example is useful for those who write scenarios for games, especially tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu . Dungeon Masters (who run the games) may often need to create documents or other fake materials for their world, but doing so takes a lot of time and effort. Now, they can prompt ChatGPT to quickly create filler text that sounds interesting or authentic but is inherently useless; it's essentially like ' Lorem Ipsum ' text, but more immersive.

When writing a story, many people will use an outline to ensure they stay on track and that the narrative flows well. But actually sitting down and organizing everything in your head in order to create a cohesive reference is a lot more daunting than it seems. It’s one of those steps that can be crucial to a well-structured work of fiction, but it can also become a hurdle. This is another area where ChatGPT can come in handy.

The key to writing an effective outline is remembering that you don’t need to have all the answers first. It’s there to structure your content, by helping you hit critical points and not miss important details in the process. While there are AI generators with a more specific focus on this topic, ChatGPT will do a good job at taking a general prompt and returning points for you to keep in mind while you research and write around that topic.

For instance, I prompted ChatGPT with “I want to write a story about a black woman in 16th century England” and it gave me a well-thought-out series of steps to help me create a story that would reflect my topic. An outline such as this would be particularly useful for those needing a resource they can quickly turn to for inspiration when writing. After that, you can begin to develop more complex ideas and have the AI organize those specifics into much easier-to-follow steps.

What makes any great story are the characters that inhabit it. Writing strong, fleshed-out characters is the cornerstone of any creative work and, naturally, the process of creating such a character can be difficult. Their background, manner of speech, goals, dreams, look, and more must be carefully considered and planned out. And this is another aspect of writing that ChatGPT can aid with, if you know how to go about it.

A basic way to use ChatGPT in this regard is to have it generate possible characters that could populate whatever setting you’re writing for. For example, I prompted it with “Provide some ideas for characters set in 1920s Harlem” and it gave me a full list of people with varied and distinctive backstories to use as a jumping-off point. Each character is described with a single sentence, enough to help start the process of creating them, but still leaving the crux of developing them up to me.

One of the most interesting features of ChatGPT is that you can flat-out roleplay with a character, whether they're a historical figure or one that you created but need help fleshing out. Take that same character you just created and have a conversation with them by asking them questions on their history, family life, profession, etc. Based on my previous results, I prompted with “Pretend to be a jazz musician from 1920s Harlem. Let's have a conversation.” I then asked questions from there, basing them on prior answers. Of course, from there you need to parse through these responses to filter out unnecessary or inaccurate details, while fleshing out what works for your story, but it does provide you with a useful stepping stone.

If you’re having issues getting the results you want, the problem could be with how you’re phrasing those questions or prompts in the first place. We've got a full guide to how to improve your ChatGPT prompts and responses , but here are a few of the best options:

• Specify the direction you want the AI to go, by adding in relevant details 
• Prompt from a specific role to guide the responses in the proper direction
• Make sure your prompts are free of typos and grammatical errors
• Keep your tone conversational, as that’s how ChatGPT was built
• Learn from yours and its mistakes to make it a better tool
• Break up your conversations into 500 words or less, as that’s when the AI begins to break down and go off topic
• If you need something clarified, ask the AI based on its last response
• Ask it to cite sources and then check those sources
• Sometimes it’s best to start fresh with a brand new conversation

Of course, many of the above suggestions apply not just to ChatGPT but also to the other chatbots springing up in its wake. Check out our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives and see which one works best for you.

Named by the CTA as a CES 2023 Media Trailblazer, Allisa is a Computing Staff Writer who covers breaking news and rumors in the computing industry, as well as reviews, hands-on previews, featured articles, and the latest deals and trends. In her spare time you can find her chatting it up on her two podcasts, Megaten Marathon and Combo Chain, as well as playing any JRPGs she can get her hands on.

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How to use ChatGPT to write an essay

Reviewed By: Steve Hook

Table of Contents

What is the easiest way to write an essay, what’s the best ai to write an essay, can you use chatgpt to write essays, how to use ai to write an essay, launch chatgpt, customize your custom instructions, give chatgpt a prompt, limitations when using chatgpt to write an essay, what is the bot that writes essays, is there an ai that can write essays, final thoughts.

Whether you need an essay writer or a speed boost for that last-minute assignment, you may be wondering how to use ChatGPT to write an essay . Since its public release in November 2022, OpenAI’s AI Chatbot has seen several updates to the quality of natural language processing (NLP) that guides it toward a high-quality, human writing style suitable for essays.

The AI bot, created by OpenAI, has been making headlines for its ability to communicate in a way that mimics human dialogue. But that’s not all! In fact, the AI model can also do some pretty wicked stuff such as essay writing, language translations, and quite recently passing university-level exams . However, it is also worth noting that colleges and universities can detect ChatGPT , and services like Turnitin will flag ChatGPT-generated content.

So while you can use ChatGPT to write an essay, we’d advise only doing so as a starting point for your own work – AI inspiration if you will. It’s fair and undetectable to use artificial intelligence for guidance, to help move past writing blocks and create your own essays.

To exemplify this, the following are excerpts from an essay that ChatGPT wrote based on the prompt “Write an essay about natural language processing”. NLP is the technology that allows the AI Chatbot to write in such a way, based on such a command.

“The genesis of NLP traces back to the 1950s, with the advent of machine translation. The Georgetown experiment in 1954 was a seminal moment, showcasing the potential of machines in translating languages. However, early optimism was curtailed by the enormity of linguistic nuances. The 1966 ALPAC report marked a period of reduced funding and interest in NLP, citing the high error rates and the lack of understanding of contextual meanings.” An excerpt from the essay generated by ChatGPT

The use of ChatGPT is frowned upon by academia, and likely won’t reflect your writing style anyway. As a result, you’ll still need to rewrite it. The best AI chatbots can take an example of your writing, and use it to customize the tone of the generated text with greater understanding. Older models like GPT-2 were not reliable in this respect, although current models like GPT-3 (especially GPT-3.5 with fine-tuning ) are both serviceable and free to use for essay writing.

The most advanced models, such as GPT-4 accessible via the ChatGPT Plus or ChatGPT Enterprise plan from OpenAI, are the best options for writing your essays. While GPT-4 is not open-source , it is better than essentially all of the immediate competition.

This is true even of Microsoft’s Copilot (formerly Bing Chat), with which ChatGPT shares an LLM — namely GPT-4; Despite the shared language model, ChatGPT offers superior functionality, especially considering the “ All Tools ” update which enables Browse with Bing, Advanced Data Analysis, Plugins, and DALL·E 3 at the same time.

Many users have been putting ChatGPT to the test, by asking the large language model to write essays. Surprisingly, these essays came out well-written and completely coherent, although they lacked the originality you get from human writers. A Twitter user even asked it to write their (slightly tongue-in-cheek) Havard application essay.

Without a doubt, ChatGPT essay writing is starting to be all the more common, but as above we would advise caution when using it. It also has various limitations which we outline below. So, thanks to the increase in ChatGPT detectors, and teachers and professors starting to ‘get wise’ to essays written by artificial intelligence, there is a real risk you could get caught if you, say, actually submit a college essay written by ChatGPT. Our recommendation is don’t; use the powerful tool as a guide for your own writing process and work.

Chat GPT is not the only AI that can write essays. Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) can also write a high-quality essay. This tech, when paired with an AI checker like GPTZero allows students to circumvent AI detection tools used by their professors. Typically, these major language models will have no issues with grammar . However, a grammar checker like Grammarly would not go amiss.

The process of using these AI-text generation tools is pretty much identical, no matter which you choose. So, let’s take a look at that process!

To start things off, head to the ChatGPT website and sign in with your login details. Alternatively, you can access ChatGPT via the mobile app for Android or iOS.

At this point, it is pretty common to be faced with a capacity error from OpenAI. In most cases, if you wait a couple of minutes you will be let in. If this is not the case, you can read our article here which shows you how to fix it.

Custom instructions are a new feature that improves the user experience by giving you greater control over ChatGPT responses. Instead of controlling how the AI chatbot responds by including instructions within the prompt itself, custom instructions stay how you set them for each new chat interaction unless changed.

To use them via web browser, click on the ‘Settings’ option to open up ChatGPT settings. You will see an option called ‘Custom instructions’.

If you’re using the iOS or Android app, you can turn on custom instructions by going to ‘Settings’, clicking on ‘New features’, and turning on ‘Custom instructions’.

ChatGPT custom instructions are now available for all users (Except EU & UK which is coming soon). Announced via OpenAI blog post on August 9th, 2023, the release notes show that neither ChatGPT Plus nor ChatGPT Enterprise are required to access the feature.

Now that you are logged in, you should be presented with the ChatGPT opening page and search bar. To get ChatGPT to generate an essay you will need to type a prompt into the search bar and click the send button.

Note, that the more detail you give ChatGPT the more specific your essay will be. For example, you can tell ChatGPT the length of the essay, to include references and the number of paragraphs.

Here are a couple examples:

• Write a 400-word essay about the impact of climate change including references
• Write a 4-paragraph essay about the causes of World War One

After ChatGPT has generated your essay you can ask the model to edit its response by typing and submitting “make it longer” or “write it again”.

To ensure your essay is the best it could be, we recommend making some edits. You can copy and paste ChatGPT’s response into a word processor such as Word or Google Docs to make some changes.

Ideally, rewriting the essay in your own words would be best, although tweaking ChatGPT’s response also works. At this stage, it is definitely important to proofread the essay and double check any facts with other sources to mitigate against ChatGPT’s accuracy limitation.

It may also be useful to run the essay through a plagiarism checker, such as Turnitin, to ensure your essay is safe from plagiarism .

In odd cases that require a specific voice, or character, you could try a ChatGPT alternative like Beta Character AI . It’s helpful to have more than one option to choose from when ChatGPT is down, or you can’t connect to Character.ai. Here’s how to make your own AI chatbot Character, and why you might prefer it compared to ChatGPT .

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There are a few things you should be wary of when using ChatGPT to write an essay. The first issue surrounds ChatGPT’s accuracy. OpenAI warns its users that the model may produce some inaccuracies that could have an obvious negative impact on their essays. The company also states that the application has the potential to produce biased responses too. This is definitely something you should be aware of, as there is a possibility that your essay could be incorrect and will need revising.

These issues are not unique to ChatGPT and can be observed in other popular LLMs (Large Language Models) like Google Bard and Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat). Ultimately, it’s functionally impossible to remove bias from an LLM at the source because the training data was produced by humans who themselves are inherently biased. Instead, the company running the LLM and its public-facing interface (ChatGPT) can add censorship filters at the end of the generation process – an imperfect solution, but more practical (and philosophically possible) than the alternative.

