Everybody’s talking about ChatGPT, the powerful AI chatbot from OpenAI that generates text. Here are the basics you need to know.

If you haven’t heard of ChatGPT, the uncanny chatbot from the artificial intelligence lab OpenAI, here is a quick primer on everything you need to know about the controversial program.

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI. It is based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture, specifically the GPT-3.5 variant. Language models like ChatGPT are designed to generate human-like responses to text-based prompts or queries.

ChatGPT is trained on a vast amount of text data from the internet, allowing it to learn patterns, language structure, and even some factual information. It can understand and generate text in a conversational manner, making it well-suited for tasks such as chatbots, virtual assistants, and other interactive applications.

Users can interact with ChatGPT by providing text prompts or questions. The model then generates a response based on its understanding of the input and its knowledge acquired during training. While ChatGPT can produce coherent and contextually relevant answers, it’s important to note that it doesn’t possess true understanding or consciousness. It relies on pattern recognition and statistical associations in the training data to generate responses.

It’s worth mentioning that the responses from ChatGPT can sometimes be creative, but they should not be taken as definitive or factual. The model may occasionally produce inaccurate or nonsensical information, so critical evaluation and verification are still essential when using its responses.

When Did ChatGPT Come Out, and Where Does It Come From?

ChatGPT, based on the GPT-3.5 architecture, was released by OpenAI on June 2020. OpenAI is an artificial intelligence research organization that aims to develop and promote friendly AI for the benefit of humanity. They have been at the forefront of language model research, with GPT-3 being one of their notable breakthroughs.

OpenAI’s earlier versions of the GPT model, such as GPT-2, had already gained significant attention for their ability to generate coherent and contextually relevant text. GPT-3, released in June 2020, further advanced the capabilities of the model, both in terms of size and performance. ChatGPT, which is a variant of GPT-3, was specifically designed for interactive, chat-based applications.

OpenAI has continued to refine and improve its language models, and while GPT-3.5 is not a specific release by OpenAI, it represents a theoretical advancement beyond GPT-3. The naming convention “GPT-3.5” is used here to refer to the model’s capabilities as it has evolved since the GPT-3 release in 2020.

How Do You Use ChatGPT?

To use ChatGPT, you can interact with it by providing text prompts or questions. Here’s a general outline of how you can use it:

1. Formulate your prompt: Think about what you want to ask or discuss with ChatGPT. It can be a question, a statement, or a conversation starter.

2. Send your prompt: Submit your text prompt to the ChatGPT model through the interface or API provided by OpenAI. The prompt is the information you want to provide to the model as input.

3. Receive the response: ChatGPT will process your prompt and generate a text-based response. The response will be generated based on the model’s training and its understanding of the input. It will try to provide a coherent and relevant answer or continuation of the conversation.

4. Iterate and refine: If needed, you can continue the conversation by using the previous response as a new prompt. This allows you to have multi-turn conversations with ChatGPT.

It’s important to note that when interacting with ChatGPT, you may need to experiment and iterate to get the desired results. Sometimes, slight modifications to the prompt or providing additional context can help improve the quality and relevance of the responses.

Additionally, remember that ChatGPT does not possess true understanding or consciousness. While it can generate impressive and contextually relevant text, it may also occasionally produce incorrect or nonsensical information. Therefore, it’s crucial to critically evaluate the responses and fact-check the information when necessary.

How Does ChatGPT Work?

ChatGPT is powered by a sophisticated algorithm called a large language model. Such algorithms are fed with massive amounts of textual data, which then allow them to respond to prompts in a realistic, human-like fashion, a computational system known as natural language processing.

Who Is ChatGPT for?

Pretty much anybody can use ChatGPT! As long as you set up an account with OpenAI, you should be good to go.

Does ChatGPT Have a Mobile App?

No, ChatGPT does not currently have a mobile app, though it seems only natural that one will pop up in the not too distant future.

Are ChatGPT’s Answers Always Correct?

No. In fact, the platform is known for making a lot of things up, and its answers can often be wrong. If you’re planning on relying on ChatGPT to write an essay or an article, you’re going to want to fact check everything it says.

Does ChatGPT Cost Money?

The current answer to this question is: it depends on just how much chatting you want to do with ChatGPT.

For the first few months it was available, ChatGPT didn’t cost any money to use, but OpenAI always made it clear that it intended to monetize the chatbot. On Feb. 1st, it was announced that a premium service had been launched. Dubbed ChatGPT Plus, users can shell out $20 a month if they want to try it out. The benefits include “priority access to new features and improvements” and supposed access to the chatbot “even during peak times,” because ChatGPT has been known to crash due to popularity.

However, you can still use the free version of ChatGPT (!!!), so there’s no need to subscribe unless you have big plans for the chatbot.

Do I Have to Log into ChatGPT?

You have to log into your OpenAI account to use ChatGPT, but the chatbot itself doesn’t require a separate login.

Can I Make My Chats with ChatGPT Private?

ChatGPT actually has a “private mode.” OpenAI says that this mode allows users to turn off their chat history. It also disables OpenAI’s ability to use the chat history data to train its AI models. To do this, head to Settings, where you can click off the Chat History & Training setting. If you change your mind and decide you want to share your data with OpenAI for the purposes of training its AI program, simply press the Enable chat history button. The company has also said on the matter: “When chat history is disabled, we will retain new conversations for 30 days and review them only when needed to monitor for abuse, before permanently deleting.” It should be noted that—as has been seen with other prominent companies—just because a firm claims your data is private doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the case, so just be careful with this one.

What’s Going to Happen With ChatGPT in the Future?

We’re not sure about that, but suffice it to say that OpenAI seems to be in a pretty good position for future success. Microsoft has invested as much as $10 billion into the AI-focused organization and has launched a beta version of a ChatGPT integration for its search engine, Bing. The integration has been dubbed “Prometheus,” which is also the name of that guy who brought fire down from the heavens and a bad sequel to the movie Alien.

Bing featuring ChatGPT also had a strange alter ego, Sydney, that would hallucinate and lash out at users if they asked certain questions. Microsoft curtailed the AI’s wilder tendencies in a subsequent update.

Who Is ChatGPT’s Competition?

Even though ChatGPT may have been the first AI chatbot to capture Americans’ hearts, it certainly won’t be the last. In fact, since OpenAI launched its little app last November, other large tech platforms have rushed to release their own versions of the same technology. So far, we’ve heard about…

Google has announced a ChatGPT competitor, an expensive lookalike dubbed “Bard.” Bard had sort of a rough start, when it was launched in early February, spouting some incorrect information during its demo.

Meta has also announced its own super smarty pants chatbot: the LLaMA. Not much is known about this furry guy, but Zuck seems to think you’re going to have a fun time with him soon enough. Microsoft/Bing’s ChatGPT integration, otherwise known as “Prometheus,” continues to be the most finished product out of all of these, currently enjoying its limited beta. But who knows how long that will last?