how to use chatgpt to write a research paper

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ChatGPT for Research and Publication: A Step-by-Step Guide

Som s. biswas.

Department of Pediatric Radiology, Le Bonheur Children’s Hospital, The University of Tennessee Health Science Center, Memphis, TN.

Introduction

This commentary provides a concise step-by-step guide on using ChatGPT, an advanced natural language processing (NLP) model, for research and publication purposes. The guide assesses crucial aspects, including data preprocessing, fine-tuning techniques, prompt engineering, and ethical considerations. By addressing challenges related to biases, interpretability, and plagiarism, this commentary offers insights and recommendations for the responsible and ethical use of ChatGPT. The guide empowers researchers to ethically integrate ChatGPT effectively into their workflows, enhancing productivity and improving the quality of their scientific publications. Through clear instructions and guidelines, researchers can tap into the transformative potential of ChatGPT, driving scientific progress in a language-driven world.

In recent years, the field of NLP has witnessed remarkable advancements, bringing us closer to the realm of humanlike language generation. Among these advancements, ChatGPT, based on the groundbreaking GPT-3.5 architecture developed by OpenAI, stands as an impressive language model capable of generating coherent and contextually relevant text responses. With its ability to understand and respond to user inputs, ChatGPT has opened up new possibilities for various applications, including research and publication. 1 – 3

The traditional process of conducting research and publishing scientific papers has been significantly transformed by the emergence of ChatGPT. Researchers and authors can now leverage the power of this sophisticated language model to streamline and enhance their workflow, leading to improved efficiency and higher-quality publications. However, using ChatGPT effectively in the research and publication domain requires a comprehensive understanding of its capabilities, limitations, and best practices.

In this commentary I offer my thoughts for a step-by-step guide for researchers and authors who seek to harness the potential of ChatGPT in their research endeavors and publication efforts. By exploring various aspects, such as data preprocessing, fine-tuning techniques, prompt engineering, and ethical considerations, this guide will equip researchers with the necessary knowledge to harness the full potential of ChatGPT in their scientific pursuits. Moreover, this commentary will delve into the challenges associated with using ChatGPT for research and publication, including biases, interpretability, and concerns regarding plagiarism. By addressing these challenges directly, I aim to provide researchers with valuable insights and recommendations to navigate these important issues and ensure the responsible and ethical use of ChatGPT as a research tool. 4

The significance of my guide lies in its potential to bridge the gap between the rapid progress of language models like ChatGPT and the research and publication process. By elucidating the intricacies of integrating ChatGPT into scientific workflows, researchers will be empowered to leverage this advanced technology effectively, thereby enhancing the overall quality and impact of their research output. 5 In the following sections, I present a comprehensive overview of the steps involved in using ChatGPT for research and publication.

Step 1: Title and Title Page Creation by ChatGPT

ChatGPT can be a valuable tool in generating titles for research papers. Its ability to understand and generate humanlike text allows it to analyze and synthesize information provided by researchers to craft concise and impactful titles. By leveraging its vast knowledge base and language capabilities, ChatGPT can assist in capturing the essence of a research paper, conveying the main focus and contributions succinctly. Researchers can collaborate with ChatGPT by providing relevant information, such as the subject, objectives, methodology, and key findings of their study. ChatGPT can then generate multiple title options, offering different perspectives and angles that researchers can consider. This collaboration with ChatGPT can save time and stimulate creativity, helping researchers refine their titles to accurately represent their work and engage potential readers. ChatGPT can then be used to create the entire title page and then can also customize based on each journal’s recommendations.

For example:

Thus, we see that ChatGPT can write an entire title page based on just the title and author details. We notice that ChatGPT has created an email address that is incorrect and needs manual rectification. However, the rest of the title page, including keywords and the running title, is appropriate.

Step 2: Abstract/Summary Creation by chatGPT

ChatGPT can assist in condensing complex information into a clear and engaging abstract/summary, helping researchers communicate the significance and novelty of their research to a wider audience. By leveraging the language proficiency of ChatGPT, researchers can save time and effort in crafting abstracts while ensuring that the key aspects of their study are accurately represented.

In this example, we demonstrate that ChatGPT can create an entire abstract just by using the title alone. However, the more information researchers provide (preferably the entire body of the paper should be entered into chatGPT), the more accurate the abstract becomes.

Step 3: Introduction Creation by ChatGPT

By collaborating with ChatGPT, researchers can provide key information, such as the background, significance, and objectives of their study. ChatGPT can then generate a well-structured introduction that sets the context, highlights the relevance of the research, and outlines the paper’s objectives. Also, ChatGPT can be used to generate keywords and generate an abbreviations list from the article by using prompts. However, it is important to note that the generated introduction should be reviewed, customized, and refined by the researchers to align with their specific study and writing style.

In the example below, we note that ChatGPT has not only created an introduction but also the objectives of the study, which can then be edited by the human author.

Step 4: Can ChatGPT Create a Literature Review?

Yes, ChatGPT can help generate a literature review, but it is important to note that it may not have access to the most up-to-date research articles and studies due to copyrights and limited access to some journals. Additionally, a literature review typically requires a comprehensive analysis of multiple sources, so the generated response may not cover all relevant studies. Nonetheless, it can assist in providing a basic literature review on a given topic, which will need human authors to add to and edit it.

As we can see, ChatGPT is not as good at giving a detailed review of the literature as it is at summarizing contents or creating an introduction. Thus, its use is limited, if there is any at all, in this section of the paper.

Step 5: Can ChatGPT Assist in Brainstorming the Methodology of Studies?

ChatGPT can be a helpful tool in conceptualizing the methodology for research papers. By engaging in a conversation with ChatGPT, researchers can discuss their research objectives, study design, data collection methods, and data analysis techniques. ChatGPT’s natural language understanding allows it to provide suggestions and insights based on its knowledge base and understanding of research methodologies. Although ChatGPT can assist in generating ideas and providing guidance, it is important for researchers to critically evaluate and adapt the suggestions to align with their specific research goals and requirements.

Although the methodology is something that is unique to each paper and needs a human researcher to conceptualize it, we see in this example that ChatGPT can assist by giving ideas and examples based on the input of the title by the human researcher. Thus, ChatGPT can be part of brainstorming sessions when conceptualizing a study, although this section needs significant editing by a human, unlike the introduction or summary.

Step 6: Do Not Use ChatGPT for Fabricating Patient Data or Results!

This section of the paper must be authentic, and ChatGPT has a limited role, if any, because patient data have to be original. ChatGPT also currently cannot analyze clinical data compared with statistical software, like SPSS Statistics and Base SAS. However, Microsoft appears to be developing an Excel copilot that uses AI to create graphs and plots, and its use needs to be evaluated once it is released to the public. 6

Step 7: Discussion and Conclusions

This section of the paper can be generated by ChatGPT if all results are pasted as input; however, this section also needs manual editing because inaccuracies are common. By discussing their research with ChatGPT, researchers can also identify potential limitations, discuss the broader implications of their findings, and propose future research directions. Although ChatGPT can generate suggestions and facilitate the thought process, it is important for researchers to critically evaluate the information provided and ensure that the Discussion and Conclusion sections align with the specific research objectives and findings of their study. Ultimately, ChatGPT can serve as a supportive tool in developing a comprehensive and well-rounded discussion and conclusion for research papers.

Step 8: References

As per the author's experience, although ChatGPT is capable of creating references for an article, most of them are incorrect. So, using ChatGPT for creating references is not recommended. However, ChatGPT can convert references into any journaling style if the references are entered into ChatGPT and it is asked to convert them into a specific style.

Disadvantages of Using ChatGPT in Research

Although ChatGPT offers numerous advantages for assisting in the writing of research papers, there are also some important potential disadvantages to consider:

• Lack of domain expertise: ChatGPT is a general-purpose language model trained on a diverse range of Internet text, which means it may lack the specific domain expertise required for certain research topics. It may generate responses that are not accurate or well informed in specialized fields, potentially leading to incorrect or misleading information in research papers.
• Inconsistency and variability: ChatGPT’s responses can be inconsistent and vary depending on the input phrasing or prompt formulation. This can lead to unpredictability in generating reliable and coherent content, requiring additional effort to refine and ensure accuracy in research papers.
• Limited control over output: Although researchers can guide the model’s responses through prompts, ChatGPT’s generation process is still primarily autonomous. Researchers have limited control over the precise content and structure of the generated text, which may require careful editing and review to align with specific research goals, standards, and above all, accuracy.
• Biases and ethical considerations: Language models like ChatGPT can inadvertently reflect biases present in the training data. These biases may perpetuate existing societal or cultural biases in research papers, potentially leading to unfair or discriminatory content. The careful examination and mitigation of biases are crucial to ensure ethical and unbiased research output. 7
• Lack of interpretability: ChatGPT’s decision-making process is complex and not easily interpretable. Researchers may struggle to understand the reasoning behind the model’s generated responses, making it challenging to assess the reliability and credibility of the information provided. Ensuring transparency and interpretability in research papers becomes more challenging with such models. ChatGPT should cite the sources for its data, like Google Bard does.
• Plagiarism concerns: Because of its vast training data from the Internet, ChatGPT may inadvertently generate text that resembles or replicates existing content without proper citation or attribution. Researchers must be cautious about unintentional plagiarism and ensure that generated content is appropriately referenced and original. So, all ChatGPt-generated articles need to be double checked using antiplagiarism software.

In this commentary I have provided a comprehensive step-by-step guide for researchers and authors on harnessing the power of ChatGPT in the realm of research and publication. By exploring crucial aspects, such as data preprocessing, fine-tuning techniques, prompt engineering, and ethical considerations, the guide equips researchers with the necessary knowledge and tools to effectively integrate ChatGPT into their scientific workflows. 8

Through clear instructions, examples, and guidelines, researchers can navigate the complexities of using ChatGPT, leading to enhanced productivity and improved quality in their research output. Moreover, I address the challenges associated with biases, interpretability, and plagiarism concerns, ensuring the responsible and ethical usage of ChatGPT as a research tool.

The significance of this research lies in its ability to bridge the gap between the rapid advancements in language models like ChatGPT and the research and publication process. By empowering researchers with the skills to leverage ChatGPT effectively, this guide fosters innovation, drives scientific progress, and opens up new possibilities for transformative contributions to various fields. 9

As language-driven technologies continue to evolve, researchers must stay abreast of the latest advancements and best practices. The step-by-step guide presented in this commentary serves as a valuable resource, providing researchers with the knowledge and guidance necessary to maximize the potential of ChatGPT in their research endeavors. By embracing the capabilities of ChatGPT and ensuring its responsible and ethical use, researchers can revolutionize the way research and publications are conducted. With ChatGPT as a powerful tool in their arsenal, researchers are poised to make significant strides in their respective fields, pushing the boundaries of scientific knowledge and ushering in a new era of language-driven innovation. 10

However, and to reiterate, I cannot overemphasize that ChatGPT has, at present, many disadvantages, including inconsistencies, bias, and plagiarism concerns, that must be addressed by the human author before the article is submitted for publication to a journal, as well as prior to publication, because the human author(s) is solely responsible for their research integrity and accurate reporting.

