Remember when ChatGPT just came out, and everyone thought humans became a thing of the past? Well, to all of you there still standing, congratulations, we made it! 🎉
In all seriousness, lots of things have happened with our friendly neighborhood ChatGPT since its official release. Two things deserve special attention: a GPT-4 model, capable of creative thinking and advanced reasoning, and a pack of features like Advanced Data Analysis (previously known as Code Interpreter) and Plugins for ChatGPT Plus subscribers (for $20/month).
Overall, ChatGPT doesn’t leave its attempts to replace humans, so it’s time to rewatch all the episodes of Black Mirror or reread Asimov's novels (I, Robot or Foundation, in particular) and prepare yourself for the dystopian future. Or maybe not?
No matter how hard it tries, ChatGPT is still made by humans. Humans aren’t perfect and sometimes make mistakes, which, in the case of ChatGPT, results in worse performance. In particular, such a thing happened on August 3rd, 2023 when OpenAI introduced an update for ChatGPT.
Along the article, we’re going to discuss the update, key issues users currently have, and whether ChatGPT became worse than it was. As a content marketing agency, we at Kaiiax are especially interested in the chatbot’s creative writing capabilities, so we will also share how you can use ChatGPT for creative tasks, so keep reading!
ChatGPT after the Aug 3rd update: What went wrong?
The August 3rd update was neither positioned nor promoted as a “revolutionary” or “game-changing” update. In fact, it was a series of simple, yet helpful updates that promised to improve the experience of using the chatbot, especially for Plus members:
So, nothing fancy, just a bunch of small goodies. But the update suddenly made the tool perform worse than before. In particular, Plus members experienced a slower task execution with GPT-4, taking much longer to even generate a response.
The problems didn’t end there, unfortunately. When it came to tasks like code processing, ChatGPT found it hard to help with the task and cut off in the middle of a session.
All in all, many users experienced a sudden performance drop, and the tool became visibly “dumber” when compared to prior versions. So instead of a better experience, we got a weirdly acting tool and a pack of topic-related memes.
Of course, the OpenAI team doesn’t stand still and pushed fixes of the performance issues. But the August update showed that many people now heavily depend on the chatbot, and the debate on whether one should use it on a daily basis has re-ignited.
As an agency whose work is primarily focused on content (and SEO), people often ask us: “Can’t I use ChatGPT for writing content instead of content writers?” After using the tool for almost a year now, we have come up with certain conclusions on when ChatGPT is a true life-saver for your content and when you'd better not rely on it that much. And no, you can’t replace human writers with ChatGPT (for now).
The good, the bad, and the ugly. ChatGPT use cases
Love or hate ChatGPT, but a 100 million+ user base couldn’t be acquired by a mediocre solution. Still, spoiler alert, no chatbot can write content as interesting as humans. But it doesn’t make the bot useless. In the end, ChatGPT can be of great help (and you won’t even have to join the Plus members club for that).
Anyways, let’s see when ChatGPT is indeed awesome, when it could perform better, and when it’s a complete no-no to fully trust the job to it.
The good
Let’s start on a positive note. Here are cases when ChatGPT can help you with content writing.
- Finding synonyms. When you don’t want to repeat one particular word all the time and make your article sound boring, you can simply ask ChatGPT for some synonyms, and it will generate them for you in seconds. For example, let’s take “cutting-edge,” one of the most popular words that junior content writers use to call today’s solutions.
15 alternatives! Not bad, and quite useful, too. So when you can’t recall any other ways of saying something, ChatGPT is here for you.
- Correcting grammar. Now, when you’re looking for a tool to help you enhance your grammar, consider using Grammarly instead, as this tool is designed specifically for correcting text and helping you improve your grammar. But if you’re more interested in paraphrasing and having a chat with your AI assistant, ChatGPT can correct your grammar, as well. For instance, take a look at one of my sentences and how the bot corrected it.
And when you need ChatGPT to justify its decisions, feel free to ask it!
- Paraphrasing. It’s quite common when you have a complex thought to deliver, but don’t know how to simplify it. That’s another case when ChatGPT can come in handy. As an example, we took a paragraph from the Wikipedia article and asked the bot to paraphrase it.
- Brainstorming ideas. Another benefit of ChatGPT is that it is literally your digital friend, willing to share its ideas with you. So when you find it hard to come up with ideas for your article, feel free to reach out to the chatbot.