Another major concern is plagiarism. Plagiarism is definitely something to be concerned about when using AI to write your assignments. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT does not necessarily copy specific pieces of text that can be found somewhere else. But, it does have the capability to word its response in a way that is closely similar. The best way to check this is by putting the essay through a high-quality plagiarism checker, such as Turnitin.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT isn’t the only AI software that could help you write an essay. Here are some other AI essay writers you could try out:

• Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) – Since the free version of ChatGPT isn’t connected to the internet, you may want a tool that can provide an up-to-date outline based on relevant and recent data. Copilot can be that tool, as it is powered by ChatGPT but is also web-connected. It also uses GPT-4, OpenAI’s current most advanced machine learning model, for free – a privilege you must pay for when using ChatGPT.
• Jasper AI – Can produce long-form AI content automatically and can continue building content based on past paragraphs you have written. The starting price is $29 per month.
• ContentBot – Can create short-form ideas to long-form text such as blog posts and essays. An interactive tool that allows you to contribute to some of the essay writing. The starting price is free.

NOW READ The best  free AI essay writer  tools.

How to use ChatGPT to write an essay on mobile

OpenAI released the official ChatGPT iOS app on Thursday, May 18th, 2023. This was then followed by the ChatGPT Android app on Wednesday, July 26th, 2023.

These apps offer all of the same functionality (most of the time, as development cycles rarely sync up perfectly). You can download the ChatGPT mobile app to help write an essay on the go!

So that’s all you need to know about writing essays using ChatGPT. With the help of ChatGPT, you, and the right inputs and prompts, you can get a great start on essays around a wide range of topics. It also has the added bonus of being able to check for grammar, punctuation, and clarity.

There are some limitations, however, where the AI chatbot falls down, namely, its inaccuracies. We’d recommend that if you are going to use ChatGPT to help you write essays, you use it to assist with a rough draft or to give you essay ideas, rather than getting it to do the whole thing.

• NOW READ Can universities detect ChatGPT?

Funmi Somoye

Funmi joined PC Guide in November 2022, and was a driving force for the site's ChatGPT coverage. She has a wide knowledge of AI apps, gaming and consumer technology.

What is ChatGPT, and what is it used for?

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How to Grade Essays with ChatGPT

Introduction.

The rise of large language models (LLMs) like OpenAI’s ChatGPT has opened exciting possibilities in essay grading. With its advanced natural language processing capabilities, ChatGPT offers a new dimension in assessing written work, potentially revolutionizing the grading process for educators and researchers. Let’s delve into how ChatGPT could potentially make essay grading easier, more efficient, and more accurate.

ChatGPT can analyze written content for various parameters, including content quality, argument structure, coherence, and adherence to guidelines. Whether you use a continuous scoring system (e.g., quality of writing) or a discrete one (e.g., essay positions), ChatGPT can be tailored to your specific needs, offering customized feedback for different writing styles and assignments. Literature also suggests that LLMs can significantly increase grading efficiency, alleviating some of the burden on educators (Abedi et al., 2023; Okonkwo & Ade-Ibijola, 2021; Richter et al., 2019). Imagine grading hundreds of essays and providing feedback on them – a time-consuming and tiring task. ChatGPT can automate the initial assessment, flagging essays that require further attention based on specific criteria. Additionally, ChatGPT can identify stylistic strengths and weaknesses, analyze the use of literary devices, and even point out potential inconsistencies in an argument’s logic. This could free up valuable educator time for student interaction and curriculum development.

However, caution against over-reliance on this new technology is adivsed in scenarios where biased or inaccurate models could unfairly impact individual students. It is essential to recognize both the potential advantages and limitations of LLMs. This blog post aims to delve into and reflect on ChatGPT’s capabilities for grading and classifying essays and to provide insights into the practical application of using ChatGPT in educational settings.

In this blog, we will explore:

• Essay grading with ChatGPT and ChatGPT API
• Steps for essay grading with ChatGPT API
• Steps for essay classification with ChatGPT API
• Cost & computation times

For steps 2 and 3, we will provide detailed instructions on how to access and set up the ChatGPT API, prepare and upload your text dataset, and efficiently grade or classify numerous essays. Additionally, we will compare the outcomes of human grading to those obtained through GPT grading.

## Essay Grading with ChatGPT and ChatGPT API

For a single essay, we can simply ask ChatGPT to grade as follows:

For multiple essays, we could request ChatGPT to grade each one individually. However, when dealing with a large number of essays (e.g., 50, 100, 1000, etc.), manually grading them in this way becomes a laborious and time-consuming task. In such cases, we can leverage the ChatGPT API service to evaluate numerous essays at once, providing greater flexibility and efficiency. ChatGPT API is a versatile tool that enables developers to integrate ChatGPT into their own applications, services, or websites. When you use the API, you also gain more control over the interaction, such as the ability to adjust temperature, maximum tokens, and the presence of system messages.

It is important to understand the distinctions between ChatGPT’s web interface and the pretrained models accessible through the OpenAI API .

ChatGPT’s web version provides a user-friendly chat interface, requiring no coding knowledge and offering features like integrated system tools. However, it is less customizable and is not designed for managing high volumes of requests. Additionally, due to its internal short-term memory span, previous conversations can influence later responses. In contrast, the OpenAI API offers pretrained models without a built-in interface, necessitating coding experience for integration. These models excel at managing large request volumes, but lack ChatGPT’s conversational memory; they process each input independently. This fundamental difference can lead to variations in the outputs generated by ChatGPT’s web interface and the OpenAI API.

Here’s an example of grading a single essay using the ChatAPI with Python:

Interestingly, this example produces a single score rather than the sentence generated above via the ChatGPT web interface. This difference could be attributed to the ChatGPT API interpreting the prompt more directly than the ChatGPT online service, even though they both use the same pretrained model. Alternatively, the variability in ChatGPT’s results might be due to inherent randomness in its responses.

By implementing a loop with multiple texts, we can acquire scores for an entire set of essays. Let’s see how to do that.

Steps for Essay Grading with ChatGPT API

Get and set up a chatgpt api key.

We assume that you have already installed the Python OpenAI library on your system and have an active OpenAI account. Setting up and obtaining access to the ChatGPT API involves the following steps:

Obtain an OpenAI key: Vist the OpenAI API website at https://platform.openai.com/api-keys and click +Create a new secret key button. Save your key securely, as you cannot regenerate the same code due to OpenAI’s security policies.

Set ip API key: In your Python script or notebook, set up the API key using the following code, replacing “YOUR-API-KEY” with your actual API key:

Load the text dataset

In this post, we will grade a series of essays about the iPad usage in schools

Score the multiple essays

Grading 50 essays takes only 25 seconds.

Compare human grading scores with GPT grading scores

For these data, we happend to have scores given by human raters as well, allowing us how similar the human scores are to the scores generated by ChatGPT.

Using the code provided in the accompanying script, we get the following:

A contigency table (confusion matrix) of the scores is:

The averages and standard deviations of human grading and GPT grading scores are 2.54 ( SD = 1.68) and 2.34 ( SD = 0.74), respectively. The correlation between them is 0.62, indicating a fairly strong positive linear relationship. Additionally, the Root Mean Squared Error (RMSE) is 1.36, providing a measure of the GPT’s prediction accuracy compared to the actual human grading scores.

Steps for Essay Classification with ChatGPT API

ChatGPT can be utilized not only for scoring essays but also for classifying essays based on some categorical variable such as writers’ opinions regarding iPad usage in schools. Here are the steps to guide you through the process, assuming you already have access to the ChatGPT API and have loaded your text dataset:

Classify multiple essays

Classifying 50 essays takes only 27 seconds.

We create a new column re_Stance_iPad based on the mapping of values from the existing Stance_iPad column. Except for AFF and NEG opinions, opinions on AMB, BAL, and NAR are unclear. Therefore, AMB, BAL, and NAR are combined as OTHER.

Compare human classification with GPT classification

ChatGPT achieves an accuracy of approximately 84%, demonstrating its correctness in classification. An F1 score of 0.84, reflecting the harmonic mean of precision and recall, signifies a well-balanced performance in terms of both precision and recall. Additionally, the Cohen’s Kappa value of 0.71, which measures the agreement between predicted and actual classifications while accounting for chance, indicates substantial agreement beyond what would be expected by chance alone.

Cost & Computation times

How long does it take to assess all essays.

Grading and classifying 50 essays each took 25 and 27 seconds , resulting in a rate of about 2 essays per second.

What is the cost of assessing all essays?

In this blog, we utilized GPT-3.5-turbo-0125. According to OpenAI’s pricing page , the cost for input processing is $0.0005 per 1,000 tokens, and for output, it is $0.0015 per 1,000 tokens, indicating that the ChatGPT API charges for both tokens sent out and tokens received.

The total expenditure for grading all essays —50 assessing essay quality and 50 for essay classification—was approximately $0.01 .

What are tokens and how to count them?

Tokens can be viewed as fragments of words. When the API receives prompts, it breaks down the input into tokens. These divisions do not always align with the beginning or end of words; tokens may include spaces and even parts of words. To grasp the concept of tokens and their length equivalencies better, here are some helpful rules of thumb:

• 1 token ≈ 4 characters in English.
• 1 token ≈ ¾ of a word.
• 100 tokens ≈ 75 words.
• 1 to 2 sentences ≈ 30 tokens.
• 1 paragraph ≈ 100 tokens.
• 1,500 words ≈ 2,048 tokens.

To get additional context on how tokens are counted, consider this:

The prompt at the beginning of this blog, requesting that OpenAI grade an essay, contains 129 tokens, and the output contains 12 tokens.

The input cost is $0.0000645, and the output cost is $0.000018.

ChatGPT provides an alternative approach to essay grading. This post has delved into the practical application of ChatGPT’s natural language processing capabilities, demonstrating how it can be used for efficient and accurate essay grading, with a comparison to human grading. The flexibility of ChatGPT is particularly evident when handling large volumes of essays, making it a viable alternative tool for educators and researchers. By employing the ChatGPT API key service, the grading process becomes not only streamlined but also adaptable to varying scales, from individual essays to hundreds or even thousands.

This technology has the potential to significantly enhance the efficiency of the grading process. By automating the assessment of written work, teachers and researchers can devote more time to other critical aspects of education. However, it’s important to acknowledge the limitations of current LLMs in this context. While they can assist in grading, relying solely on LLMs for final grades could be problematic, especially if LLMs are biased or inaccurate. Such scenarios could lead to unfair outcomes for individual students, highlighting the need for human oversight in the grading process. For large scale research, where we look at always across many essays, this is less of a concern (see e.g., Mozer et al., 2023)

The guide in this blog has provided a step-by-step walkthrough of setting up and accessing the ChatGPT API essay grading.