In conclusion, I have attempted to provide researchers with a comprehensive understanding of how to effectively leverage ChatGPT for research and publication purposes. It has also highlighted the problems and precautions that the human author(s) must take before publishing ChatGPT-generated content. By embracing this step-by-step guide, researchers can unlock the full potential of ChatGPT, driving scientific progress and shaping the future of research and publications.

• Please use ChatGPT only if allowed by your institution, research lab, and the journal in question.
• Please acknowledge ChatGPT within your manuscript/published paper wherever you are using it.
• Please do not fabricate or plagiarize data. ChatGPT can be used only for summarizing texts, improving English writeups, and brainstorming ideas, and not for creating fabricated research raw data.

Acknowledgment.

The author acknowledges that this article was partially generated by ChatGPT (powered by OpenAI’s language model, GPT-3; http://openai.com ). The editing was performed by the human author.

Disclosures. The author declare no conflicts or financial interest in any product or service mentioned in the manuscript, including grants, equipment, medications, employment, gifts, and honoraria.

Home → Academic Writing → How to Use ChatGPT to Write a Research Paper: Tips and Tricks to Get You Started

How to Use ChatGPT to Write a Research Paper: Tips and Tricks to Get You Started

Jordan Kruszynski

• January 4, 2024

If you’re an academic, you’ve probably spent a lot of time planning and writing research papers. It’s a fine art, and one that requires a fair amount of skill, precision and preparation. But whether you’re an old master in the field, or a rookie embarking on your first serious research paper, there are tools that can help you to simplify the planning stages and organise your thoughts more effectively.

One of those tools is the (in)famous ChatGPT , and it’s this that we’ll be focusing on in our article. In the right hands, ChatGPT can become a powerful research tool that will make your paper-writing that little bit easier. So sit back, relax, and discover our tips and tricks for using ChatGPT to write a research paper.

What is ChatGPT?

Just in case you don’t already know, ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence tool developed by OpenAI that can help you with your research. It uses natural language processing to understand what you’re looking for and provide you with relevant information. You can ask it questions, and it will provide you with answers in a conversational style, as well as offer sources to back up its information.

One of the biggest advantages of ChatGPT is that it can save you time. Instead of spending hours searching for sources, you can simply ask ChatGPT for help. This can bring you a reliable list of sources for further investigation fairly quickly. It’s crucial to note however that the AI shouldn’t be exploited to do the actual writing of the paper for you. This could see you accused of plagiarism or misconduct, and besides, as a researcher, you’re probably rightfully proud of your ability to write a compelling paper.

Another advantage of ChatGPT is that it’s always available (even when libraries or other sources of information might be inaccessible) so you can work on your research paper at any time of day or night.

Interested in learning more about how AI programs like ChatGPT are changing the academic landscape? Listen to Oxford researcher Samantha-Kaye Johnston’s views from the frontline in this exciting episode of The Research Beat podcast.

The benefits of using ChatGPT to write a research paper

There are many benefits to using ChatGPT for research papers. Firstly, as we mentioned earlier, it can save you time . A slow drag of several hours looking for specific sources can be reduced to just a few minutes with the AI’s help.

Secondly, it can help you find sources that you might not have found otherwise . ChatGPT has access to a wide range of sources, including academic journals and books.

Thirdly, it can help you organise your research . ChatGPT can provide you with a summary of the information you’ve gathered, making it easier to analyse and integrate into your research paper.

How to use ChatGPT to write a research paper – a step by step guide

• Start by creating a list of questions that you want to answer in your research paper.
• Open ChatGPT and ask it one of the questions on your list, for example, ‘What is the critical history of feminist literature in Europe?’
• ChatGPT will provide you with a list of sources to check out.
• Read through the sources and take notes on the information that is relevant to your research question.
• Repeat steps 2-4 for each question on your list.
• Once you’ve gathered all of your information, organise it into an outline for your research paper.
• Use the information you’ve gathered to write your research paper.

Working with your sources

Once you have your sources in order, you might want to use prompts to get help from ChatGPT with other parts of the writing process. A prompt is a specific instruction to the AI that can give you tailored information or responses. For example, if you’re struggling to understand part of another research paper, you could use the following prompt:

‘Please explain the following paragraphs in simple words. I am having trouble understanding (insert concept here).’

Input the prompt along with the relevant passage from the source, and ChatGPT will provide a summary that could help you to unlock your understanding of the tricky concept.

Looking for ChatGPT prompts tailor-made for academics? Check out Audemic’s list of over 50 prompts to help you with your work and research!

Writing tips and tricks for using ChatGPT

When using ChatGPT to write a research paper, it’s important to keep a few things in mind. Firstly, make sure that you’re using reliable sources . ChatGPT can provide you with a list of sources, but it’s up to you to determine which ones are reliable.

Secondly, make sure that you’re paraphrasing the information you’ve gathered in your own words . You don’t want to cheat or be accused of it.

Finally, make sure that you’re using the information you’ve gathered to answer your research questions . Everything you uncover through ChatGPT should be used to feed your own understanding and improve the quality and precision of your answers.

Common mistakes to avoid when using ChatGPT to write a research paper

While ChatGPT is an excellent tool for research papers, there are some common mistakes to avoid:

• Crucially, don’t rely too heavily on ChatGPT. It’s essential to do some of your research on your own and use ChatGPT to supplement it.
• Don’t forget to cite your sources correctly. Just because ChatGPT provided you with the information doesn’t mean that you don’t need to cite it. Moreover, ChatGPT cannot actually produce academic citations for you.
• Always remember to proofread your research paper carefully, especially if you’ve used AI elements to construct it.

ChatGPT vs. traditional research methods

While traditional research methods have their advantages and always will, ChatGPT, as we’ve seen, has some of its own. We think one of the best uses for AI programs like ChatGPT is to accelerate parts of the paper-writing process that would otherwise take hours. If you can use the AI to produce a list of interesting and relevant sources, then you can get to work quickly as an academic, studying and analysing those sources to determine their value within your paper. In general, if you approach ChatGPT with an attitude of maintaining quality and integrity, then it can only enhance your work.

Final Thoughts

ChatGPT is everywhere at the moment, and while it has stirred up a great deal of controversy thanks to its implications for academic integrity, it can be an excellent tool for helping to write research papers . The key is using it correctly, and not relying too heavily on it. Focusing on how it can enhance your already-sharp academic writing skills will allow you to save time, find plenty of valuable sources, and organise your paper’s structure more effectively. And that’s how to use ChatGPT to write a research paper!

ChatGPT is not the only AI tool that can help with these parts of the paper-writing puzzle. If you want to listen to academic papers, break them down into digestible pieces and freely take notes on them, then Audemic is waiting for you. Try it for free today!

Keep striving, researchers! ✨

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How To Use ChatGPT To Write A Literature Review: Prompts & References

In the rapidly evolving world of academic research, the integration of AI tools like ChatGPT has transformed the traditional approach to literature reviews. As a researcher, you should also leverage on this tool to make your research work easier.

In this post, explore how ChatGPT can enhance the literature review process. We’ll explore how specific prompts can effectively guide this advanced AI model to generate insightful content, while ensuring accuracy, relevance, and academic integrity in their scholarly work.

How to Use ChatGPT for Writing a Literature Review

Understanding chatgpt’s limitations.

While it can efficiently generate content, streamline the research process, and provide a comprehensive understanding of relevant literature, its capabilities are not without constraints. Here are some for you to consider:

Dependence On Pre-Existing Datasets

Since ChatGPT is a language model trained on available data, it may not include the most recent research papers or cutting-edge findings in a specific field. This gap can lead to a lack of current state-of-research insights, particularly crucial in fields like technology and science where advancements happen rapidly.

May Lack Depth And Context

ChatGPT, while able to produce summaries and synthesize information, might not fully grasp the nuanced arguments or complex theories specific to a research topic. This limitation necessitates that researchers critically evaluate and supplement AI-generated text with thorough analysis and insights from recent systematic reviews and primary sources.

Risk Of Plagiarism

Although ChatGPT can generate human-like text, it’s vital to ensure that the content for your literature review is original and properly cited. Relying solely on ChatGPT to write a literature review defeats the purpose of engaging deeply with the material and developing a personal understanding of the literature.

Not A Total Replacement of A Researcher

While ChatGPT can assist non-native English speakers in crafting clear and concise academic writing, it’s not a replacement for the human ability to contextualize and interpret research findings. Researchers must guide the AI model with specific prompts and leverage it as a tool rather than a substitute for comprehensive analysis.

By keeping these limitations in mind, ChatGPT can be a valuable aid in the literature review process, but it should be used judiciously and in conjunction with traditional research methods.

Defining Research Objective

When starting on writing a literature review, the initial step involves using ChatGPT to define your research question or hypothesis.

The AI model’s ability to respond with a summary of the current state of research in your field can provide a comprehensive understanding, especially for systematic reviews or research papers.

For example, by inputting a prompt related to your research topic, ChatGPT can generate human-like text, summarizing prior research and highlighting relevant literature.

One insider tip for effectively using ChatGPT in the literature review process is to leverage its natural language processing capabilities to identify relevant keywords.

These keywords are crucial for non-native English speakers or those new to a research field, as they streamline the search for pertinent academic writing. Additionally, ChatGPT can guide you in understanding the context of your research topic, offering insights that are often challenging to find.

Using AI language models like ChatGPT for generating content for your literature review is efficient and effective, saving valuable time. However, it’s vital to critically evaluate the generated text to ensure it aligns with your research objectives and to avoid plagiarism.

ChatGPT’s ability to synthesize large amounts of information can aid in developing a clear and concise outline, but remember, it’s a guide, not a replacement for human analysis.

Despite these limitations, ChatGPT provides a unique advantage in conducting literature reviews. It can automate mundane tasks, allowing researchers to focus on analysis and critical thinking.

Identifying Keywords and Search Terms

Using ChatGPT to identify relevant keywords related to your research topic can significantly streamline your workflow.

For instance, when you input a summary of your research question into ChatGPT, the AI model can generate a list of pertinent keywords.

These keywords are not just randomly selected; they are based on the vast amounts of information in ChatGPT’s dataset, making them highly relevant and often inclusive of terms that are current in your research field.

An insider tip for leveraging ChatGPT effectively is to guide the AI with clear and concise prompts.

For example, asking ChatGPT to: “summarize key themes in [specific field] research papers from the last five years” can yield a list of keywords and phrases that are not only relevant but also reflective of the current state of research.

This approach is particularly beneficial for conducting systematic reviews or for non-native English speakers who might be unfamiliar with specific academic jargon.

While ChatGPT can provide a comprehensive understanding of relevant literature and help automate the identification of keywords, it’s important to critically evaluate the generated content.

Researchers should use ChatGPT as a tool to augment their research process, not as a replacement for human insight.

It’s crucial to mind the limitations of the AI model and ensure that the keywords identified align with the research topic and objectives.

