Unless you have been living under a rock, you’d have felt the seismic shift the world experienced on November 30, 2022 — the day long-form question-answering AI called ChatGPT was introduced by Open AI. In a little over two months, this latest cutting-edge rendition of what artificial intelligence is capable of doing has created ripples in various sectors.
From writing flawless essays to cracking some of the most difficult entrance exams in the world — medical and law — ChatGPT has demonstrated its capabilities beyond doubt. This, naturally, led to a host of apprehensions and fears, especially with regard to its impact on digital content creation in different forms as well as the future of search engines like Google.
These aspersions were further compounded when Gmail’s creator Paul Buccheit took to Twitter to claim that this open-source AI tool could disrupt Google in just a couple of years.
In his tweets, Buccheit said, “Google may be only a year or two away from total disruption. AI will eliminate the Search Engine Result Page, which is where they make most of their money. Even if they catch up on AI, they can’t fully deploy it without destroying the most valuable part of their business. The way I imagine this happening is that the URL/Search bar of the browser gets replaced with AI that autocompletes my thought/question as I type it while also providing the best answer (which may be a link to a website or product).”
Whether or not Buccheit’s fears play out as he has predicted remains to be seen. So does the further trajectory the digital space may take riding on the curve of disruptive technologies, ChatGPT being one of them. In the immediate future, however, ChatGPT is far from replacing the human role in content creation. Let’s dive in deeper to understand what this new, fascinating piece of technology truly is, what it is capable of achieving, and where it’s found lacking.
What is ChatGPT?
Developed by OpenAI and modeled on GPT-3.5, ChatGPT is a large language model chatbot with an incredible ability to provide human-like responses to user queries and engage in conversational dialogue.
The large language model on which it is built has been designed for text prediction. And the tool has been enhanced with a layer of Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback (RLHF) that utilizes human feedback to generate better responses.
OpenAI, the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence company, responsible for developing it is well-known for its deep-learning model and is backed by tech behemoth Microsoft.
To see its efficacy, we asked ChatGPT to describe itself, and here is what it had to say:
Now that we fundamentally understand what this tool is all about, and what it is capable of doing, let’s also take a look at its abilities and limitations in its current form and assess whether they legitimize the prevailing concerns about it annihilating the digital space as we know it.
Where Can You Use ChatGPT
ChatGPT has a range of functionalities that can be immensely helpful to the process of content creation in its varied forms as well as gathering unmatched insights on how Google views and analyzes AI-generated content. Here are some aspects of content creation where it can come in handy:
· Content Ideas: Running out of ideas is far too common in any creative space and digital content is no exception. Instead of manually scanning competitor websites to scour for ideas, you can rely on ChatGPT to offer some interesting, off-beat options you can delve into
· Content Structure: What kind of headlines attract clicks? How to structure a post for optimal engagement? What kind of visual elements can help prolong the time spent on a page? These are just some of the questions content creators and digital marketers contend with, and ChatGPT can offer clear, reliable answers to each one of these and then some
· A better understanding of topics: This tool has proven its ability to simplify the most complex topics, from quantum physics to finance and legal space, for a layperson without compromising on accuracy. This ability can be extremely beneficial in gaining a fresh perspective on certain topics and issues, and then writing about them. Which, in turn, can go a long way in minimizing the growing problem of rehashed or spun content
· Keyword research: ChatGPT can also suggest keywords to target on a particular web page, along with a cluster of supporting keywords (LSI and longtail keywords). This can be extremely beneficial for beginners and amateurs, who lack the resources or the know-how to work with expensive keyword research tools in the market
In addition to these, here is what ChatGPT thinks it can bring to the table for content creators:
Where ChatGPT is Found Lacking
Like any other intelligent tool, ChatGPT also has its share of limitations. While it’s capable of producing human-like responses to queries, it’s not human after all. Its output is strictly based on the data with which it is trained, and that is the sole governing factor in the quality of the content it can produce. Therefore, everyone — content creators in particular — must be wary of relying on it blindly. ChatGPT is not likely to yield competitive results in:
· Writing niche content: Since the tool lacks the ability to offer context and perspective, it cannot do justice to creating niche content that requires expertise and authoritativeness
· Creating personalized content: The human ability to add a personal touch to content cannot be replicated by a machine
· Problem-solving: It may also lack the ability to deep dive into complex matters, analyze them from different angles, and offer solutions to problems
Here is what ChatGPT thinks its limitations are:
While it’s possible that ChatGPT — or another intelligent tool — may go on to become a viable alternative to Google and its ilk and forever change internet search as we know it, it is highly unlikely that it will take over the process of content creation anytime soon (as you’ve heard from the horse’s mouth). The smart thing to do right now would be to leverage it cautiously, without surrendering control of the creative process of content creation.