We also explored the reliability of ChatGPT’s grading, as compared to human grading. The moderate positive correlation of 0.62 attests to same consistency between human grading and ChatGPT’s evaluations. The classification results reveal that the model achieves an accuracy of approximately 84%, and the Cohen’s Kappa value of 0.71 indicates substantial agreement beyond what would be expected by chance alone. See the related study (Kim et al., 2024) for more on this.

In essence, this comprehensive guide underscores the transformative potential of ChatGPT in essay grading, presenting it as a valuable approach in the ever-evolving educational fields. This post gives an overview; we next dig in a bit more, thinking about prompt engineering + providing examples to improve accuracy.

Writer’s Comments

The api experience: a blend of ease and challenge.

Starting your journey with the ChatGPT API will be surprisingly smooth, especially if you have some Python experience. Copying and pasting code from this blog, followed by acquiring your own ChatGPT API and tweaking prompts and datasets, might seem like a breeze. However, this simplicity masks the underlying complexity. Bumps along the road are inevitable, reminding us that “mostly” easy does not mean entirely challenge-free.

The biggest hurdle you will likely face is mastering the art of crafting effective prompts. While ChatGPT’s responses are impressive, they can also be unpredictably variable. Conducting multiple pilot runs with 5-10 essays is crucial. Experimenting with diverse prompts on the same essays can act as a stepping stone, refining your approach and building confidence for wider application.

When things click, the benefits are undeniable. Automating the grading process with ChatGPT can save considerable time. Human graders, myself included, can struggle with maintaining consistent standards across a mountain of essays. ChatGPT, on the other hand, might be more stable when grading large batches in a row.

It is crucial to acknowledge that this method is not a magic bullet. Continuous scoring is not quite there yet, and limitations still exist. But the good news is that LLMs like ChatGPT are constantly improving, and new options are emerging.

Overall Reflections: A Journey of Discovery

The exploration of the ChatGPT API can be a blend of innovation, learning, and the occasional frustration. While AI grading systems like ChatGPT are not perfect, their ability to save time and provide consistent grading scheme makes them an intriguing addition to the educational toolkit. As we explore and refine these tools, the horizon for their application in educational settings seems ever-expanding, offering a glimpse into a future where AI and human educators work together to enhance the learning experience. Who knows, maybe AI will become a valuable partner in the grading process in the future!

Call to Action

Have you experimented with using ChatGPT for grading? Share your experiences and questions in the comments below! We can all learn from each other as we explore the potential of AI in education.

• Abedi, M., Alshybani, I., Shahadat, M. R. B., & Murillo, M. (2023). Beyond Traditional Teaching: The Potential of Large Language Models and Chatbots in Graduate Engineering Education. Qeios. https://doi.org/10.32388/MD04B0
• Kim, Y., Mozer, R., Miratrix, L., & Al-Ademi, S. (2024). ChatGPT vs. Machine Learning: Assessing the Efficacy and Accuracy of Large Language Models for Automated Essay Scoring (in preparation).
• Okonkwo, C. W., & Ade-Ibijola, A. (2021). Chatbots applications in education: A systematic review. Computers and Education: Artificial Intelligence, 2, 100033. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.caeai.2021.100033
• Pricing . (n.d.). OpenAI. Retrieved March 2, 2024, from https://openai.com/pricing#language-models
• Mozer, R., Miratrix, L., Relyea, J. E., & Kim, J. S. (2023). Combining Human and Automated Scoring Methods in Experimental Assessments of Writing: A Case Study Tutorial. Journal of Educational and Behavioral Statistics, 10769986231207886. https://doi.org/10.3102/10769986231207886
• Zawacki-Richter, O., Marín, V. I., Bond, M., & Gouverneur, F. (2019). Systematic review of research on artificial intelligence applications in higher education–where are the educators?. International Journal of Educational Technology in Higher Education, 16(1), 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0171-0

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• An Interview Question

Why Learn to Use ChatGPT?

• Vijay Yadav
• Aug 22, 2024
• Other Artcile

Learning ChatGPT boosts productivity by automating tasks like content creation and coding assistance. It supports continuous learning in fields like programming and language skills, improves communication, and enhances creativity.

Introduction

In today’s rapidly evolving technological landscape, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is at the forefront of many industries, and one of the most innovative AI tools is OpenAI's ChatGPT. From students to developers and business professionals, ChatGPT is transforming the way we interact with technology, making it a skill worth learning. Here's why you should consider learning how to use ChatGPT.

1. Enhances Productivity and Efficiency

ChatGPT is a powerful tool that can significantly boost productivity. Whether you need quick answers, content generation, or assistance with complex problem-solving, ChatGPT can help.

• Content Creation: Generate ideas, write articles, or even create marketing content within minutes.
• Coding Assistance: Get help with writing code, debugging, and learning programming languages.
• Summarizing Information: Quickly digest large documents or research by having ChatGPT summarize key points.

By automating repetitive tasks and providing instant support, ChatGPT enables you to focus on more critical and creative work.

2. Supports Continuous Learning

ChatGPT can act as a virtual tutor, offering explanations, answering questions, and helping you learn new concepts in various fields, including.

• Programming: ChatGPT can explain complex coding concepts, provide examples, and assist in troubleshooting.
• Language Learning: Practice conversations, grammar, and vocabulary in multiple languages.
• Academic Assistance: Get help with research, problem-solving, and essay writing across subjects like math, science, history, and more.

This versatility makes ChatGPT an excellent tool for both students and lifelong learners.

3. Improves Communication Skills

Communication is key in nearly every profession, and ChatGPT can help you improve your writing and conversational skills.

• Writing Assistance: It helps you refine your writing by providing suggestions for structure, tone, and grammar.
• Customer Support Simulations: Use ChatGPT to simulate real customer interactions, helping improve your problem-solving and customer service skills.

Learning how to communicate effectively with AI can enhance your professional and personal communication skills.

4. Versatility Across Industries

ChatGPT's applications are virtually limitless, making it relevant across industries. Here are some examples of how different sectors use ChatGPT.

• Education: Assist teachers in creating lesson plans, quizzes, and study materials while helping students with assignments.
• Healthcare: Provide information on medical conditions, generate patient reports, or create wellness content.
• Business: Automate customer service, streamline administrative tasks, and assist in decision-making processes.

Mastering ChatGPT can open doors to various job opportunities and make you a more valuable asset in your current industry.

5. Enhances Creativity

ChatGPT can serve as a creative partner, helping generate ideas and brainstorm solutions for creative projects. Whether you’re working on a novel, a business proposal, or an art project, ChatGPT can provide.

• Idea Generation: Quickly generate new ideas, approaches, and perspectives.
• Problem Solving: Collaborate with ChatGPT to think outside the box and find innovative solutions.
• Artistic Collaboration: Use ChatGPT to inspire poetry, stories, and even creative writing.

Learning how to leverage AI creatively can enhance your ability to innovate and think critically.

6. Preparing for the Future of Work

As AI continues to advance, understanding how to work with AI tools like ChatGPT is becoming increasingly important. Many jobs will require professionals to collaborate with AI to maximize productivity and efficiency. Learning how to effectively use ChatGPT will make you.

• More Competitive: In a job market that’s increasingly emphasizing technological proficiency.
• Adaptable: AI is expected to impact every industry, and learning ChatGPT prepares you for a future where AI is integrated into daily workflows.

7. Ethical Awareness and AI Literacy

Understanding how to interact with AI responsibly is essential. By learning ChatGPT, you also gain insight into.

• AI Limitations: Recognize when ChatGPT may not provide accurate information and how to critically assess AI-generated content.
• Ethical Considerations: Develop an awareness of the ethical implications of AI in decision-making, bias, and privacy concerns.

Becoming AI literate helps ensure that you can use these tools responsibly and effectively.

Learning to use ChatGPT is an investment in your future. It not only enhances your productivity, creativity, and communication but also prepares you for the evolving landscape of AI-powered industries. Whether you’re a student, professional, or lifelong learner, mastering ChatGPT opens up a world of possibilities for improving your skills and staying competitive in a technology-driven world.

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• Virtual Tutor

The Developer's Guide to ChatGPT: Enhancing Your Skills with AI

What is ChatGPT? Here's everything you need to know about OpenAI's chatbot

• ChatGPT is getting a futuristic human update. 
• ChatGPT has attracted users at a feverish pace and spurred Big Tech to release other AI chatbots.
• Here's how ChatGPT works — and what's coming next.

OpenAI has started rolling out an advanced voice mode for its blockbuster chatbot ChatGPT.

Sam Altman's company began rolling out the chatbot's new voice mode to a small group of ChatGPT Plus users in July. OpenAI said the new voice feature "offers more natural, real-time conversations, allows you to interrupt anytime, and senses and responds to your emotions."

The feature is part of OpenAI's wider GPT-4o launch, a new version of the bot that can hold conversations with users and has vision abilities. The chatbot's vision features are expected as a later release. 

The move is a big step for the future of AI-powered virtual assistants, which tech companies have been racing to develop.

Since its release in late 2022, hundreds of millions of people have experimented with the tool, which is already changing how the internet looks and feels to users.

Users have flocked to ChatGPT to improve their personal lives and boost productivity . Some workers have used the AI chatbot to develop code , write real estate listings , and create lesson plans, while others have made teaching the best ways to use ChatGPT a career all to itself.

ChatGPT offers dozens of plug-ins to ChatGPT Plus subscribers. An Expedia plug-in can help you book a trip, while one from OpenTable will nab you a dinner reservation. OpenAI has also launched Code Interpreter, a version of ChatGPT that can code and analyze data .

While the personal tone of conversations with an AI bot like ChatGPT can evoke the experience of chatting with a human, the technology that runs on large language model tools doesn't speak with sentience and doesn't "think" the way humans do. 

That means that even though ChatGPT can explain quantum physics or write a poem on command, a full AI takeover isn't exactly imminent , according to experts.

"There's a saying that an infinite number of monkeys will eventually give you Shakespeare," said Matthew Sag, a law professor at Emory University who studies copyright implications for training and using large language models like ChatGPT.

"There's a large number of monkeys here, giving you things that are impressive — but there is intrinsically a difference between the way that humans produce language, and the way that large language models do it," he said. 

Chatbots like ChatGPT are powered by large amounts of data and computing techniques to make predictions to string words together in a meaningful way. They not only tap into a vast amount of vocabulary and information, but also understand words in context. This helps them mimic speech patterns while dispatching an encyclopedic knowledge. 