Creating an Initial Literature Review Outline

The key to using ChatGPT effectively in crafting an initial outline lies in its ability to generate content based on specific prompts.

For instance, a researcher working on organic photovoltaic devices can input a prompt into ChatGPT, such as “Help me create a structure for a literature review on organic photovoltaic devices.”

The AI model, using its comprehensive understanding of the research topic, can then produce a preliminary structure, including sections like:

• Introduction
• Advances in materials and technology, performance, and efficiency.

This generated outline serves as a valuable starting point. It helps in organizing thoughts and determining the key areas that the literature review should cover. I

mportantly, researchers can refine and expand this initial outline as they delve deeper into their topic, ensuring it aligns with their specific research question and the current state of research.

However, while ChatGPT can streamline the review process and save valuable time in creating an initial outline, researchers should not solely rely on it.

The content generated by ChatGPT must be critically evaluated and supplemented with in-depth research. This involves:

• Reading systematic reviews
• Reading research papers, and
• Summarizing relevant literature to ensure the review is comprehensive and up-to-date.

Get ChatGPT To Help You During Research, Using The Right Prompts

The key to effectively using ChatGPT in this process lies in crafting the right prompts, guiding the AI to generate relevant and useful content. 

When initiating a literature review, the prompt should aim for a broad understanding of the research topic. For instance, asking ChatGPT to:

• “Give a brief overview of research done on [topic]”
• “What are some of the recent findings on the [topic] in research?” or 
• “Summarize the historical development of [topic] in academia”

Helps in capturing the general landscape of the field. These prompts assist in identifying key theories, methodologies, and authors within the research area. As the review progresses, more specific prompts are necessary to delve deeper into individual studies. Queries like:

• “Summarize the main arguments and findings of [specific paper]” or
• “What are the strengths and weaknesses of [specific paper]?”

enable ChatGPT to provide detailed insights into particular research papers, aiding in understanding their contribution to the broader field. Comparative prompts are also crucial in synthesizing information across multiple works. Asking ChatGPT to:

• “Compare and contrast the methodologies of [paper 1] and [paper 2]” or
• “How do the findings of [paper 1] and [paper 2] agree or disagree?”

helps in discerning the nuances and disparities in the literature. In the final stages of the literature review, prompts should focus on summarizing findings and identifying emerging trends or gaps. For example:

• “What trends or patterns have emerged from the literature on [topic]?” or
• “What future research directions are suggested by the literature on [topic]?”

We will share more on these ChatGPT prompts in the later part of this post, read on.

Reviewing ChatGPT’s Responses

When using ChatGPT to write a literature review, it’s crucial to critically evaluate its responses.

Firstly, researchers should cross-reference the information provided by ChatGPT with actual research papers.

This step ensures the accuracy of the data and helps in identifying any discrepancies or outdated information, given that ChatGPT’s dataset may not include the most recent studies.

Another essential aspect is assessing the coherence and depth of the AI-generated text. ChatGPT can summarize and synthesize information efficiently, but it might not capture the nuances of complex theories or research arguments.

Researchers should ensure that the content aligns with their research question and systematically reviews the topic comprehensively. This is where a researcher’s value comes in.

Additionally, verifying the originality of the content is vital to avoid plagiarism. While ChatGPT can generate human-like text, researchers must ensure that the AI-generated content is used as a guide rather than a verbatim source. 

Proper citations and references are essential to maintain the integrity of the literature review. Avoid torpedoing your own research by committing plagiarism.

Ensuring Coherence and Flow

One of the challenges when using such advanced AI language models is ensuring the coherence and flow of the final document. This aspect is crucial as it determines the readability and academic rigor of the literature review.

ChatGPT can generate vast amounts of content on a wide range of topics, responding efficiently to prompts and synthesizing information from its extensive dataset.

However, the content generated by ChatGPT, while informative, might not always align seamlessly with the specific research question or maintain a consistent narrative flow.

To tackle this, researchers need to take an active role in guiding ChatGPT and subsequently refining its output.

A practical approach is to use ChatGPT as a starting point, leveraging its ability to quickly provide summaries, synthesize relevant literature, and identify key references and keywords related to the research topic. For example, prompts like:

• “Summarize the current research on [topic]” or
• “Identify key debates in [topic]”

Can yield valuable initial insights.

Once this foundational information is obtained, the crucial task is to carefully review and edit the AI-generated content.

This involves connecting the dots between different sections, ensuring that each part contributes meaningfully to addressing the research question, and refining the language to maintain academic standards.

It’s also essential to check for and avoid plagiarism, ensuring that all sources are correctly cited.

In addition, considering the vast amounts of information ChatGPT can access, it’s vital to verify the accuracy and relevance of the content.

Researchers should cross-reference AI-generated summaries with actual research papers, especially the most recent ones, as ChatGPT’s dataset may not include the latest studies.

Editing and Proofreading

Now that your literature review is mostly written out, now focus on the editing and proofreading. The content generated by ChatGPT needs to be meticulously reviewed and edited. Here are the steps:

• Verifying the accuracy of the information. Researchers must cross-check the AI-generated content against actual research papers and systematic reviews. This ensures that the latest studies are accurately represented.
• Improve coherence and flow. Researchers should restructure sentences, ensure logical progression of ideas, and maintain a consistent academic tone throughout the document.
• Checking for plagiarism. Despite ChatGPT’s ability to generate human-like text, researchers must ensure that all sources are correctly cited and that the review does not inadvertently replicate existing material.
• Check Grammar and Spelling: Editing should encompass grammar checks, vocabulary refinement, and ensuring that the language used is appropriate for an academic audience.
• Update Citation: Review citation, or reference list to ensure everything is cited correctly, and the citation list is written out to your required standard, be it MLA, Chicago, or APA.

What ChatGPT Prompts To Use When Writing A Literature Review?

There are many ways to use ChatGPT to write literature review, usually by using the right prompts. Here’s how specific types of prompts can be effectively employed, with multiple examples for each category:

• “Provide a comprehensive overview of the latest research on [topic].”
• “Summarize the current understanding and key findings in the field of [topic].”
• “Detail the dominant theoretical frameworks currently used in [topic].”
• “Describe the evolution of theoretical approaches in [topic] over the past decade.”
• “Identify and discuss the major debates or controversies in [topic].”
• “What are the conflicting viewpoints or schools of thought in [topic]?”
• “List the leading researchers in [topic] and summarize their key contributions.”
• “Who are the emerging authors in [topic], and what unique perspectives do they offer?”
• “Explain the most common research methodologies used in studies about [topic].”
• “How have the methodologies in [topic] research evolved recently?”
• “Trace the historical development and major milestones in [topic].”
• “Provide a timeline of the key discoveries and shifts in understanding in [topic].”
• “What significant paradigm shifts have occurred in [topic] in the last twenty years?”
• “How has the focus of research in [topic] changed over time?”
• “Analyze the methodology and conclusions of [specific paper].”
• “Discuss the impact and reception of [specific paper] in the field of [topic].”
• “Compare the results and methodologies of [paper 1] and [paper 2] in [topic].”
• “How do [paper 1] and [paper 2] differ in their approach to [topic]?”
• “Based on current literature, what are the suggested future research directions in [topic]?”
• “Identify gaps in the literature of [topic] that could be explored in future studies.”

By using these types of prompts, researchers can guide ChatGPT to produce content that is not only relevant to their literature review but also rich in detail and scope.

Wrapping Up: Use Other AI Tools Too, Not Just ChatGPT

In conclusion, while ChatGPT serves as a powerful ally in the literature review process, it’s important to recognize it as one of many AI tools available to researchers as well. Diversifying your AI toolkit can enhance the depth and breadth of your review, offering varied perspectives and methodologies.

As AI continues to evolve, embracing a range of these tools can lead to more comprehensive, nuanced, and innovative academic writing, expanding the horizons of research and scholarly exploration beyond what we currently envision.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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• NATURE PODCAST
• 12 July 2023

ChatGPT can write a paper in an hour — but there are downsides

• Noah Baker ,
• Benjamin Thompson &

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Hear the latest from the world of science, with Noah Baker, Benjamin Thompson and Dan Fox.

In this episode:

00:23 Using ChatGPT to generate a research paper from scratch

A pair of scientists have produced a research paper in less than an hour with the help of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) ChatGPT. The aim of this exercise was to explore the technology’s ability to act as a research ‘co-pilot’ and spark debate about its use. While AI tools like ChatGPT have the potential to speed up research, it is still unclear what role they should play in research.

Nature News: Scientists used ChatGPT to generate an entire paper from scratch — but is it any good?

06:28 Last week saw the world’s hottest day on record – twice

On Monday last week the average worldwide temperature reached 17.01 °C, beating a record set in 2016. Then, on Tuesday that record was broken again, as average temperatures hit 17.18 °C. Further record-breaking days may follow this year as a result of climate change, and the arrival of the El Niño weather phenomenon, which is expected to strengthen in the coming months.

Bloomberg: Earth Keeps Breaking Temperature Records Due to Global Warming

Nature News: El Niño is here — how bad will it be?

10:03 Anti-ageing protein boosts monkey memories

Injecting monkeys with the naturally occurring protein klotho can improve their cognition. Previous work had shown that elevated levels of the enzyme could improve cognitive functions in mice, now researchers have shown that injecting klotho into old rhesus macaques caused them to perform better in memory-related tasks. While the mechanism behind this effect is unclear, it’s hoped that the finding could ultimately lead to new treatments for neurodegenerative diseases in humans.

Nature News: Anti-ageing protein injection boosts monkeys’ memories

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Benjamin Thompson

Hi, Benjamin from the Nature Podcast here. We're going to change things up a little bit this week. And we're going to take a deep-dive into some stories that have been in the Nature Briefing over the past few days. And joining me to do so are Noah Baker. Noah, how're you doing today?

I'm very well. Thank you. Looking forward to chatting about Briefing items.

And Dan Fox, Dan. Hello.

Hi. How's it going?

Yeah, it's going very, very well. Well, listen, three stories to go through today. Noah, why don't you go first? You're talking about AI? Right?

Yeah. So I think probably one of the hottest topics at the moment is generative AI. And this is a story all about ChatGPT, the poster child of said movement in the news. But specifically, this is about some researchers that have used ChatGPT to generate an entire paper from scratch. And so there's a news article in Nature that I've been reading about whether or not that paper is any good, what the limitations are. Should we be scared? Spoiler alert. No, not really yet. But maybe it could be useful as a tool in the future.

When you say an entire paper, do you mean what abstract, introduction, methods, conclusion? The whole business?

Absolutely the whole thing. So it did the analysis with some prompts. And it created an article that was quote, fluent, insightful and presented in the expected structure for a scientific paper. But it did it with a lot of help. So the researchers wrote a program which prompted ChatGPT to do this in stages. And I can talk you through what those stages were from the sort of beginning of the research all the way through to the published paper in the end, but this entire process took less than an hour, which is I guess, a big part of why this is something that's worthy of talking about now.

