ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI and released in 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 foundational large language models and has been fine-tuned using both supervised and reinforcement learning. We thought to do a quick summary of what it is all about. 

How does it work? It is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI. The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

When did it get released? November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use.

What is the latest version? Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4.

Is it free? There is a free version that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus.

Who uses it? Anyone can use it! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and a chatbot? A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn’t necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they’ll give canned responses to questions. ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt.

Can it write essays?  Yes.

Can it commit libel? Due to the nature of how these models work, they don’t know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That’s a problem when you’re using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn’t commit, that may well at this point be libel. We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry.

Does ChatGPT have an app? There is not an app available for iPhone or Android, but users have options to enable the chatbot on their mobile devices via their browser or a third-party app that uses ChatGPT’s public API.

What is the ChatGPT character limit? It’s not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words.

What are some sample everyday uses for ChatGPT? Everyday examples include programing, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc.

What are some advanced uses for ChatGPT? Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc.

How good is it at writing code? It depends on the nature of the program. While it can write workable Python code, it can’t necessarily program an entire app’s worth of code. That’s because it lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn’t always appropriate for the specific context in which it’s being used.

Can you save a ChatGPT chat? Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet.

Are there alternatives? Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together, Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude, and developers are creating open source alternatives. But the latter are harder — if not impossible — to run today..

Where can I find examples of  prompts? Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase. Another is ChatX. More launch every day.

Can it be detected? Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests, they’re inconsistent at best.

Are the chats public? No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users’ conversations to other people on the service.

Who owns the copyright on created content or media? The user who requested the input from ChatGPT is the copyright owner.

Are there issues regarding plagiarism with ChatGPT? Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.