Other tech companies like Google and Meta have developed their own large language model tools, which use programs that take in human prompts and devise sophisticated responses.

Despite the AI's impressive capabilities, some have called out OpenAI's chatbot for spewing misinformation , stealing personal data for training purposes , and even encouraging students to cheat and plagiarize on their assignments. 

Some efforts to use chatbots for real-world services have proved troubling. In 2023, the mental health company Koko came under fire after its founder wrote about how the company used GPT-3 in an experiment to reply to users. 

Koko cofounder Rob Morris hastened to clarify on Twitter that users weren't speaking directly to a chatbot, but that AI was used to "help craft" responses. 

Read Insider's coverage on ChatGPT and some of the strange new ways that both people and companies are using chat bots: 

The tech world's reception to ChatGPT:

Microsoft is chill with employees using ChatGPT — just don't share 'sensitive data' with it.

Microsoft's investment into ChatGPT's creator may be the smartest $1 billion ever spent

ChatGPT and generative AI look like tech's next boom. They could be the next bubble.

The ChatGPT and generative-AI 'gold rush' has founders flocking to San Francisco's 'Cerebral Valley'

Insider's experiments: 

I asked ChatGPT to do my work and write an Insider article for me. It quickly generated an alarmingly convincing article filled with misinformation.

I asked ChatGPT and a human matchmaker to redo my Hinge and Bumble profiles. They helped show me what works.

I asked ChatGPT to reply to my Hinge matches. No one responded.

I used ChatGPT to write a resignation letter. A lawyer said it made one crucial error that could have invalidated the whole thing .

Read ChatGPT's 'insulting' and 'garbage' 'Succession' finale script

An Iowa school district asked ChatGPT if a list of books contains sex scenes, and banned them if it said yes. We put the system to the test and found a bunch of problems.

Developments in detecting ChatGPT: 

Teachers rejoice! ChatGPT creators have released a tool to help detect AI-generated writing

A Princeton student built an app which can detect if ChatGPT wrote an essay to combat AI-based plagiarism

Professors want to 'ChatGPT-proof' assignments, and are returning to paper exams and requesting editing history to curb AI cheating

Related stories

ChatGPT in society: 

BuzzFeed writers react with a mix of disappointment and excitement at news that AI-generated content is coming to the website

ChatGPT is testing a paid version — here's what that means for free users

A top UK private school is changing its approach to homework amid the rise of ChatGPT, as educators around the world adapt to AI

Princeton computer science professor says don't panic over 'bullshit generator' ChatGPT

DoNotPay's CEO says threat of 'jail for 6 months' means plan to debut AI 'robot lawyer' in courtroom is on ice

It might be possible to fight a traffic ticket with an AI 'robot lawyer' secretly feeding you lines to your AirPods, but it could go off the rails

Online mental health company uses ChatGPT to help respond to users in experiment — raising ethical concerns around healthcare and AI technology

What public figures think about ChatGPT and other AI tools:

What Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and 12 other business leaders think about AI tools like ChatGPT

Elon Musk was reportedly 'furious' at ChatGPT's popularity after he left the company behind it, OpenAI, years ago

CEO of ChatGPT maker responds to schools' plagiarism concerns: 'We adapted to calculators and changed what we tested in math class'

A theoretical physicist says AI is just a 'glorified tape recorder' and people's fears about it are overblown

'The most stunning demo I've ever seen in my life': ChatGPT impressed Bill Gates

Ashton Kutcher says your company will probably be 'out of business' if you're 'sleeping' on AI

ChatGPT's impact on jobs: 

AI systems like ChatGPT could impact 300 million full-time jobs worldwide, with administrative and legal roles some of the most at risk, Goldman Sachs report says

Jobs are now requiring experience with ChatGPT — and they'll pay as much as $800,000 a year for the skill

ChatGPT may be coming for our jobs. Here are the 10 roles that AI is most likely to replace.

AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes

It's not AI that is going to take your job, but someone who knows how to use AI might, economist says

4 careers where workers will have to change jobs by 2030 due to AI and shifts in how we shop, a McKinsey study says

Companies like Amazon, Netflix, and Meta are paying salaries as high as $900,000 to attract generative AI talent

How AI tools like ChatGPT are changing the workforce:

10 ways artificial intelligence is changing the workplace, from writing performance reviews to making the 4-day workweek possible

Managers who use AI will replace managers who don't, says an IBM exec

How ChatGPT is shaping industries: 

ChatGPT is coming for classrooms, hospitals, marketing departments, and everything else as the next great startup boom emerges

Marketing teams are using AI to generate content, boost SEO, and develop branding to help save time and money, study finds

AI is coming for Hollywood. 'It's amazing to see the sophistication of the images,' one of Christopher Nolan's VFX guy says.

AI is going to offer every student a personalized tutor, founder of Khan Academy says

A law firm was fined $5,000 after one of its lawyers used ChatGPT to write a court brief riddled with fake case references

How workers are using ChatGPT to boost productivity:  

CheatGPT: The hidden wave of employees using AI on the sly

I used ChatGPT to talk to my boss for a week and she didn't notice. Here are the other ways I use it daily to get work done.

I'm a high school math and science teacher who uses ChatGPT, and it's made my job much easier

Amazon employees are already using ChatGPT for software coding. They also found the AI chatbot can answer tricky AWS customer questions and write cloud training materials.

How 6 workers are using ChatGPT to make their jobs easier

I'm a freelance editor who's embraced working with AI content. Here's how I do it and what I charge.

How people are using ChatGPT to make money:

How ChatGPT and other AI tools are helping workers make more money

Here are 5 ways ChatGPT helps me make money and complete time-consuming tasks for my business

ChatGPT course instruction is the newest side hustle on the market. Meet the teachers making thousands from the lucrative gig.

People are using ChatGPT and other AI bots to work side hustles and earn thousands of dollars — check out these 8 freelancing gigs

A guy tried using ChatGPT to turn $100 into a business making 'as much money as possible.' Here are the first 4 steps the AI chatbot gave him

We used ChatGPT to build a 7-figure newsletter. Here's how it makes our jobs easier.

I use ChatGPT and it's like having a 24/7 personal assistant for $20 a month. Here are 5 ways it's helping me make more money.

A worker who uses AI for a $670 monthly side hustle says ChatGPT has 'cut her research time in half'

How companies are navigating ChatGPT: 

From Salesforce to Air India, here are the companies that are using ChatGPT

Amazon, Apple, and 12 other major companies that have restricted employees from using ChatGPT

A consultant used ChatGPT to free up time so she could focus on pitching clients. She landed $128,000 worth of new contracts in just 3 months.

Luminary, an AI-generated pop-up restaurant, just opened in Australia. Here's what's on the menu, from bioluminescent calamari to chocolate mousse.

A CEO is spending more than $2,000 a month on ChatGPT Plus accounts for all of his employees, and he says it's saving 'hours' of time

How people are using ChatGPT in their personal lives:

ChatGPT planned a family vacation to Costa Rica. A travel adviser found 3 glaring reasons why AI won't replace experts anytime soon.

A man who hated cardio asked ChatGPT to get him into running. Now, he's hooked — and he's lost 26 pounds.

A computer engineering student is using ChatGPT to overcome learning challenges linked to her dyslexia

How a coder used ChatGPT to find an apartment in Berlin in 2 weeks after struggling for months

Food blogger Nisha Vora tried ChatGPT to create a curry recipe. She says it's clear the instructions lacked a human touch — here's how.

Men are using AI to land more dates with better profiles and personalized messages, study finds

Lawsuits against OpenAI:

OpenAI could face a plagiarism lawsuit from The New York Times as tense negotiations threaten to boil over, report says

This is why comedian Sarah Silverman is suing OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT

2 authors say OpenAI 'ingested' their books to train ChatGPT. Now they're suing, and a 'wave' of similar court cases may follow.

A lawsuit claims OpenAI stole 'massive amounts of personal data,' including medical records and information about children, to train ChatGPT

A radio host is suing OpenAI for defamation, alleging that ChatGPT created a false legal document that accused him of 'defrauding and embezzling funds'

Tips on how to write better ChatGPT prompts:

7 ways to use ChatGPT at work to boost your productivity, make your job easier, and save a ton of time

I'm an AI prompt engineer. Here are 3 ways I use ChatGPT to get the best results.

12 ways to get better at using ChatGPT: Comprehensive prompt guide

Here's 9 ways to turn ChatGPT Plus into your personal data analyst with the new Code Interpreter plug-in

OpenAI's ChatGPT can write impressive code. Here are the prompts you should use for the best results, experts say.

Watch: What is ChatGPT, and should we be afraid of AI chatbots?

• Main content

ChatGPT cover letter hack — 7 prompts to make your job application stand out

Struggling with cover letters? Here's how ChatGPT can help you land that job interview

Crafting a compelling cover letter in today's competitive job market can be daunting. Enter ChatGPT , the popular AI language model that's revolutionizing how we approach writing tasks. While many know how to use ChatGPT to help you write a resume , its potential for creating standout cover letters is equally impressive. By harnessing AI's language processing capabilities, you can refine your writing, tailor your message, and effectively highlight your key qualifications. But ChatGPT's usefulness doesn't stop there. Did you know it can also analyze PDFs for free —making industry research so much easier. And to streamline the job application process, you can even connect Google Drive to ChatGPT for easy document access. This guide will show you how to leverage ChatGPT to create impressive cover letters while maintaining your authentic voice. Remember, AI is here to enhance not to replace your personal touch. Let's dive in and discover how to make ChatGPT your secret weapon in landing your dream job! 

1. Analyze the job description

Log in or sign up to ChatGPT . Begin by pasting the job description into the prompt box and asking it to identify key skills, qualifications, and responsibilities. This analysis will help you understand exactly what the employer is looking for in an ideal candidate.

You can use a prompt like: Analyze this job description and list the top 5 skills and qualifications the employer is seeking . Then , hit Enter. 

2. Outline your cover letter

Once you have a clear understanding of the job requirements, ask ChatGPT to create a basic outline for your cover letter based on the job description analysis . This will provide a structure for your letter and ensure you address all the key points.

Try using a prompt such as: Create an outline for a cover letter addressing these top 5 skills and qualifications.

3. Craft your opening paragraph

Use ChatGPT to generate ideas for an attention-grabbing opening paragraph that expresses your enthusiasm for the position. This is your chance to make a strong first impression, so consider asking for multiple options. 

You might use a prompt like: Generate three engaging opening paragraphs for a cover letter applying for [job title] at [company name] .