Maybe we start off with, with what was this paper about? And how did the researchers go about making it?

Yeah, so it's two researchers from Israel from Technion in Haifa. And they essentially started with the data, right. So they started with some freely available data, CDC telephone survey data about 250,000 people talking about their diabetes status. And then they wrote this program, which essentially prompted ChatGPT in an automated way. So it said, 'Hey, ChatGPT write some code that could uncover patterns in this data'. And so it wrote some code to uncover some patterns. And its first attempt, it was a nightmare. Loads of errors, things that didn't work. But the program took those error messages, fed it back into ChatGPT and said 'do better'. And eventually it did, it produced code that could be used to explore the dataset. And then they said, 'Okay, cool. You've got a structured data set now, look for some things'. And so it said, 'why don't you explore how physical activity and diet are related to diabetes risk', so it generated more code. And it found yep, sure, eating more fruit and vegetables and exercising is linked to a lower risk of diabetes according to these data. And then still via this program, it prompted ChatGPT to summarize those findings in a table, then write the whole results section. Then step-by-step, they got it to write the abstract, the introduction, the methods and the discussion section of the manuscript. And then after that, refine all the text so that it could go through and refine it all. So there was lots and lots of prompts. But what they ended up with is in less than an hour, they've essentially done some research and written a paper, or rather ChatGPT had done some research and written a paper.

I mean, that's really interesting. But I guess diabetes, and correlation with eating fruit and veg and physical activity is not the most, not the most novel piece of research.

Yeah, for sure. I mean, this is one of the things that the researchers quoted in this story have said, you know, this is not something that's going to surprise any medical expert. It's not close to being novel. But really importantly, one of the things that ChatGPT did do when it was generating the text for this paper is it used quotes like this "addresses a gap in the literature", which this very much isn't. There's very little novel about this finding, in terms of our understanding of diabetes and risk factors for diabetes. And this is one of the big concerns that scientists have about using ChatGPT for this kind of purpose.

So it's not necessarily what it found then. But it's the fact that it could be done that that is so interesting about this work.

Yeah. I mean, researchers are trying to find ways that ChatGPT could be used as a tool, essentially, it's like, how could it help the scientific process? How could it be used to make things more efficient for researchers to be able to do more work, more insightful work, see things that perhaps aren't seen otherwise? But there are lots and lots of questions around whether or not you can do that. This approach of trying to get it to create an entire paper means that you end up with a paper that's not super novel or exciting, and equally has lots of made up citations. It's another thing that it did, it hallucinated concepts it didn't really understand, well, because ChatGPT doesn't understand anything, it doesn't really understand any of that context. And so it needs a lot of support from the researchers, however, a lot happened in an hour. So there's a discussion in this piece about how it might be useful and where the problems might lie. And there are suggestions that it could be very useful to just throw up a bunch of potential avenues for research, or perhaps things like summarization of results could be something that ChatGPT could do very quickly. Or perhaps even things like writing code is something that ChatGPT can do very quickly. So there are places it could be useful, but building an entire paper, perhaps not. And there are other reasons that this could be concerning. So one of the things that's that's mentioned here in this story is things like P-hacking. So P-hacking is when scientists just test a bunch of hypotheses on datasets, hoping that one of them's going to work and then they just only talk about that thing. And in a world where you can essentially say, 'Hey, ChatGPT, do some P-hacking for me' because it can look at so many things so quickly, then potentially you end up with a situation where you're using an AI to enhance this relatively dishonest practice. So concerns abound, but potentially a very powerful tool. There's just a lot of kinks to work out before we can really get there and use it appropriately. And that includes in publishing research as well.

Yeah, I mean, quite the quite the sort of two-way street and for a number of reasons, right, because you said you could do it in an hour. And I can almost hear some of the researchers listening to this podcast, rubbing their hands going 'writing papers is boring and takes ages, this will be super useful'. But the other side of that is, it could be used to just churn out absolute dross, right. And these kind of, we've heard about paper mills before publishing fake research.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think there's a lot to be watched here, you know, there's a lot of onus on journals like Nature and other journals to continue to develop their process for how AI use can be declared. I mean, this is something that is very important to try to declare how AI tools are used in papers so that we can better see and spot places where there may have been biases or hallucinations, inputted by the generative AI. And that's something that editors can do. It's something that scientists need to do, because the stuff that's created can be so fluent ChatGPT can make stuff that sounds so convincing, that even experts in the field can sometimes struggle to see places where it's made stuff up, or it's seen things that aren't there. So, lots to watch, but perhaps smaller steps at the moment, so we can make things actually useful.

Well, I have a feeling that isn't the last we're going to hear about ChatGPT on the Nature Podcast . But let's move on to our second story today. And it's a story that I've brought, and I read about it in Bloomberg . And it's about some records that have been broken, but sadly, not in a good way. It's how data suggests that last week, the average global temperatures across the world broke the existing record, not once but twice.

Yeah, this is the record in like human history, right, a really significant record to break twice in one year.

Yeah it's not a good one. And this is according to data from the US National Centers for Environmental Prediction. In terms of the numbers then, the average worldwide temperature reached 17.01 ° on Monday last week. And that was then shortly broken on Tuesday, when they reached 17.18 °C. This record isn't official, it has to be said. But I think it is quite a sobering indication of where things are right now.

Yeah, I mean, point two-degree rise doesn't seem much on any given day. But across, you know, when you start to bring in averages, and also when you start to think about this as a global temperature, it's a really significant jump in temperature. Right?

Absolutely. And this comes against a backdrop of a lot that's going on across the world right now. I mean, there's been huge heatwaves in China with records are broken there. The hottest June in the UK on record, Antarctica had its highest temperature recorded in July, at 8.7 °C, heatwaves in Spain, you know, across the land and sea.

So is there a sense of some of the reasons behind it being the hottest day on record sort of two, two days in a week?

WellI mean, you'll be you'll be shocked to know that climate change is clearly playing a part in the fact that the world is warming. But there's something else involved here as well, and that is El Niño, which is this sort of global weather phenomenon that happens every sort of two to seven years.

Right, So we have a record broken twice in one week. And then at the same time, we have a new El Niño cycle starting, which we know is associated with particularly high temperatures. This doesn't sound like good maths, is this gonna be a particularly big El Niño cycle?

Well, that's a great question. And it's actually yet to be decided. Researchers don't quite know yet. But what I can say is last time, there was a strong El Niño that corresponded to the hottest year on record, and that was in 2016. So from what I've read, there is a sense that really, maybe 2023, or maybe even 2024, when El Niño really kicks in, could break the record for the for the hottest year.

And with hot temperatures also comes more extreme weather and loads of other potential knock ons, right?

So this changes weather patterns across the globe, due to a slackening of the trade winds above the tropical Pacific Ocean. It could lead to droughts in Australia and southeast Asia, increased rainfall in places like the Horn of Africa. And that can lead to localized flooding, which can damage crops. But also other things as well, which maybe not entirely obvious. For example, strong rainfall could lead to an increase in the number of mosquitoes, which could then lead to more diseases being spread. Something similar was seen in Peru, weather pattern change was linked to a severe outbreak of the disease, dengue, which of course, is a viral disease spread by mosquitoes. So there's a great deal going on here, which could have really quite severe effects on life and livelihoods. And of course, you know, in the face of a warming world, one of the only ways we can get on top of this is reducing emissions, right. And of course, COP28 is coming up in November. And it'd be interesting to see in the face of of what is potentially going to happen, whether that will affect negotiations and discussions at that meeting at all.

I wonder whether or not this will change the urgency with which people discuss things. Anyway. Dan, do you have anything a little bit more uplifting? Perhaps maybe something a little bit less doom-and-gloom to talk about as a final story for the show.

Yeah. So this is I think it's quite a positive research development. So some researchers have published a paper that's come out in Nature Aging , where rhesus macaques were injected with a protein called klotho. And that increased their cognitive ability, quite significantly, for well over two weeks, and is potentially a treatment for degenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and dementia.

So, I know this is probably trivializing, but it sounds to me like scientists have injected monkeys with a super smart-serum.

I mean, it's very much the plot of 2011's Rise of the Planet of the Apes , starring James Franco. But this is a bit more exciting in that...

But I mean, it's probably less exciting. There's no talking monkeys. But they are they are 15% better at finding snacks.

I was interested in that. So what is it that they've actually done to measure cognitive ability here? Is this a series of behavioral tasks?

So the tests the researchers used, involved putting a treat reward into one of a variety of different wells, so different sort of geographical location, spatial locations. That experiment was hidden from the monkeys for a period of time. And then when they returned, they had to find the treat that they'd seen hidden previously. So the researchers say, this is similar to a task like finding your car in a busy car park, and it's something that specifically gets harder as you get older. So the rhesus macaques were older macaques as well. So the average age of these monkeys was around 22 years old, which the authors of the paper say corresponds to being about a 65 year old human. And before they were injected with this protein, they successfully found the treat in the correct well 45% of the time,after an injection with this protein klotho, they found that 60% of the time. So a 15%, increase in their ability to find their car in a car park, find their their tasty snack, and that lasted for two weeks.

Klotho that is a protein, I have to say, I've never heard of. What is klotho, and what's the scientists know about it?

So klotho is protein that's expressed in the body in a few different places, it comes in a few different varieties. And these researchers are looking at alpha klotho. So it's something that actually decreases in the body as you age. And the researchers have called it a 'longevity factor'.

Hence it becoming a target to try to understand what's going on with aging, because it's something that seems to be correlated with aging.

Wow, what was going on in the brains of these monkeys then? Because it seems like fairly straightforward to inject them with protein, but I'm sure there's more to it than that.

Well, I think that's one of the fascinating parts of the story is they don't really know. The actual mechanics of how this protein is working, is not very well understood. So it's previously been shown that they get a similar effect from injecting this protein into mice, increases in synaptic plasticity and cognition and in resilience against aging and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. But they also know that this protein doesn't pass the blood-brain barrier. So there's some sort of intermediary that's communicating this effect into the brain. And that isn't well understood. And something else that complicates matters, and shows that there's kind of a more complicated process going on then the researchers initially thought is that, while a low-dose works very well, and gives this two-week effect, at higher doses, there's no cognitive improvement. And they think that possibly even higher doses, there'd be cognitive impairment. So it's not really clear exactly what's going on inside the body.

Well, so you can improve a monkey memory using a protein without really understanding how the protein works. Could you improve a human memory by doing a similar thing?

The short answer is, is yes. So it's already been shown that individuals that have elevated klotho levels due to natural variation show improved cognition and decreased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's. So there's already been a demonstrated benefit to klotho in humans. And the researchers behind this work have said that there's a very strong reason to jump into human clinical trials now.

So lots of excitement in the field. But knowing scientists as I do, I can imagine there are certainly people that are saying, Sure, clinical trials will be interesting. But we do really need to understand this mechanism a little bit better, right?

Absolutely. And there are research saying that a better understanding of the proteins mode of action will be crucial for realizing its clinical potential and the authors of the paper, and the authors also mentioned in the paper, that identifying these intermediaries that are taking the message from this klotho across the blood-brain barrier into the brain itself, is going to be key.