- Titles and headings. Last but not least, good headings are paramount for engaging content, but are also very hard to make. And when you feel like you got stuck and could use some inspiration, you know who to call.
The bad
Okay, enough with the good stuff, let’s see when you should be careful about everyone’s favorite AI pal.
- Giving stylistic improvements. When it comes to improving your writing style, we assure you that there is no universal way to do it. Content is a subjective thing, and every writer is willing to provide their own unique perspective. Unfortunately, ChatGPT doesn’t have its own perspective, because it’s an AI tool created by humans and trained by reading the internet, so don’t expect it to teach you the tone and voice the way human professionals can.
- Helping with argumentation. As mentioned, ChatGPT doesn’t have its own perspective, so when you’re asking the bot to help you create compelling arguments, be ready for it to provide a neutral (but seemingly persuasive) answer. This way, no one can say it's biased or its answer is wrong.
For example, we asked ChatGPT to answer why React Native is better than Flutter for mobile app development. After offering some reasons, ChatGPT ends hesitantly, saying that “everyone has the right to think otherwise.” We bet that if you ask a developer the same question, they will offer their own experienced-based – maybe a bit biased – but pretty compelling arguments.
- Analyzing current events. If you are writing about things that happened after September 2021, ChatGPT will deliberately tell you that it’s beyond its “knowledge.” It would still offer you some ideas, but those are based on the data gathered before the events happened, so additional fact-checking is recommended (by both us and the chatbot itself).
- Offering new ideas. When it comes to generating unique ideas, ChatGPT lags behind. The thing is, unlike humans, who are able to think outside the box and add their personal experience to the topic, the OpenAI tool summarizes data it was trained on and mixes everything together. So if, for example, you are looking to develop a creative strategy for brand communication, we wouldn’t recommend trusting this work to ChatGPT.
The ugly
And now, let’s turn to cases where we wouldn’t recommend using ChatGPT or when you need to trust the job to humans.
- Fact-checking. Let’s take a look at that small disclaimer at the bottom when opening ChatGPT.
As you can see, ChatGPT directly warns us about the relevance of the information it provides. And no one can deny the harm of disinformation. ChatGPT is not the strongest player when it comes to fact-checking, but what makes this tool particularly dangerous is that you can’t tell if it lies or tells the truth – in the end, the chatbot answers everything in text and doesn’t have a clear human voice.
- Writing content for you. Another thing that we won’t recommend doing is making ChatGPT responsible for your content. The thing is, ChatGPT doesn’t provide any unique perspectives or experience-backed ideas – something that makes content work. The thing ChatGPT does is take the most common patterns, combine them, and turn them into a boring piece of content. What’s more, ChatGPT is extremely verbose and very passionate about writing bullet lists, which results in a very dry and lifeless article you feel like you’ve seen a hundred times before. To prove this point, let’s ask ChatGPT to create an engaging article about itself and why it’s going to replace human writers:
Props to the heading, it does look interesting. But let’s move on further. “In the ever-evolving landscape of technology and communication, the role of content writing has undergone a profound transformation.” The key problem with this intro is that it’s very generic. It talks truism that you can’t fully prove or disprove. For example, instead of “content writing,” I can say “the role of eating ice cream” or any other process, and the effect would be the same. You’ve definitely seen such an opening line more than once –– it doesn’t catch your interest, it wears you out. The further narrative can be summarized in a similar way – it’s weasely, it’s generic, and it's not very engaging.
If you want us to analyze an article generated by ChatGPT – leave a comment and we’ll make it happen. But the conclusion is as follows: please, don’t create dry imposter content using ChatGPT.
Create your own expert content without relying on robots
Overall, we can’t deny the usefulness of ChatGPT, but you don’t have to think of it as something that can replace human beings. One thing sci-fi movies taught us is that robots lack human emotions and real-life experiences and can only mix and match different elements that already exist to see what comes out. And that’s where humans can’t be replaced.
ChatGPT hasn’t come to destroy human civilization, but to raise awareness of human expertise and creativity and value them even more. And that’s what we at Kaiiax are all about. We help our clients create unique content based on their hands-on expertise, sharing their personal vision and business philosophy with the world. If you are looking for help with content writing, drop us a line and we’ll come back to discuss the details.