4. Highlight your relevant experience

Provide ChatGPT with bullet points from your resume. Then, ask it to transform them into compelling sentences that align with the job requirements . This step helps you tailor your experience to the specific role. A useful prompt could be: Turn these resume bullet points into persuasive sentences for a cover letter, focusing on how they relate to [specific job requirements].

5. Create a strong closing

Ask ChatGPT to suggest impactful closing paragraphs that reiterate your interest and qualifications. A strong closing can leave a lasting impression on your prospective employer.

Try a prompt like: Write a closing paragraph for my cover letter that summarizes my fit for the role and expresses enthusiasm for an interview.

6. Refine and personalize

Ask ChatGPT to combine all the elements to create your cover letter. Then use it to help you fine-tune your language and add a personal touch to the cover letter. This step ensures your letter doesn't sound generic or AI-generated.

A good prompt for this could be: Review the cover letter generated and suggest ways to make it more personalized and engaging. If you're happy with the suggestions, ask ChatGPT to apply them.

7. Proofread and edit

Finally, ask ChatGPT to proofread your cover letter and suggest any improvements in grammar, style, or clarity. While ChatGPT is excellent at catching errors, always review its suggestions yourself. 

You can use a prompt like: Please proofread the cover letter and suggest any improvements in grammar, style, or clarity. Once you're happy with the cover letter letter, copy and paste into a document to send. Happy job hunting! 

So that's it! If you're curious about what else is happening in AI right now, OpenAI has knocked Gemini off the top of chatbot leaderboard with its new model, thanks to some rapid advancements. These include extending beyond text, as evidenced by recent experiences with voice AI. Read what happened when our AI editor spent the weekend with GPT-4o Advanced Voice . Finally, big things are undoubtedly coming, with news from OpenAI that ChatGPT got a secret upgrade , so make sure you check Tom's Guide regularly for the best guides on how to utilize AI to help with your everyday tasks.

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Kaycee is an Editor at Tom’s Guide and has been writing for as long as she can remember. Her journey into the tech world began as Cazoo's Knowledge Content Specialist, igniting her enthusiasm for technology. When she’s not exploring the latest gadgets and innovations, Kaycee can be found immersed in her favorite video games, or penning her second poetry collection. 

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• How to Write an Essay with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples

How to Write an Essay with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples

Published on 26 June 2023 by Koen Driessen .

Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is widely considered plagiarism. However, when used correctly, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can legitimately help guide your writing process.

These tools are especially helpful in the preparation and revision stages of your essay writing.

You can use ChatGPT to:

• Write a research question
• Develop an outline
• Find relevant source information
• Summarise or paraphrase text
• Get feedback

Instantly correct all language mistakes in your text

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Table of contents

Writing a research question, developing an outline, finding source recommendations, summarising/paraphrasing text, getting feedback, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

You can use ChatGPT to brainstorm potential research questions or to narrow down your thesis statement . Begin by inputting a description of the research topic or assigned question. Then include a prompt like “Write 3 possible research questions on this topic”.

You can make the prompt as specific as you like. For example, you can include the writing level (e.g., high school essay, college essay), perspective (e.g., first person) and the type of essay you intend to write (e.g., argumentative , descriptive , expository , or narrative ).

You can also mention any facts or viewpoints you’ve gathered that should be incorporated into the output.

If the output doesn’t suit your topic, you can click “Regenerate response” to have the tool generate a new response. You can do this as many times as you like, and you can try making your prompt more specific if you struggle to get the results you want.

Example: Using ChatGPT to write a research question

• Generate three possible research questions for an argumentative high school essay on the following topic: “The long-term impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
• To what extent has the Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated existing social inequalities and what measures can be taken to address these disparities in the long term?
• How has the Covid-19 pandemic transformed education systems, and what are the potential long-term implications for students’ learning outcomes and educational equity?
• What lessons can be learned from the Covid-19 pandemic to enhance global preparedness and response to future public health crises, and how can these lessons be effectively implemented in the long term?
• Based on the second question, develop three further research questions with a specific focus on distance learning.
• What are the long-term effects of widespread adoption of distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic on students’ academic performance, motivation, and overall educational outcomes?
• How has the shift to distance learning impacted the social and emotional well-being of students, and what strategies can be implemented to address any negative consequences in the long term?
• What are the key factors that contribute to the success of distance learning programs, and how can educational institutions and policymakers ensure equitable access to quality education in the long term, especially for marginalized and underserved student populations?

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Once you’ve decided on a research question, you can use ChatGPT to develop an essay outline . This can help keep you on track by giving you a clear idea of what topics you want to discuss and in what order.

Do this by prompting ChatGPT to create an outline for a specific research question, mentioning any topics or points you want to discuss. You can also mention the writing level and the intended length of your essay so that the tool generates an appropriate outline.

You can then refine this by further prompting ChatGPT or editing the outline manually until it meets your requirements.

Examples: Using ChatGPT to generate an essay outline

• Develop an outline for an argumentative high school essay with the following research question: “What are the long-term effects of widespread adoption of distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic on students’ academic performance and overall educational outcomes?”The essay will be about 4 pages long.
• Background information on the Covid-19 pandemic and the shift to distance learning
• Thesis statement: The widespread adoption of distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic has had both positive and negative long-term effects on students’ academic performance and overall educational outcomes.
• Increased flexibility and personalized learning opportunities
• Access to a wider range of resources and educational materials
• Development of self-directed learning skills
• Critiques and limitations of previous studies
• Lack of face-to-face interaction and reduced social engagement
• Increased potential for distractions and lack of structure
• Technological barriers and unequal access to resources
• Examination of studies and data on academic achievement during distance learning
• Analysis of long-term effects on educational attainment and future opportunities
• Discussion of potential implications for college admissions and career readiness
• Strategies for promoting student engagement and motivation in distance learning
• Importance of teacher-student communication and support
• Addressing technological disparities and ensuring equitable access to resources
• Recap of the main points discussed
• Emphasize the need for further research and long-term planning to optimize distance learning experiences
• Restate the thesis and provide a final thought on the potential long-term effects of distance learning on students’ academic performance and overall educational outcomes

Once you know the scope of your essay, you can find relevant primary and secondary sources to support your argument.

However, we don’t recommend prompting ChatGPT to generate a list of sources as it occasionally makes mistakes (like listing nonexistent sources). Instead, it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT to get suggestions for the types of sources relevant to your essay and track them down using a credible research database or your institution’s library.

When you have found relevant sources, use a specialised tool like the Scribbr Citation Generator to cite them in your essay.

Example: Using ChatGPT to find sources

• What types of sources can I use to write an essay on the following research question?”What are the long-term effects of widespread adoption of distance learning during the Covid-19 pandemic on students’ academic performance and overall educational outcomes?”
• Academic Journals and Research Articles: Look for scholarly articles and research studies published in peer-reviewed academic journals. These sources often provide in-depth analysis, empirical evidence, and statistical data on the long-term effects of distance learning.
• Educational and Government Reports: Reports published by educational institutions, government agencies, or educational organizations can offer valuable insights into the impact of distance learning on academic performance and educational outcomes. These reports may include surveys, case studies, and data analysis specific to the Covid-19 pandemic and distance learning.
• Official Websites and Publications: Explore the official websites of educational institutions, education ministries, or educational technology companies. They often publish articles, white papers, or research findings related to distance learning and its effects on students’ academic performance.
• Expert Interviews or Opinion Pieces: Seek out interviews or opinion pieces from experts in the field of education, distance learning, or pedagogy. These sources can provide valuable perspectives and insights on the long-term effects of distance learning on students’ educational outcomes.
• Online Databases and Digital Libraries: Utilize online databases and digital libraries such as JSTOR, Google Scholar, or academic databases provided by your educational institution. These platforms offer a wide range of scholarly articles, research papers, and publications that can support your arguments.
• Surveys and Studies Conducted by Educational Institutions: Some schools or universities may have conducted their own surveys or studies to evaluate the impact of distance learning on students. Check if your educational institution has published any research findings or survey results that are relevant to your topic.

During your writing process, you can use ChatGPT as a summarising tool to condense text to its essential ideas or as a paraphraser to rephrase text in clear, accessible language. Using ChatGPT in these ways can help you to understand complex material, express your own ideas more clearly, and avoid repetition.

Simply input the relevant text and prompt the tool to summarise or paraphrase it. Alternatively, you can use Scribbr’s free text summariser and Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , which are specifically designed for these purposes.

Example: Using ChatGPT to summarise/paraphrase

• Paraphrase the following text using clear language:”Engaging in an extensive examination of the intricate interplay between remote instructional methods and academic achievement necessitates consideration of diverse factors, including the pedagogical efficacy of virtual platforms, the socioemotional ramifications of reduced face-to-face interactions, the equitable accessibility of technological resources, and the potential long-lasting implications for students’ educational trajectories and future opportunities.”
• To thoroughly explore the connection between remote teaching methods and academic success, it is crucial to take into account various factors. These factors include evaluating how well virtual platforms support effective teaching, understanding the impact of limited in-person interactions on students’ emotional well-being, ensuring fair access to technology resources, and recognizing the potential long-term effects on students’ educational paths and future prospects.

Once you’ve written your essay, you can prompt ChatGPT to provide feedback and recommend improvements.

You can indicate how the tool should provide feedback (e.g., “Act like a university professor examining papers”) and include the specific points you want to receive feedback on (e.g., consistency of tone, clarity of argument, appropriateness of evidence).

While this is not an adequate substitute for an experienced academic supervisor, it can help you with quick preliminary feedback.

You can also use ChatGPT to check grammar mistakes. However, ChatGPT sometimes misses errors and on rare occasions may even introduce new grammatical mistakes. We suggest using a tool like Scribbr’s free grammar checker , which is designed specifically for this purpose. Or, for more in-depth feedback, try Scribbr’s proofreading and editing service .

Example: Using ChatGPT for feedback

• Feedback the above text with regard to consistency of tone, clarity of argument, appropriateness of evidence, and coherence of structure.
• Clarity of Argument: The argument could be further clarified by explicitly connecting the discussed factors to their impact on academic performance. For example, explicitly stating how the proficiency of virtual platforms and equitable access to technology affect academic performance would strengthen the clarity of the argument.
• Appropriateness of Evidence: The evidence provided is generally appropriate and relevant. To enhance the strength of the evidence, consider incorporating specific examples, research studies, or statistics that directly support the discussed factors and their impact on academic performance. This would provide stronger evidence for the claims made.
• Coherence of Structure: The structure of the text is coherent, with a clear introduction, body paragraphs addressing different factors, and a conclusion. To improve coherence, consider adding transitional phrases or sentences at the beginning or end of paragraphs to facilitate the smooth flow of ideas between paragraphs. This would enhance the overall structure and make it easier for the reader to follow the argument.