When they do work out what's going on with that intermediary, please come back on and let us know. But let's leave it there for this week's Briefing Chat and listeners, for more of these stories, look out for links in the show notes, where you'll also find a link where you can sign up for the Nature Briefing to get even more science stories like this delivered directly to your inbox. But for this week, all that's left to say is Noah and Dan, thank you so much for joining me.

Cheers, Ben.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-023-02298-x

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This list of writing prompts covers a range of topics and tasks, including brainstorming research ideas, improving language and style, conducting literature reviews, and developing research plans.

ahmetbersoz/chatgpt-prompts-for-academic-writing

Folders and files, repository files navigation.

✨ NEW UPDATE: Literature Review Generator

A Custom GPT for Literature Review Generator has been released. It efficiently parses PDF files of research publications, extracts key themes, and creates a literature review section for your academic publications.

TRY NOW: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-G3U8pZGwC-literature-review-generator

ChatGPT Prompts for Academic Writing

In this repository, this list of writing prompts covers a range of topics and tasks, including brainstorming research ideas, improving language and style, conducting literature reviews, and developing research plans. Whether you're a student, researcher, or academic professional, these prompts can help you hone your writing abilities and tackle your writing projects with confidence.

Use directly in: chat.openai.com

The list is regularly updated, so you can keep track of new prompts by following this repository.

TIPS: As there is a limit to the number of words that can be used in ChatGPT, you can input your text multiple times using the prompt "Read this [PARAPGRAPH]:" and then run your final prompt "Considering the above text...".

You can also use prompts splitter: chatgpt-prompt-splitter.jjdiaz.dev

BRAINSTORMING

Article sections, title/topic sentence, introduction, literature review.

NOTE: Be careful and double-check article existence. ChatGPT may generate fake references

Methodology

Experiments, future works, improving language, summarization, plan/presentation, working with documents (available only in gpt-4).

Upload a PDF file of a paper then:

Upload a PDF file of your paper then:

Upload PDF files of papers then:

Upload a figure image then:

Contributors 4

How to Use ChatGPT for Research and Essays

Want to use ChatGPT to help out with research and essays? To avoid inaccurate information, there are certain ways you can use it to your advantage.

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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How to Use ChatGPT To Write A Research Paper

Over the past three years, we’ve helped thousands of students write research papers with research mentors. And, since the public release of ChatGPT, we’ve been getting questions about how best to use (and not use) this new technology. In this article, we outline the best ways to use ChatGPT from our experience including the ways that ChatGPT can help out academic writing - and the ways that it can be limited. We’re researchers ourselves - our founders met at Harvard while doing a research program - so we’ll show you what we’re seeing and how you can use it for your own papers.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed by OpenAI. It is designed to generate human-like responses to any input you desire, making it a powerful tool for anyone. ChatGPT can understand social contexts, recognize patterns, and generate coherent messages. Here’s an example from our co-cofounder Stephen, when he used ChatGPT to try to recreate a paper one of his students wrote on high school employment.

As you can see from his article, ChatGPT was quite good at building a somewhat credible sounding literature review - but wasn’t as good at identifying accurate information. ChatGPT has gotten better since he wrote that piece (in December, 2022), but it still makes factual mistakes which can be dangerous for a researcher when using ChatGPT.

ChatGPT has already been used to write complex code for algorithms, transcribed new poems and stories, and

7 Ways to Use ChatGPT to Write A Research Paper

Below, we outline a few steps to use ChatGPT when writing a research paper. We begin with thinking about the structure of the paper and then moving to discuss how you can level up the existing writing you’ve done.

1. Summarize Other Research Papers

As an up-and-coming researcher, other scientific papers may be extremely dense and difficult to read. Have ChatGPT summarize the article for you.

Us: Write a paragraph summary of "Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice" by Bergner.

ChatGPT: In the paper "Acceleration of 1I/‘Oumuamua from radiolytically produced H2 in H2O ice", Bergner explores the possibility that the interstellar object 'Oumuamua could have been propelled by gas released from its surface due to the decomposition of water ice by cosmic radiation. The author presents a theoretical model and calculations to support this hypothesis and shows that the acceleration observed in 'Oumuamua's trajectory could be explained by the release of hydrogen gas from the object's surface. The study suggests that the radiolytic decomposition of water ice could be a common mechanism for the propulsion of interstellar objects and highlights the importance of further investigating the properties and behavior of such objects.

2. Edit Your Style and Grammar

ChatGPT’s ability to deeply understand English can be used as a grammar checker by inputting any text into the chat window and receiving feedback on any grammatical errors. This can already be done with other existing software, but the most exciting thing is that ChatGPT can transform any input you enter into the prompt.

If you believe that your essay sounds too informal, utilizes rudimentary vocabulary that you want to upgrade, or you want to add more technical terms, you can say just that. Copy your essay into the prompt, with your request, such as “ Use fancier scientific knowledge/terminology to applicable places in my essay. ” or “Edit my essay to increase the brevity of this paragraph.” or “Make this essay more at the level for 8th graders/college-level research paper.”

Outside of research papers, you could even use this to change the tone or style of any writing pieces. “Transform this essay into a long prose in the style of a limerick. “Write this paragraph about my day yesterday in the style of a Ph.D research paper.”

3. Generating an First Outline

Writing a large research paper can be extremely overwhelming, and sometimes, you may not even know where to start. An outline can be extremely helpful, and can be generated by ChatGPT. You can even specialize and customize this outline based on your needs and specialities, as each paper and style of paper will have its unique structures.

Us: Draft an outline for a biology research paper at a college level

I. Introduction

A. Background information on the topic

B. Significance of the research question

C. Research objectives and hypotheses

D. Brief overview of the structure of the paper

II. Literature review

A. Overview of the relevant literature

B. Key concepts and theories related to the topic

C. Previous research on the topic

D. Gaps in the literature and the need for further research

III. Methods

A. Description of the study design and methodology

B. Sampling strategy and sample size

C. Data collection techniques and instrumentation

D. Data analysis methods

… and it continues on until the end of the paper.

4. Build a First Draft to Your Paper

Similar to above, we can have ChatGPT generate ideas and new content based off of your outlines for any research papers. With any idea you may have, you can have ChatGPT write a couple sentences that could kickstart your thinking process or use as experimentation. For example,

Us: Write three sentences on the effect and most prevalent gut microbiota regulating the immune system

ChatGPT: The gut microbiota is known to modulate the immune system via complex interactions with immune cells, including regulatory T cells and antigen-presenting cells. Alterations in gut microbial composition, such as a decrease in beneficial bacteria like Bacteroidetes and Firmicutes, and an increase in pathogenic bacteria, have been linked to several immune-mediated diseases. Therefore, maintaining a healthy balance of gut microbiota is essential for immune homeostasis and preventing autoimmune disorders.

From your outline, you can begin using this to begin bolstering your essay with actual content, utilizing this generated content as a text-filled outline to begin writing the rest of the paper. Be sure to edit, fact check anything that you may not recognize, and do not purely just copy and paste.

5. Expand and Draw Conclusions From Experiments

Sometimes during research, you run into a roadblock and cannot figure out where to go further from your recent experiment. You may just need another person, or better yet, a computer to help you out.

Us: What conclusions can I draw from a western blot and what experiments should I conduct afterwards?

ChatGPT: A Western blot is a widely used technique in molecular biology to detect and quantify specific proteins in a sample. The conclusions that can be drawn from a Western blot depend on the research question being addressed, but generally, the presence or absence of a target protein in the sample can be inferred from the signal intensity of the band observed on the blot. Other conclusions, such as the size and post-translational modifications of the protein of interest, can also be deduced based on the molecular weight and mobility of the band.

After obtaining initial results from a Western blot, it is important to conduct further experiments to confirm and extend the findings. For example, one could perform additional Western blots using different antibodies to validate the specificity of the signal, or use techniques such as co-immunoprecipitation or mass spectrometry to identify interacting partners or modifications of the target protein. It may also be useful to compare the levels of the target protein across different samples or experimental conditions to gain insight into its regulation and function. Additionally, follow-up experiments could involve perturbing the expression or activity of the protein of interest to investigate its role in cellular processes or disease states.

6. Correct Misconceptions As an Encyclopedia

It can be easy to mix up pieces of information, or just accidentally mess up something. Use the internet as an encyclopedia for your convenience.

Us: Cesium fluoride has been shown to exhibit unique catalytic properties in organic reactions due to its high reactivity and low ionization potential, making it an attractive alternative to traditional catalysts.

ChatGPT: The sentence is partially true, as Cesium fluoride (CsF) is indeed known for its high reactivity and low ionization potential. However, it is not commonly used as a catalyst in organic reactions because it is a strong base and can cause unwanted side reactions. In addition, CsF is also expensive and can be difficult to handle due to its high reactivity with moisture in the air. Therefore, CsF is not a common alternative to traditional catalysts in organic reactions.

7. Use as a Writing Partner Throughout Your Process

How many times have you wished that you had someone to banter with, to run ideas through, to ask if this paragraph makes sense in the structure of your paper. While ChatGPT may be just a computer, its natural language processing origins means that it can be great to answer these questions above. ChatGPT can assess readability, make sure that a sentence fits into place with the “story” of your research, and do much of what another person “reading over” your essay can do.

How to NOT Use ChatGPT?

While being such a valuable resource, there are many, many reasons and scenarios to not use ChatGPT. ChatGPT, at its heart, can be an aid to progressing your education, but never a replacement for using critical thinking skills or purely – to learn.

1. Write Your Entire Research Paper For You Through Copy and Paste

It may be tempting to just ask all of your research questions and copy and paste what ChatGPT generates for you, but is taking the “easy” way out the best way to go? Remember that ChatGPT is trained from data and continues to be an ever-evolving model, but not perfect and never fully accurate. It can easily misdirect you with information that may seem correct, but are fully factually inaccurate. Additionally, think of all of the moral issues with submitting work that was not created by you and conclusions not synthesized by you.

2. Analyze Your Data

ChatGPT cannot synthesize new information and conclusions based on posted data, due to its limitations as a language model. ChatGPT is just an advanced version of existing language models, which can only predict the next word based off of the previous word based off of previous data it has learned from. It can be difficult, or flat out wrong, to synthesize conclusions based on what ChatGPT has analyzed.

If you’re looking for the opportunity to research under the guidance of a mentor that is not ChatGPT, then consider applying to the Lumiere Research Scholar Program . Last year over 2100 students applied for about 500 spots in the program. You can find the application form here.

Aaron Zheng is a sophomore at Harvard University, studying Bioengineering. He is passionate about biotechnology, business development, and aiding students get to college, regardless of background. In his spare time, he looks to read, journal, and explore the world.

Image source: Stock image.

Interesting and useful! I am very interested in this question. By the way, my job is such that I often turn to the services of translators. I have been using this platform for quite some time https://www.translate.com/italian-english They offer professional translation and every order goes through three stages. In this case, we can conclude that these specialists take their work responsibly and can be trusted. What do you think about it?