Overall, the text demonstrates a consistent tone, a clear argument, appropriate evidence, and a coherent structure. Clarifying the argument by explicitly connecting the factors to their impact, incorporating stronger evidence, and adding transitional phrases for better coherence would further enhance the text’s effectiveness. Note Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is generally considered plagiarism (or at least academic dishonesty ) and may result in an automatic fail and other negative consequences . AI detectors may be used to detect this offence.

If you want more tips on using AI tools , understanding plagiarism , and citing sources , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations, examples, and formats.

• Citing ChatGPT
• Best grammar checker
• Best paraphrasing tool
• ChatGPT in your studies
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

• Citation styles
• In-text citation
• Citation examples
• Annotated bibliography

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to summarise text . This can help you understand complex information more easily, summarise the central argument of your own paper, or clarify your research question.

You can also use Scribbr’s free text summariser , which is designed specifically for this purpose.

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to paraphrase text to help you express your ideas more clearly, explore different ways of phrasing your arguments, and avoid repetition.

However, it’s not specifically designed for this purpose. We recommend using a specialised tool like Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , which will provide a smoother user experience.

Using AI writing tools (like ChatGPT ) to write your essay is usually considered plagiarism and may result in penalisation, unless it is allowed by your university. Text generated by AI tools is based on existing texts and therefore cannot provide unique insights. Furthermore, these outputs sometimes contain factual inaccuracies or grammar mistakes.

However, AI writing tools can be used effectively as a source of feedback and inspiration for your writing (e.g., to generate research questions ). Other AI tools, like grammar checkers, can help identify and eliminate grammar and punctuation mistakes to enhance your writing.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the ‘Cite this Scribbr article’ button to automatically add the citation to our free Reference Generator.

Driessen, K. (2023, June 26). How to Write an Essay with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 21 August 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/using-ai-tools/chatgpt-essays/

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More From Forbes

Lifestyle psychiatry is trending: here’s how generative ai can aid therapists, clients, and everyday folks in lifestyle choice-making.

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Fundamentals of lifestyle psychiatry and the intertwining of generative AI is a recipe for good ... [+] mental health.

Lifestyle psychiatry and lifestyle choice-making are trending.

What does it all encompass, and what do generative AI apps such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other such AI have to do with this rather heady topic?

That’s what you are about to discover.

Here’s the path I’ll be covering. First, I will share with you a thumbnail sketch of lifestyle psychiatry and lifestyle choice-making. Following that foundational stage setting, I’ll make sure you are handily up-to-speed about generative AI and large language models (LLMs). Doing so will dovetail into revealing the highly notable and innovative intertwining of these two modern-day momentous topics.

Prepare yourself for a memorable and informative ride.

For my ongoing readers and new readers, this hearty discussion continues my in-depth series about the impact of generative AI in the health and medical realm. The focus this time is once again on the mental health domain and examines the use of generative AI when combined with lifestyle psychiatry.

Previously, I have examined numerous interleaving facets of generative AI and mental health, see my comprehensive overview at the link here . You might also find of notable interest a CBS 60 Minutes episode that recently examined crucial facets of this evolving topic, see the link here (I am honored and pleased to indicate that I was featured in the episode, see the link here ).

Other vital postings in my column include in-depth coverage of mental health chatbots which have been bolstered by generative AI (see the link here ) and the rapidly changing nature of the client-therapist relationship due to generative AI at the link here . I explored where things are headed regarding the levels of AI-based mental therapy autonomous guidance at the link here , and showcased the importance of the World Health Organization (WHO) report on global health and generative AI at the link here , and so on.

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Clues And Answers For Thursday, August 22

Oprah endorses kamala harris at dnc: her political history—and rare endorsements—explained, bill clinton takes crack at trump’s hannibal lecter references in dnc speech.

On with the show.

Essentials Of Lifestyle Psychiatry

The American Psychiatric Association (APA) announced at its 2024 annual meeting that the theme for the year ahead would be to cogently highlight the nature of lifestyles and corresponding mental health implications, as noted in an online news posting entitled “Viswanathan Introduces Theme of Lifestyle Psychiatry” by Mark Moran, Psychiatric News , June 25, 2024 (excerpts):

• “When incoming APA President Ramaswamy Viswanathan, M.D., Dr. Med. Sc., cast about for a theme for his presidential year, he landed on “Lifestyle for Positive Physical and Mental Health.”
• “I have chosen this theme because the data show us that when an effort is made to live a healthier lifestyle, outcomes for physical and mental health, and life expectancy all improve,” he said at the Opening Session of APA’s 2024 Annual Meeting.”
• “Many avoidable health conditions and premature deaths can be attributed to an unhealthy lifestyle.”
• “Lifestyle interventions should be offered in addition to psychotherapy, pharmacotherapy, other somatic therapy, and attention to social determinants of health, not only to ameliorate or cure illnesses but to help people lead positive, meaningful lives.”

In everyday terms, this would seem to be an acknowledgment of taking a holistic perspective on mental health.

It goes like this. If you were to only focus on mental health per se, the bigger picture of lifestyle choices might get inadvertently neglected or underplayed. Lifestyle choices though are indubitably part and parcel of mental health considerations. Leaving out lifestyle facets, or diminishing its importance, would seem to be a faltering of an all-around and robust means of aiding mental health fitness.

On the other side of the coin, if one were to only concentrate on lifestyle choices and somehow leave mental health on the curb, the odds of gaining fully the impacts of a positive lifestyle might not be especially attainable. It would be a hugely uphill battle.

So, the gist is that lifestyle and mental health are two peas in a pod. Looking at one ought to include looking at the other. They share a sense of duality.

Let’s see what the incoming head of the APA had to say about the lifestyles theme for the APA. His remarks were encapsulated in a posting he authored, entitled “Lifestyle and Global Psychiatry” by Ramaswamy Viswanathan, Psychiatric News , June 21, 2024 (excerpts):

• “The growing interest in lifestyle psychiatry is occurring at the global level as well.”
• “The president of the World Psychiatric Association, Danuta Wasserman, M.D., Ph.D., has also chosen lifestyle as her presidential theme.”
• “Some countries and psychiatric associations have given a prominent place for lifestyle interventions in their evidence-based guidelines for the treatment of depression and other psychiatric disorders.”
• “But even in these countries, many clinicians do not pay sufficient attention to lifestyle in the treatment of their patients, nor for their own well-being.”
• “This shows that much more needs to be done to educate and motivate clinicians and the public.”

According to his above-noted remarks, attention to lifestyles and lifestyle intervention is both a US national consideration and a global one. Thus, this is not something solely of concern or interest to our nation alone.

The matter is much wider in scope.

The key problem afoot is that therapeutic treatment associated with lifestyles has at times incompletely incorporated mental well-being as an on-par attribute. This happens to professionals in the mental health field, regrettably so, namely that they might undervalue the lifestyle angles. Meanwhile, the general public might be eyeing mental health improvements and overlooking how their lifestyle choices interact with their cognitive status.

A straightforward way to get your hands around the topic of lifestyle psychiatry is to be aware of the five major elements typically within this bailiwick.

An article entitled “Special Report: Lifestyle Psychiatry Emphasizes Behaviors Supporting Mental Health” by Douglas Noordsy, Amelia Abbott-Frey, and Vanika Chawla, Psychiatric News , February 23, 2024, made these salient points (excerpts):

• “We know that lifestyle factors are correlated with the prevalence, onset, and perpetuation of psychiatric symptoms and syndromes. These trends point to the importance of careful assessment of the role of lifestyle factors in the mental and physical health of people who present to us for care.”
• (1) “ Physical exercise: A robust body of evidence supports the therapeutic benefits of exercise across various psychiatric conditions.”
• (2) “ Diet and nutrition: Food is medicine, and research underscores the significant impact of healthy, nutrient-rich diets on mental health.”
• (3) “ Mind-body and mindfulness practices: Yoga, tai chi, and meditation are garnering increasing attention and evidence of their benefits in promoting well-being, reducing stress, and as an intervention for a variety of mental health conditions.”
• (4) “ Restorative sleep: Sleep and mental health are inextricably intertwined.”
• (5) “ Social relationships: Improving the quantity and quality of social connections is important in the prevention and management of psychiatric conditions.”

Those five major elements are of course not the whole kit and kaboodle, but they do provide a helpful framing for what lifestyles and mental health necessitate as a togetherness with each other.

You could readily say that lifestyle choices consist of decisions about physical exercise, diet and nutrition, mindfulness, restorative sleep, and social relationships. Those in term impact mental health. Boom, drop the mic.

It is also vital to recognize that mental health will undoubtedly impact your lifestyle choices associated with your approach to physical exercise, diet and nutrition, mindfulness, restorative sleep, and social relationships. You are bound to have great trouble adjusting and enhancing those lifestyle parameters without due care for your mental health. Boom, drop the mic, again.

Now that we’ve crossed that bridge herein, let’s shift into AI mode, particularly exploring the advent of generative AI.

Generative AI Meets With Lifestyles And Mental Health

I’m sure you’ve heard of generative AI, the darling of the tech field these days.

Perhaps you’ve used a generative AI app, such as the popular ones of ChatGPT, GPT-4o, Gemini, Bard, Claude, etc. The crux is that generative AI can take input from your text-entered prompts and produce or generate a response that seems quite fluent. This is a vast overturning of the old-time natural language processing (NLP) that used to be stilted and awkward to use, which has been shifted into a new version of NLP fluency of an at times startling or amazing caliber.

The customary means of achieving modern generative AI involves using a large language model or LLM as the key underpinning.

In brief, a computer-based model of human language is established that in the large has a large-scale data structure and does massive-scale pattern-matching via a large volume of data used for initial data training. The data is typically found by extensively scanning the Internet for lots and lots of essays, blogs, poems, narratives, and the like. The mathematical and computational pattern-matching homes in on how humans write, and then henceforth generates responses to posed questions by leveraging those identified patterns. It is said to be mimicking the writing of humans.

I think that is sufficient for the moment as a quickie backgrounder. Take a look at my extensive coverage of the technical underpinnings of generative AI and LLMs at the link here and the link here , just to name a few.

Back to the crux of things.

There are two main avenues to go with generative AI in this realm of lifestyles and mental health:

• (1) By Mental Health Professions. Mental health professionals can opt to make use of generative AI to aid their patients and clients while under their care.
• (2) By The General Public. The general public can make use of generative AI to aid in their self-advancement regarding lifestyles and mental health.

We will next explore each of those, one by one.

Generative AI As Used By Mental Health Professionals

Let’s start with the first use case involving how mental health professionals can employ generative AI in this context.

Generative AI can be a demonstrably crucial tool in the realm of lifestyles and mental health as undertaken by therapists, clinicians, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other akin professionals. The idea is that within a suitable plan of care, generative AI is readily a useful and state-of-the-art tool that can be used during the performance and delivery of said services to willing patients and clients.

Not all such professionals opt to use generative AI in their practice of care. It is a fair bet to say that eventually and inevitably they will. See my predictions at the link here .

Not all patients or clients will necessarily be willing or able to make use of generative AI. I dare say that this will gradually change as the popularity of generative AI usage overall continues to skyrocket. If anything, the chances are that prospective and current patients and clients will clamor for the use of generative AI, see my analysis at the link here .

Here are some quite practical ways that generative AI can be used by therapists when they provide lifestyle psychiatric services to their clients or patients:

• (i) Use generative AI to craft personalized treatment plans.
• (ii) Use generative AI for patient education and support.
• (iii) Use generative AI as support for the therapist.
• (iv) Use generative AI for mental health monitoring and feedback.
• (v) Use generative AI for conducting research and evidence synthesis.
• (vi) Use generative AI to enhance patient engagement.

I’ll do a fast-paced explanation.

Generative AI can be used upfront when devising a treatment plan for patients or clients. Furthermore, generative AI can be used to revise and update the treatment plan. In that manner, generative AI can be an effective and efficient tool throughout the course of treatment.

You can use generative AI to educate about the treatment process. I’ll show you some examples shortly. There is also the use of generative AI to provide support, 24x7, which is something that a mental health professional cannot themselves otherwise readily undertake. The gaps in time between seeing a patient or client and having them be able to garner support can be taken up via generative AI usage.

If you look closely at the other above-listed uses, I am guessing they would seem relatively self-evident as to what they consist of.

I’d like to bring up the 600-pound gorilla or the elephant in the room when it comes to using generative AI as part of your professional services.

Here it is.

Generative AI can go off the rails and generate off-the-wall responses. This is commonly referred to as AI hallucinations, see my discussion at the link here . I disfavor the terminology because the word “hallucinations” is generally reserved for human conditions. The AI field has lamentedly borrowed the word. In any case, the crux is that generative AI can produce AI fabrications or falsehoods. That is a disconcerting downside when using AI for advisement on mental health facets.

There are new AI advances that will help reduce this propensity and provide guardrails, see my coverage at the link here and the link here .

Additional issues confronting the use of generative AI include potential privacy or confidentiality concerns, see the link here , and other usage complications, see the link here . All in all, be cautious of construing generative AI as a silver bullet. It is a tool that has strengths and weaknesses.

Make sure to know what you are getting yourself into.

But don’t put your head in the sand and ignore generative AI. That would be unwise.

General Public Use Of Generative AI

This takes us to the second use case.

People are already embracing generative AI overall. According to the AI maker of ChatGPT, they reportedly have over one hundred million weekly users. That’s just their usage. Add up the usage by the other AI makers and the numbers are staggering.

Untold millions are potentially using generic generative AI for mental health advisement (we don’t have stats on that usage, so it’s a guess right now). I have repeatedly stated and warned that we are in the midst of a Wild West environment whereby anyone can use generative AI to obtain mental health advice and therapy, entirely provided via AI and without any human therapist in the loop. See my concerns at the link here .

People can use generative AI for lifestyle and mental health advisement, even if not doing so in conjunction with a therapist. That comes as a shock to some professionals in the sphere of mental health. They at times have expressed surprise during my speeches and presentations indicating they naturally assumed that generative AI was automatically restricted from providing mental health therapy.

The only considered wink-wink limitation is that oftentimes an AI maker will say in their licensing agreement for the AI that people aren’t supposed to the AI for that purpose, see the link here . This is rarely if ever monitored or enforced. It is essentially a hollow CYA.

Here are some ways that people can easily and immediately make use of generative AI for lifestyle and mental health advisement:

• (a) Generative AI can do a lifestyle choices assessment.
• (b) Generative AI can provide physical exercise guidance via personalized workout plans.
• (c) Generative AI can perform nutritional analysis.
• (d) Generative AI can generate motivational messages and lifestyle choice reminders.
• (e) Generative AI can offer advice on sleeping, bedtime routines, and sleep quality facets.
• (f) Generative AI can gauge stress levels and suggest stress-reducing activities.
• (g) Generative AI can indicate personalized mindfulness exercises.

The bottom line here is that for each of the earlier mentioned five elements of lifestyle choice-making, generative AI can be used. Period, end of story.

Since I gave you a taste of the downsides of generative AI usage in this overall context, I might as well lay out many more that come to mind. Again, this is not to say that generative AI should not be used. It is to say that when generative AI is used, care and thoughtful efforts are hopefully top of mind.

There are some additional downsides and potential gotchas associated with using generative AI in this milieu:

• Generative AI might provide generic advice rather than personalized advice.
• Generative AI might seem overly confident and lull people into a false sense of trust.
• Generative AI might have outdated content that no longer is considered valid.
• Generative AI might miscalculate context and say the wrong thing.
• Generative AI might trigger someone via wording that is off-putting to the person.
• Generative AI might distract a person from seeking the help of a human therapist.
• Generative AI might end up revealing confidential or private information about a person.
• Generative AI might lead the person toward being dependent upon generative AI for advice.
• Generative AI might misinterpret, misdiagnose, or otherwise be off target.
• Generative AI might contain hidden biases that produce inappropriate advice.
• Generative AI might lack any semblance of accountability for the advice being rendered.
• Generative AI might produce falsehoods, fictitious indications that are so-called “AI hallucinations”.

A lengthy list, for sure.

Example Usage Of Generative AI For Lifestyles And Mental Health

I will next proceed to examine further the use of generative AI in this context.

This will consist of a series of dialogues with ChatGPT. ChatGPT is a logical choice in this case due to its immense popularity as a generative AI app. As noted, an estimated one hundred million weekly active users are said to be utilizing ChatGPT. That’s a lot of people and a lot of generative AI usage underway.

A few quick comments before we launch into using ChatGPT.

If you are going to try to do the same prompts that I show here, realize that the probabilistic and statistical properties will likely produce slightly different results than what I show here. That’s the nature of generative AI and how it is devised.

You also should expect that different generative AI apps will respond in different ways. Not all generative AI apps are the same. The key is that sometimes a particular prompt will work in one generative AI app and not another. Nonetheless, the odds are relatively high that you will get roughly similar responses from all the major generative AI apps such as GPT-4, Gemini, Bard, Claude, etc.

There is also a timing factor to be considered. A prompt that worked today might not work the same way tomorrow. Most of the generative AI apps are continually being updated. The updates might alter internal mechanisms that could change how the generative AI reacts to your prompting.

We are ready to get underway with ChatGPT.

Here’s a dialogue of me experiencing a semblance of lifestyle psychiatry via ChatGPT as my therapist.

First, I focused on physical exercise and making positive lifestyle choices:

• ChatGPT generated prompt : “How are you feeling today?”
• My entered prompt: “I’ve been swamped lately. I’d like to work out but feel like going to the gym is a burdensome chore. Also, I am usually quite exhausted after a day of work and don’t even have time to think about going to the gym.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt : “It sounds like time and enjoyment are the main obstacles for you. Those are common challenges, but we can work through them. Let’s start by identifying activities you actually enjoy. Exercise doesn’t have to be a trip to the gym. What types of physical activities do you find fun or relaxing?”
• My entered prompt: “I used to love swimming and hiking when I had more free time. I guess I just haven’t made the time for those things recently.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That’s a great start! Swimming and hiking are both excellent forms of exercise, and they’re also activities you enjoy. How do you feel about incorporating them back into your routine, maybe even starting with just once a week?”
• My entered prompt: “I think I could do that. It would be nice to go for a hike on the weekends, especially to get away from the city for a bit. Swimming might be harder to fit in, but I can try to go to the pool after work once a week.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That sounds like a solid plan.”

End of dialogue with ChatGPT

You can see in the above dialogue that ChatGPT was able to find a means to overcome my seemingly doom-and-gloom viewpoint about being able to get daily exercise under my belt.

Rather than simply trying to pound away at me that I ought to be exercising, ChatGPT noted the underlying reasons that I seemed to be avoiding working out. I was preoccupied with using the gym. ChatGPT shifted my attention to other forms of exercise. This was a somewhat nimble nudge and showcases more than a routine browbeating that some lesser capable motivational systems might employ.

Next, I shifted the discussion toward diet and nutrition.

• My entered prompt : “I’ve been trying to eat healthier these days, but I’m finding it hard to stick to a balanced diet, especially with how busy work has been.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “I understand. Busy schedules can make it challenging to maintain good nutrition. What’s been the most difficult part for you?”
• My entered prompt: “Mostly, it’s the convenience. I end up grabbing takeout or snacks that are quick but not always the healthiest.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That’s a common issue. Let’s see if we can make healthy eating more convenient for you. How do you feel about meal prepping or keeping some nutritious snacks on hand for those busy days?”
• My entered prompt: “Meal prepping might help. I could try making a few things on Sundays to have ready during the week. And having healthier snacks at work could keep me from grabbing junk food.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That sounds like a great plan. Preparing meals in advance can save time and ensure you’re eating well, even on your busiest days. It’s all about making the healthy choice the easy choice.”

I once again harped on the fact that I was working hard. In the case of eating, I said that I just grab snacks and takeout.

ChatGPT expressed a form of sympathetic response and brought up an alternative of doing meal prepping. After I indicated this seemed feasible, ChatGPT urged me to proceed. A handy tip was provided that a healthy choice should be the easy choice. Nice.

This next dialogue entails mindfulness aspects.

• ChatGPT generated prompt: “How are you feeling about incorporating mindfulness into your routine?”
• My entered prompt: “I’m interested, but I’m not sure where to start. I’ve heard a lot about it, but it feels a bit overwhelming.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That’s understandable. Let’s start simple. How about beginning with just 5 minutes of mindfulness practice each day? Something like deep breathing or a short guided meditation?”
• My entered prompt: “I think I could manage that. A short time commitment feels more doable.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “Great. The key is consistency. Even just a few minutes can help reduce stress and improve focus. You can do it in the morning, during a break, or before bed—whatever works best for you.”

In the above example, ChatGPT asked me whether I had considered the use of mindfulness.