Now more and more people are starting to use automation while writing texts, and this is great. Too bad it didn't happen before. Although, better than a human, a robot will not write. Do you agree? Personally, I went to https://www.fellowshippersonalstatement.com/ I'm delighted because my article was written for me from scratch, without any templates. My best qualities and achievements were emphasized. Obviously, they only used my information from the completed questionnaire. They are responsible professionals.

A very useful article, I like it, but in my unprofessional opinion, it is too early to trust chat with such tasks, as for me, if you need help with writing, it is better to contact specialists. For example, I turned to the guys who provided me with a document editing service at a very affordable price, doing everything themselves, carefully checking everything, in short, professionals in their field, I trust them more than chat, it still needs to progress so that additional algorithms are installed. In the meantime, it cannot replace human work in the field of working with documents, texts, etc.

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How ChatGPT (and other AI chatbots) can help you write an essay

ChatGPT  is capable of doing many different things very well, with one of the biggest standout features being 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 getting stuff done, we constantly take time out of our day to compose emails, texts, posts, and more. ChatGPT can help you claim some of that time back by helping you brainstorm and then 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 just 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 to do both the writing and assisting, as well as 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.

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

For example,  Copilot  has access to the internet, and as a result, it can source its answers from recent information and current events. Copilot also includes footnotes linking back to the original source for all of its responses, making the chatbot a more valuable tool if you're writing a paper on a more recent event, or if you want to verify your sources.

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

1. Use ChatGPT to generate essay ideas

Before you can even get started 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: ChatGPT vs. Copilot: Which AI chatbot is better for you?

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. 

Also: I'm a ChatGPT pro but this quick course taught me new tricks, and you can take it for free

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

Also: Thanks to my 5 favorite AI tools, I'm working smarter now

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 Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

After a couple of seconds, the chatbot produced a holistic outline divided into seven different sections, with three different 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. 

As mentioned before, since Copilot is connected to the internet, if you use Copilot to produce the outline, it will even include links and sources throughout, 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 to get your information. If you don't know where to start, you can just ask ChatGPT. 

Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

All you need to do is ask the AI to find sources for your essay topic. For example, I asked the following: 

Can you help me find sources for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

The chatbot output seven sources, with a bullet point for each that explained what the source was and why it could be useful. 

Also:   How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables

The one caveat you will want to be aware of when using ChatGPT for sources is that it does not have access to information after 2021, so it will not be able to suggest the freshest sources. If you want up-to-date information, you can always use Copilot. 

Another perk of using Copilot is that it automatically links to sources in its answers. 

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 a form of plagiarism since it is not your original work. As with any information taken from another source, text generated by an AI should be clearly identified and credited in your work.

Also: ChatGPT will now remember its past conversations with you (if you want it to)

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 use it to create a sample essay to guide your writing. 

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

Can you write a five-paragraph essay on the topic, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill 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. 

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

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: AI meets AR as ChatGPT is now available on the Apple Vision Pro

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 take a look at a specific paragraph or sentence, and asking it to rewrite or fix the text for clarity. Personally, I find this feature very helpful. 

Rote automation is so last year: AI pushes more intelligence into software development

How to use chatgpt (and how to access gpt-4o), chatgpt vs. copilot: which ai chatbot is better for you.

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

Last Updated: April 28, 2024 Fact Checked

Getting ChatGPT to Write the Essay

Using ai to help you write, expert interview.

This article was written 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 47,577 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. [3] X Research source 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. [4] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

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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://help.openai.com/en/articles/6787051-does-chatgpt-remember-what-happened-earlier-in-the-conversation
• ↑ https://www.ipl.org/div/chatgpt/

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How to Use ChatGPT: Beginner Friendly Guide

Discover how to use ChatGPT and unlock Its full potential.

✓ Fact Checked

Last Updated: May 22, 2024

The world has seen remarkable growth in AI over the past few years. It all went from simple applications to complex systems capable of understanding and generating content like a human. Today's star and the one everybody needs to learn how to use ChatGPT ; a tool designed by OpenAI, that has changed how we interact with AI today.

ChatGPT is part of a new wave of AI models known as large language models (LLMs) . These models are trained on human language datasets, allowing them to generate text that is often indistinguishable from that written by humans. ChatGPT can answer questions, write essays, create poetry, and even generate code.

The development of AI, including ChatGPT, is driven by advancements in computing power, data availability, and algorithmic innovations . The final goal is to create machines that can understand, learn, and respond in ways that were once thought to be exclusively for humans. However, this has not only expanded our capabilities but also raised important questions about ethics, privacy, and the future role of AI in society.

If you're fascinated by the potential of ChatGPT, Writesonic or Synthesia can be your next step toward adopting AI-driven content creation. Whether you're managing a tech blog, running a startup, or starting a YouTube channel, these two equip you with the tools to excel.

Whether you want it or not, AI is the future and it is better to be prepared before it comes. I found Udemy , Datacamp , and Udacity to have the best available courses on this topic. With that in mind, let's learn how to use ChatGPT and how it works .

Key Takeaways

• ChatGPT, designed by OpenAI, has taken the world by storm. You can use it to generate texts, answer questions, and even code. It learns from each interaction, getting smarter over time.
• ChatGPT is not just for fun. It's a valuable tool in educational and professional settings. You can use it to enhance your learning and improve your work efficiency.
• The development of future models like GPT-5 shows the potential for even more advanced AI. However, you need to be aware of privacy and ethical issues that come with AI.

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Table of Contents

• 1. What is ChatGPT?
• 2. How to Use ChatGPT: A Starter Guide
• 3. ChatGPT Versions and Advanced AI Features
• 4. How To Get ChatGPT API in Applications
• 5. Top 4 ChatGPT Use Cases
• 5.1. Creative Writing and Content Generation
• 5.2. Code Generation, Debugging, and Learning Programming
• 5.3. ChatGPT for Learning and Educational Content Creation
• 5.4. Automating Customer Service and Reducing Workload
• 6. How To Improve Your ChatGPT Experience
• 6.1. Best Strategies for Formulating Finer Prompts
• 6.2. User Communities, Forums, and Learning from Experience
• 7. ChatGPT's Limitations and Future Directions
• 7.1. Accuracy Struggles, Content Generation Limits, and Tokens
• 7.2. Ethical Usage, Privacy, and Security
• 8. Innovative Uses of ChatGPT and Future Prospects
• 8.1. The Latest Updates on GPT. Peek into GPT-5?
• 9. Conclusions

What is ChatGPT?

To learn how to use ChatGPT you first need to learn what is ChatGPT . Developed by OpenAI, ChatGPT is a tool that uses something called neural networks along with machine learning (ML) to understand and generate language. Let's unwrap it bit by bit, shall we?

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If you ever wondered " How does ChatGPT work? ", think of neural networks as webs of digital neurons , not too different from those in our brains. These digital versions learn patterns from given text and visual data . Now, mix in some machine learning magic - where the computer learns from the data it's fed and improves its responses over time - and you've got the engine that powers ChatGPT.

It's mind-blowing how quickly ChatGPT gained popularity . Within two months of its release, it hit an impressive milestone, amassing 100 million users . At the time of writing this article, over 180 million accounts were actively using ChatGPT daily. This rapid adoption rate speaks a lot about ChatGPT's utility and fascination among the population.

ChatGPT's training involved feeding it the content of books, websites, code, and all sorts of written material. This training allowed it to generate responses that could be informative or even mimic a specific writing style . Let's say you ask it to write a poem in the style of your favorite poet, and it does just that!

What sets ChatGPT apart is not just its ability to understand and generate text but also its continuous learning . Every interaction helps it get better, thanks to learning from human feedback . It's like teaching a super-smart student who never forgets a lesson and continually improves. Sounds impossible, right?

Yet, with all its brilliance, ChatGPT keeps its cyber feet on the ground. It admits when it doesn't know something and avoids providing harmful information . Do you want to try it out? Follow me and learn how to access ChatGPT in a step-by-step guide.

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How to use chatgpt: a starter guide.

Whether you're at your desktop or using your phone on the go, it is very easy to start learning how to use ChatGPT. Here's a simple guide to get you up and running :

Step 1 : Head over to the OpenAI website. Do you prefer your phone? Just download the ChatGPT app from the Apple Store or Google Play Store.

Step 2 : Click the sign-up button. You'll need to provide some basic information, like your email address. Once you hit " C ontinue ," you're almost there.

Step 3 : Check your email for a verification link from OpenAI. Clicking this link confirms your email address, and voila, you're in.

Step 4 : Once you're logged in, you'll see a prompt to start chatting. Type in anything you're curious about, and ChatGPT will respond.

Note : You can also upgrade your plan to the pro version. The pro plan offers the GPT-4 model, DALL-E for image generation , and more. A subscription costs $20 per month .

Encounter issues while trying to figure out how to access ChatGPT? Here are some tips to make your start a little easier:

• Possible sign-up issues : Occasionally, ChatGPT might have a few bumps. A common hiccup is the verification email taking its sweet time . Patience is key; it usually shows up. If the email is nowhere to be seen, peek into your spam or promotions folders. It might be hiding there. In case you encounter website or app errors, a quick refresh or restart often does the trick.
• User interface insights : The ChatGPT interface is clean and user-friendly. Your chats appear in order, making it easy to follow the conversation . Look around, and you'll notice options to start a new chat or review old ones. It's all designed to make your experience smooth and enjoyable.
• Personalization settings : Since you know how to access ChatGPT, I am sure you want to improve your experience. Check out the settings. You can adjust notifications, manage privacy options, and even customize how ChatGPT interacts with you. Personalizing your chat makes the conversation unique.

There you have it - a simple guide on how to get ChatGPT. Go ahead and ask anything, it's ready to chat whenever you are.

ChatGPT Versions and Advanced AI Features

You know what is ChatGPT by now. But how does ChatGPT work?  The generative pre-trained transformer models, or GPTs, are a core of the ChatGPT engine. From GPT-1 to GPT-4, each model has its own set of skills , sort of like characters in a video game leveling up with each new version.

While everything started with GPT-1, GPT-2 was the one that put OpenAI on the map. With 1.5 billion parameters (the bits of data it learns from), it was a huge step forward in AI technology . People used it for everything from writing stories to generating code snippets . Its ability to create detailed text based on minimal input was, frankly, mind-blowing at the time .

Then came GPT-3 , with a staggering 175 billion parameters . This version wasn't just a step up; it was a giant leap. Suddenly, you could have conversations with AI that felt very human . GPT-3 could write essays, solve puzzles, and even create basic apps from descriptions. Its versatility made it a favorite among developers, creatives, and researchers alike.

GPT-3.5, an interim update before the next big release, fine-tuned the abilities of GPT-3 , making conversations even smoother and more intuitive . It served as a polished version of its predecessor, bridging the gap to the next big innovation.