I wanted you to see that a dialogue with generative AI doesn’t have to be driven by the person who is undergoing the advisement, which is what happened in the prior examples. Things don’t have to go that way. Generative AI can readily take the driving position.

Dialogue with modern generative AI is typically a back-and-forth style. Generative AI will provide a bit of direction, for which the person can go in that direction or opt to not do so. Likewise, the person can suddenly change direction as desired.

This showcases the fluidity of having an interactive discussion with generative AI.

Some non-AI systems will be locked into a particular method of dialogue, such as the system always forcing the topic at hand to be this or that. If the person tries to change the topic, they get sternly informed they must either continue the line of inquiry or quit the discussion entirely.

That’s not very conducive to a therapeutic interaction.

Next, I proceeded to discuss the topic of restorative sleep.

• ChatGPT generated prompt : “How’s your sleep been recently?”
• My entered prompt: “Not great. I’ve been having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That sounds frustrating. Let’s start by focusing on a few small changes to improve your sleep. Have you tried establishing a consistent bedtime routine?”
• My entered prompt: “Not really. I usually just go to bed when I’m tired, but that’s different every night.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “A consistent bedtime can signal your body that it’s time to wind down. How about setting a regular time to start relaxing, maybe 30 minutes before bed, with activities like reading or light stretching?”
• My entered prompt: “I could try that. I think it might help me unwind.”

You can see that ChatGPT somewhat diagnosed my sleeping issue and opted to try and make small improvements.

A technique often used when changing behaviors entails trying to not bite off more than you can chew, in the sense that starting small is oftentimes an astute approach. Here, ChatGPT suggested reading or stretching to signal my mind and body that it is time to go to sleep. Handy.

The last element to cover would be the matter of social relationships.

Take a look.

• My entered prompt: “I’ve been feeling a bit isolated. Work’s been so busy that I haven’t made much time for friends.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That’s understandable. Social connections though are important for mental health. How about starting with small steps, like reaching out to a friend for a quick chat or scheduling a coffee with someone this week?”
• My entered prompt: “I could do that. There’s a friend I’ve been meaning to catch up with. A coffee meet-up sounds nice.”
• ChatGPT generated prompt: “That’s a great idea. Even brief interactions can boost your mood and help you feel more connected. Think of it as recharging your social battery.”

This last bit of discussion was again involving how busy my work activities are.

You can see that ChatGPT responded by using the same start-small advice. I agreed with the advice and ChatGPT reinforced my idea of how to proceed.

My dialogue with ChatGPT was actually in one lengthy stream and I clipped out portions to show you what the discussion consisted of. I want you to realize that the interaction was much more seamless and not at all choppy, which it might seem to be via the way I have listed the snippets above.

I also tried being obstinate. ChatGPT took this in stride. I tried being obtuse. ChatGPT went along with this and asked me further questions to get clarification. The point here is that the generative AI didn’t lash out at me or get upset or become impatient.

Congratulations, you are now markedly informed about the trend of lifestyle psychiatry and the intertwining of generative AI. Like a proverbial journey of a thousand miles, you have taken the first step.

Keep your eyes wide open as this is an intertwining that is going to get deeper and wider. Whether you think it’s a good mixture or a bad mixture, the wheels are turning, and further advancement is going to occur.

My advice is for you to take good care of your physical exercise, diet and nutrition, mindfulness, restorative sleep, social relationships, and mental health. Those are going to be avidly needed on the road ahead on these weighty and evolving matters.

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Using AI tools

How to use ChatGPT in your studies

Translated on February 13, 2023 by Tegan George. Originally published by Tobias Solis

ChatGPT is a chatbot developed by OpenAI in November of 2022. Chatbots are computer programs that simulate human interactions via artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). ChatGPT has quickly become popular with students due to its ability to help answer many academic questions.

You can use ChatGPT in the following areas of your studies:

• Exam preparation
• Homework assignments
• Getting a simple topic explained
• Academic writing

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Table of contents

Chatgpt for exam preparation, using chatgpt for homework assignments, chatgpt for explaining simple topics, chatgpt for academic writing, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about chatgpt.

You can use ChatGPT to prepare for exams by creating:

• easy-to-understand summaries
• multiple choice questions

How to create easy-to-understand summaries

ChatGPT can help you summarize or paraphrase text in an easy-to-understand way. This can simplify and rephrase complicated topics to help you understand them in layman’s terms.

Simply copy the text into the chat section by section and ask it to summarize/paraphrase.

Alternatively, you can use Scribbr’s free text summarizer  and  Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , which are specifically designed for these purposes.

Input: Please summarize the following text in a way that is easy to understand:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Multiple-choice questions

You can use ChatGPT to create multiple-choice questions for your study material. This can help you test your level of knowledge.

To do this, ask ChatGPT to create multiple-choice questions for a block of text.

ChatGPT result: Here is a practice test with 4 multiple-choice questions about A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, along with their answers:

Who is the protagonist in A Tale of Two Cities?

a) Charles Darnay b) Sydney Carton c) Charles Dickens d) Jarvis Lorry

What is the central theme of A Tale of Two Cities?

a) Love b) Redemption c) The French Revolution d) Poverty

Who is the villain in A Tale of Two Cities?

a) Charles Darnay b) Sydney Carton c) Madame Defarge d) Jarvis Lorry

What is the setting of A Tale of Two Cities?

a) England b) France c) America d) Australia

Check for common mistakes

Use the best grammar checker available to check for common mistakes in your text.

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You can also use ChatGPT to help you with your homework, for topics such as:

• Computer science
• Business administration

To do this, generate first draft solutions for the tasks given to you, and then improve them.

ChatGPT for computer science homework

For example, you can work on tasks from technical courses, such as computer science.

ChatGPT result: Here is one way to write a program in Python to calculate the sum of all numbers from 1 to N:

n = int(input(“Enter a positive integer: “)) sum = 0 for i in range(1, n+1): sum += i print(“The sum of all numbers from 1 to”, n, “is”, sum)

In this program, the user is prompted to enter a positive integer n. The variable sum is initialized to 0 and then we use a for loop to iterate from 1 to n (inclusive), adding each number to the sum. Finally, the result is printed to the screen.

ChatGPT for homework in business administration

You can also request assistance on your coursework related to economics or business administration.

Please solve the following task: The following data is given for planning the ordering policy of a material type in an industrial company:

Planning period: 180 days Total requirement: 30,000 ME Cost price: 30 GE/MU Order cost rate: 200 GE Storage cost rate: 1.50 GE/ME (related to the planning period) Interest rate: 5% (related to the planning period)

Determine the optimal order quantity, the optimal order frequency and storage range as well as the costs resulting from the optimal ordering policy as the sum of order costs and storage costs (including capital commitment costs).*

ChatGPT result:

The optimal order quantity, order frequency, and storage range can be determined using the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model. The EOQ model balances the trade-off between ordering costs and holding costs.

Ordering costs are the costs incurred each time an order is placed, and holding costs are the costs associated with holding inventory in stock over the planning period.

The EOQ model is calculated using the following formula:

EOQ = √(2DS/H)

Where: D = Total requirement (30,000 ME) S = Order cost rate (200 GE) H = Holding cost rate (1.5 GE/ME)

Plugging in the values: EOQ = √(2 * 30,000 * 200 / 1.5) = √(12,000,000) = 3464.16 ME

The optimal order quantity is approximately 3464.16 ME.

The order frequency can be calculated as the total requirement divided by the EOQ: Order frequency = Total requirement / EOQ = 30,000 / 3464.16 = 8.68 orders

The optimal order frequency is approximately 8.68 orders.

The storage range can be calculated as the EOQ divided by 2: Storage range = EOQ / 2 = 3464.16 / 2 = 1732.08 ME

The optimal storage range is approximately 1732.08 ME.

The costs resulting from the optimal ordering policy can be calculated as the sum of the order costs and holding costs.

Order costs = Order frequency * Order cost rate = 8.68 * 200 = 1736 GE Holding costs = (EOQ / 2) * Holding cost rate * planning period = (3464.16 / 2) * 1.5 * 180 = 126,601.76 GE Capital commitment costs = (EOQ / 2) * Interest rate * Cost price = (3464.16 / 2) * 0.05 * 30 = 523.25 GE Total costs = Order costs + Holding costs + Capital commitment costs = 1736 + 126,601.76 + 523.25 = 127,861.01 GE

*This task was taken from a document published by Prof. Dr. Kay Blaufus.

Note that ChatGPT sometimes makes mistakes, and it is always best to double-check if something it presents to you is correct.

You can get explanations on simple or definitional topics from your studies from ChatGPT as well.

Input: chemistry What are the main concepts of thermodynamics and their applications?

Input: English What is a phrasal verb and how is it used?

Input: history How has European colonial rule evolved throughout history?

Input: computer science How do operating systems work and what are their main uses?

Input: philosophy What are the most important concepts in the history of philosophy and how are they relevant in today’s world?

Input: psychology What is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and how is it used?

You can also use ChatGPT to help you organize your academic essays and theses or dissertations . It can help to optimize your writing process in the following areas:

• development of your research question
• creating your research paper outline
• generating ideas for your literature review
• providing suggestions for rewriting or revising your text
• providing feedback on your writing
• proofreading your writing for spelling or grammar errors (you can also use a more specialized tool like Scribbr’s free grammar checker )

To learn more about how to use AI tools effectively, see our AI writing resources page.

If you want more tips on using AI tools , understanding plagiarism , and citing sources , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations, examples, and formats.

• Citing ChatGPT
• Best grammar checker
• Best paraphrasing tool
• ChatGPT in your studies
• Deep learning
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

• Citation styles
• In-text citation
• Citation examples
• Annotated bibliography

You should not trust ChatGPT’s results unconditionally. While you can use ChatGPT during your studies to clarify questions, you should always double-check the answers you receive against other credible sources , as it doesn’t always give correct information. Don’t cite ChatGPT as a source of factual information.

Yes, ChatGPT is able to create code in different programming languages like Python, Java and C++.

There are several ways you can use ChatGPT in your studies , such as if programming is part of your bachelor’s or master’s degree.

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

George, T. (2023, February 13). How to use ChatGPT in your studies. Scribbr. Retrieved August 21, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/ai-tools/using-chatgpt-in-your-studies/

Is this article helpful?

Tegan George

Other students also liked, applying the craap test & evaluating sources, how to avoid plagiarism | tips on citing sources, using chatgpt for assignments | tips & examples, "i thought ai proofreading was useless but..".

I've been using Scribbr for years now and I know it's a service that won't disappoint. It does a good job spotting mistakes”