GPT-4  trained on roughly 13 trillion tokens , pushed boundaries even further with its ability to understand and generate text. With GPT-4, the quality of output reached new heights. It could pass SAT reading and writing parts with a score of 710/800 , design websites from photos, and much more. The newest model, GPT-4o, builds on the strengths of its predecessors with even more advanced capabilities. It offers improved accuracy, better context understanding, and increased creativity.

Each model's unique capabilities opened up new application scenarios. GPT-2 started the trend with creative writing and simple question-answering tasks. GPT-3 expanded to more complex tasks like programming help, tutoring, and even gaming. With GPT-4, the scope has widened to include professional-level tasks, educational tools, and detailed creative work.

The evolution from GPT-2 to GPT-4o is a story of how AI is becoming an integral part of our creative and professional lives, offering tools that inspire, assist, and sometimes even amaze us.

How To Get ChatGPT API in Applications

Determining how to use ChatGPT API for your apps breathes new life into them, making them smarter and more interactive. Let's break down how to do this, from setup to authentication, with some neat examples to spark your imagination.

Step 1 : Sign up for OpenAI and get API access: First things off, you need an OpenAI account . Once you've got that, access to the API keys is next. These keys are secret handshakes between your app and ChatGPT, letting them communicate securely.

Step 2 : Import the OpenAI library: If your project speaks Python, adding the OpenAI library is a breeze. Just a quick " pip install openai " in your terminal, and you're set. For other languages , you might need to interact with the API directly through HTTP requests. Check out the official guide here .

Step 3 : Using your API key: With your API key in hand, authenticate your application. Keep this key safe ; it's the password to a lot of power. Typically, you'll use it in your code (securely) to make API calls.

Step 4 : Crafting your first request: How to use ChatGPT to do something cool? Whether you're asking for text generation or translation, it starts with a simple function call in your code, passing the prompt and any parameters like temperature (creativity level) and max tokens (length of the response).

Hooray! You have integrated GPT into your project. Next, for more inspiration, let's review some examples of how the ChatGPT API is being used in real life:

• Content creation bots : Imagine you're building a blog platform. Integrating ChatGPT to help users come up with blog post ideas or even draft posts can be a game changer. A simple prompt like "Give me blog post ideas about AI advancements" can release a flood of inspiration.
• Customer support automation : ChatGPT can power up your customer support by providing instant, accurate responses to common queries . Set it up to understand questions about your product or service, and watch your customer satisfaction bloom.
• Language learning apps : With ChatGPT, your app can offer conversational practice, grammar corrections, or vocabulary suggestions in a foreign language. It's like having a tutor available 24/7.

Like Uncle Ben once said, with great power comes great responsibility. Secure your API keys and monitor usage to prevent unexpected bills. Also, consider how you use AI to ensure it benefits your users positively.

Top 4 ChatGPT Use Cases

ChatGPT aids writers in unlocking new ideas and overcoming writer's block while also providing programmers with coding insights and solutions. With a few more examples incoming, let's see how it manages to do it all at once and get some inspiration for future projects.

Creative Writing and Content Generation

ChatGPT has become a go-to for many when it comes to flexing creative muscles or cranking out content . Writers, from newbies to professionals, found it an invaluable tool for breaking through writer's block or generating ideas for their next big project.

Imagine sitting down to write with your screen blank and your mind buzzing with the day's distractions. Then, you turn to ChatGPT. You type in a prompt, perhaps something as simple as "Write a story about a lost city." Seconds later, you have a starting point - a spark that turns on your imagination.

ChatGPT draws information from a deep well of internet text. It's read more books, articles, and websites than any human could in multiple lifetimes . This reading list allows it to generate text across a wide spectrum of genres and styles. Need a sci-fi story set in a post-apocalyptic future? ChatGPT can do that. Or perhaps you're looking for a heartfelt letter to a friend? ChatGPT has you covered there too.

Content creators use ChatGPT for stories and scripts . Bloggers turn to it for article ideas or even complete drafts on topics ranging from technology to travel. Its ability to adjust tone and style means it can suit any audience, whether it's a formal report or a casual blog post.

One of the most fascinating aspects of ChatGPT is its potential for collaboration. Artists and writers prompt ChatGPT for plot twists, character dialogues, or descriptive passages, then refine and integrate these suggestions into their work. It's like having a ghostwriter who's always available , day or night.

Yet, for all its capabilities, ChatGPT isn't without its quirks. It might occasionally veer off course or offer a take that's more humorous than helpful. These moments, though, often add a touch of unpredictability and fun to the creative process. In the end, ChatGPT stands out as a source of inspiration. Its influence is growing, shaping how stories are told and content is created.

Code Generation, Debugging, and Learning Programming

After learning how to use ChatGPT many programmers found their new go-to partner , from experts to those just dipping their toes into the coding waters. Here's a closer look at how it's shaking things up.

Say you're working on a project and need a quick example of a Python function to sort a list of numbers . ChatGPT can generate that in seconds.

Most of the time, you would need a few iterations to get the code working; however, this time, it was a one-shot.

Debugging can often feel like looking for a needle in a haystack. Here's where ChatGPT comes in handy too. Feed it the error messages or describe the bug, and it will suggest potential fixes. It might point out if you're missing a semicolon or using a variable out of scope, saving hours of frustration and forehead-smacking.

ChatGPT is also a patient teacher. Interested in learning JavaScript but have a background in Ruby? ChatGPT can help translate concepts between languages with explanations and examples in a way that makes sense. It easily adapts to your pace and style of learning.

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There are stories of developers using ChatGPT to write entire sections of code for new projects. Others share how ChatGPT helped them understand complex algorithms by breaking them down into simpler steps. Some even credit ChatGPT with helping them pass coding interviews by practicing with it daily.

ChatGPT's influence extends beyond writing and debugging code. It's helping people think differently about problem-solving and algorithm design. By interacting with ChatGPT, programmers can refine their logic, learn to ask better questions, and even improve their documentation skills.

In the often intimidating world of programming, ChatGPT makes coding more accessible, understandable, and fun . Whether you're debugging late at night, learning a new programming language, or just needing someone to bounce ideas off, ChatGPT is becoming an integral tool in the programmer's toolkit.

ChatGPT for Learning and Educational Content Creation

ChatGPT has turned into a game-changer for education too. From complex math problems to history essays, ChatGPT lends a hand, making learning more accessible and engaging.

Teachers are getting creative with it. Imagine a history class where ChatGPT helps students experience dialogues between historical figures. It's not just about dates and events anymore; it's about bringing history to life and making it into a conversation. This approach converts learning from a passive into a more interactive experience. Sounds fun, right?

For students struggling with writing, ChatGPT can be a second pair of eyes with its suggestions for improvements. And for those learning new languages, ChatGPT acts as a patient language partner, ready to practice conversation anytime, correcting mistakes, and boosting confidence along the way.

Educational content creators are finding a valuable ally in ChatGPT as well. It helps to generate new ideas, outline articles, or even draft entire lessons. This can be a big time saver, allowing you to focus more on engaging with your audience and less on staring at a blank page.

Yet, with all its advantages, ChatGPT is far away from being a replacement for teachers. It offers information and help, but the guidance, wisdom, and personal touch of educators are irreplaceable. The goal is to blend ChatGPT's capabilities with traditional teaching methods, creating a hybrid model where technology supports humans.

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Automating Customer Service and Reducing Workload

Businesses are finding new teammates in ChatGPT, especially when it comes to customer service. This AI tool is changing the way companies interact with their customers , making conversations smoother and responses quicker. Imagine a customer service agent who never sleeps , eats, or takes a break. That's ChatGPT for you.

Reducing workload? Absolutely. ChatGPT has this uncanny ability to take on a variety of tasks. From scheduling appointments to sending follow-up emails, it's got it covered. This not only speeds up operations but also ensures nothing falls through the cracks.

For starters, ChatGPT can handle a flood of customer queries without breaking a sweat. From answering FAQs to solving basic issues, an extra set of hands on deck. This means human agents can focus on more complex cases while ChatGPT takes care of the routine stuff. It's a win-win; customers get instant responses, and humans aren't overwhelmed .

Then there's the task of gathering information. ChatGPT can ask the right questions and collect details from customers. This information is gold for businesses looking to understand their audience better. Like a detective on the team - one that's good at piecing together little clues.

And let's not forget the cool factor. ChatGPT can turn a standard customer service interaction into something memorable. It can crack jokes, offer personalized recommendations, or simply ensure the conversation flows naturally. This adds a bit of warmth and personality to digital interactions, making customers feel more connected to the brand.

In the grand scheme of things, integrating ChatGPT into business operations isn't just about keeping up with technology. It's about enhancing the customer experience, streamlining workflows, and, ultimately, building stronger relationships.

How To Improve Your ChatGPT Experience

Mastering how to use ChatGPT is simpler than you think. Imagine having a toolkit that transforms every interaction with GPT into a seamless exchange of information, just for you.

This chapter is that toolkit!

The art of formulating prompts, and engaging in online communities will get you exactly what you need from ChatGPT, making every conversation more productive.

Best Strategies for Formulating Finer Prompts

Getting the best out of ChatGPT often comes down to how you ask. Think of it as talking to a very literal genie; the clarity of your request can make a world of difference. Here are some tips to shape those wishes into prompts that ChatGPT can work with.

• Be clear and direct : Start with clarity. If you're looking for an answer to a question, make it straightforward. Instead of saying, "I'm wondering about ChatGPT," just ask, " What is ChatGPT?" or " How does ChatGPT work? " This direct approach helps ChatGPT understand exactly what you're after, increasing the chances of a spot-on answer.
• Add context : Giving context is like adding spices to a recipe; it improves the outcome. If you're into a topic that's broad or has many angles, offer a bit of background. For instance, asking, "Tell me about the history of the Roman Empire," could lead anywhere. Narrowing it down to " Tell me about Julius Caesar's role in the Roman Empire " guides ChatGPT to a more focused response.

• Use specific keywords : Keywords are your friends. They are guidelines for ChatGPT to your query. If you're curious about the science behind rainbows, instead of asking, "Why are rainbows colorful?" try, " Explain the refraction and dispersion of light in rainbows. " Keywords like "refraction" and "dispersion" signal to ChatGPT the level of detail you're seeking.
• Frame your question for the expected answer : The structure of your prompt can influence the type of answer you get. Looking for ideas? Frame your question to invite creativity. Need a straightforward fact? Ask directly. If you're after a list, include that in your prompt, like, " List the top five reasons... " This tells ChatGPT the format you're expecting, helping it to respond accordingly.
• Feedback loop : Not only do you learn how to use ChatGPT, but it also learns from you. If an answer misses the mark, refine your prompt and try again . This iterative approach isn't just about getting the answer you need; it's about teaching ChatGPT how to serve you better in the future.

By honing the art of prompt crafting, you turn each interaction into an opportunity for more precise, informative, and useful exchanges. It's a dialogue, and how you engage determines the outcome of the conversation.

User Communities, Forums, and Learning from Experience

Learning how to use ChatGPT isn't just about mastering commands or feeding a perfect prompt. It's also about becoming a part of bigger communities, where shared experiences can offer new insights and strategies.

These forums and communities are goldmines of information , where you can stumble upon uses of ChatGPT you might never have considered. Do you have a tricky question? Someone else might have faced it before and found a solution.

Reddit , for example, hosts discussions with enthusiasts sharing tips, tricks, and even their latest ChatGPT-powered projects. From automating boring tasks to generating art, the range of topics is as big as the internet itself.

Then there's GitHub , where developers showcase their ChatGPT integrations, offering a peek into the future of AI in software development. GitHub repositories often come with documentation that could guide you through the often-tangled coding of your version of ChatGPT.

Don't overlook the official OpenAI forums and the ChatGPT support page. Here, you'll find official updates, bug fixes, and feature announcements directly from the source. It's also a place to raise your voice; feedback from users like you shapes the future of ChatGPT.

Learning from personal experience ties everything together. Each interaction with ChatGPT is a learning opportunity. Experiment with different prompts, note what works well and what doesn't , and share your discoveries with the community. Your unique issues and solutions could help others too .

Remember, every great invention starts with a curious mind and a question. The more you engage, experiment, and exchange ideas, the richer your ChatGPT experience will become. So, join these communities, ask questions, and share your stories.

ChatGPT's Limitations and Future Directions

While ChatGPT's advancements are noteworthy, it's essential to acknowledge its limitations, too. Let's talk about where it shines a little less brightly and what that means for users and developers [1] alike.

Accuracy Struggles, Content Generation Limits, and Tokens

ChatGPT tries to understand and generate human-like text, but sometimes it's a bit like an eager student who hasn't quite mastered the subject. It can misunderstand questions or offer answers that miss the mark. This is partly because language is complex , filled with nuances and meanings that can shift with context. ChatGPT does its best, but it doesn't always get it right .

Then there's the matter of creativity and content generation. Ask it to write a story or come up with a poem, and it will give it a go. Yet, the results might not always have the spark or originality you'd find in human-made art. It's constantly learning, but it hasn't quite captured the essence of creativity that comes so naturally to people.

Another technical hiccup comes in the form of token limits. Without getting too tangled in technicalities, think of tokens as pieces of information. ChatGPT can only handle so many at once . This can limit the length and depth of the conversations you have with it. It's like trying to have a chat with someone who can only hold so much in their memory at a time before they need to reset.

These limitations paint a picture of a technology that's groundbreaking yet still finding its footing. ChatGPT has opened doors and sparked imaginations worldwide , setting the stage for a future where AI might just understand the subtleties of human language a bit more clearly. This brings us back to the fundamental questions: "How does ChatGPT work, and why does it face such challenges?" For now, it remains a work in progress - a glimpse into what's possible as technology marches forward.

Ethical Usage, Privacy, and Security

You need to learn how to use ChatGPT at the same time walking carefully on moral grounds, especially when it comes to privacy, security, and responsible use . This means being mindful of the data shared and understanding the implications of its use.

When discussing privacy, it's critical to remember that ChatGPT learns from interactions. So, sharing sensitive or personal information during a chat could pose risks . Imagine talking to someone with a phenomenal memory; you'd choose your words carefully, right? That's a good rule of thumb when interacting with ChatGPT.

On the security front, while OpenAI has implemented robust measures to secure data, threats evolve constantly . Regularly updating security practices and being cautious of the information fed into ChatGPT can mitigate potential risks. Think of it as locking your doors in the neighborhood.

Responsible use of ChatGPT also means acknowledging its limitations . It's an AI, not a human, so its understanding and responses are based on the data it's trained on. Relying on it for critical decisions without human oversight can lead to unexpected outcomes. It's something like using a very advanced calculator; it helps with math but doesn't understand history problems.

Moreover, using ChatGPT to create misleading content , spread false information, or harm others contradicts the ethical guidelines set forth for AI use. It's akin to being given a powerful tool; using it to build and innovate can lead to growth, but misuse can cause damage.

In essence, the ethical use of ChatGPT revolves around respect for privacy , diligence in security, and commitment to responsible and constructive use. By adhering to these practices, you can explore the potential of ChatGPT while maintaining a safe, respectful, and ethical digital environment.

Innovative Uses of ChatGPT and Future Prospects

ChatGPT, the AI sensation, has been turning heads not just for what it can do now but for the limitless possibilities it promises for the future. It's delightful to see how creative minds have already started pushing boundaries, finding uses that hint at even more exciting times ahead [2] .

In healthcare, they learned how to use ChatGPT to start conversations we never thought possible. Therapists are exploring its use as a preliminary tool for providing mental health support . It's not replacing human therapists, of course, but it offers a non-judgmental space for patients to express themselves freely, breaking down barriers to seeking help.

Creative industries are witnessing a renaissance with ChatGPT at their side. Musicians and writers are collaborating with AI to spark new ideas. There's a buzz about novels co-authored by ChatGPT and human writers , blending the creativity of the human mind with the AI's ability to process and generate text in novel ways.

Even more intriguing is GPT's role in environmental conservation. Researchers are experimenting with using it to analyze and predict climate patterns , potentially offering insights into combating climate change .

On the lighter side, ChatGPT is making strides in the culinary world. Fancy a recipe created by AI? ChatGPT is being used to craft unique recipes , sometimes combining ingredients in ways a human chef might not consider. It's adding a dash of unpredictability and excitement to cooking, making mealtime an adventure.

As we look to the future, it's clear ChatGPT is just revving up. Its current applications are impressive, no doubt, but they merely scratch the surface of its potential.

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The Latest Updates on GPT. Peek into GPT-5?

Peering into the latest development updates on GPT models, particularly GPT-5, reveals a horizon filled with improvements and ambitious goals. With an industry focus on scaling models, GPT-5 promises to extend through a combination of increased parameter size, multimodal capabilities, and a step toward more personalized AI experiences.

• Parameter size and abilities : GPT-5 is anticipated to make a jump in parameters, aiming to surpass the benchmark set by GPT-4 , which was reported at around 1.7 trillion parameters . Though specifics are under wraps, a 4-5x increase in parameters compared to GPT-4 could place GPT-5 among the most advanced models. This expansion is expected to not only improve the model's raw computing power but also improve the context window and up-to-date knowledge, potentially introducing real-time processing capabilities for certain types of information.
• Multimodality and user experience : With GPT-4 laying the groundwork for multimodal interactions through its support for speech and image functionalities, GPT-5 is poised to take a significant step forward. The introduction of video processing capabilities, coupled with improvements in accuracy, suggests a transformation in how users interact with AI, making it more natural. Innovations like the text-to-video generator Sora hinted at the ambitious multimodal direction OpenAI is taking, offering a glimpse into what might be possible with GPT-5 .

• Personalization and customization : A noteworthy ambition for GPT-5 is to transcend its role as a chatbot to become a fully autonomous agent capable of executing tasks and making decisions based on user preferences and external data sources. This leap towards personalization is expected to incorporate a user's data, such as emails and calendars, into the model's operational framework, making AI interactions individualized and intuitive.

While we do not know the exact GPT-5 release date yet, it is speculated to be available in the summer . However, the developments surrounding it paint a picture of a future where AI is more intelligent and integrated into our daily lives. You might even need to re-learn how to use ChatGPT again.

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Conclusions.

Wrapping up, ChatGPT has swiftly become a pivotal resource , from creative writing to coding to even educational support. Its rapid adoption, underscored by millions of users within months of launch, attests to its utility and the growing fascination with AI's capabilities.

On the flip side, ChatGPT has quirks . The accuracy of its responses can sometimes waver , and there are limits to the creativity and depth of content it can produce. The dialogue with ChatGPT can also hit a ceiling with token limitations , highlighting areas ripe for future improvements.

Ethically, navigating the use of ChatGPT involves a careful balance, especially concerning privacy and security. Users are urged to engage with mindfulness about the information shared and the potential implications of its use.

Looking ahead, future versions like GPT-5 signal a big step towards even more capable, personalized, and multimodal interactions. Improvements promise to elevate the AI experience, making it more integral to daily tasks and creative work.

In essence, ChatGPT is an indicator of the future of AI interaction , blending the capabilities of technology with the nuances of human communication. It is a clear example of the potential for AI to become an even more seamless part of our lives.

While waiting for new GPT to be released, embrace new technology with tools like Writesonic and Synthesia , learn useful knowledge from educational platforms: Udemy , Coursera , and Datacamp , and become an AI master.

Scientific References

1. M. Alawida, S. Mejri, A. Mehmood, et.al.: "A Comprehensive Study of ChatGPT: Advancements, Limitations, and Ethical Considerations in Natural Language Processing and Cybersecurity";

2. S. S. Sohail, F. Farhat, Y. Himeur, et.al.: "Decoding ChatGPT: A Taxonomy of Existing Research, Current Challenges, and Possible Future Directions".

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How to use ChatGPT effectively?

You can use ChatGPT to automate various tasks, like writing assistance, generating content like stories or poems , answering any question  across numerous topics, and even coding . It’s designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the question you provide.

Is ChatGPT free to use?

Yes, ChatGPT has a free version that you can access via OpenAI's platform. However, premium features like the GPT-4 model and DALL-E image generation are not available with the free version. OpenAI also offers paid plans that provide these features and higher usage limits for extensive or commercial use.

What are Artificial Intelligence tools?

AI tools are software environments designed to help people create art, write content, edit or generate videos . AI applications integrate various models, including machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), deep learning (DL), or data analytics to execute various tasks. AI platforms like Synthesia or Writesonic enable individuals or businesses to create realistic AI-generated videos, output high-quality written content, and automate various tasks.

What are the types of AI tools?

The most popular types of AI tools include writing assistants, chatbots, voice and image generators, and website builders. Writing assistants , such as Writesonic and Quillbot , are designed to help users create content, fix grammar, or rephrase the whole text. While chatbots can partially automate and alleviate customer success work, AI apps such as video generators and editors ( Pictory , Descript , and Synthesia ) can help you customize and make new footage. AI website builders are great for quick and efficient website creation.

How to pick the best AI platform?

Choosing the best AI tools mainly depends on the specific task you plan to accomplish. The general criteria that should be considered are the quality of the services, speed, user interface, and pricing structure . For instance, if you’re looking for AI platforms that you could use as writing assistants, Writesonic and Quillbot tick off the above-mentioned criteria. On the other hand, if you need AI applications for editing or generating videos, Pictory and Synthesia are known to deliver excellent results. Ultimately, the best choice will vary depending on your needs.

Which AI applications are the best for beginners?

Platforms such as Writesonic , Quillbot , and Synthesia are known for their beginner-friendly features, which makes them some of the best AI tools for starting out. In fact, finding the best artificial intelligence applications for beginners is not a difficult task, as most platforms offer a fairly similar and minimalistic interface. While some software may be a bit harder to get used to, the majority of the work is done by AI, and users are more likely to encounter challenges with prompt engineering than with navigating the software.

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• How to Write a Paper with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples

How to Write a Paper with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples

Published on 17 August 2023 by Koen Driessen .

A good research paper demonstrates your academic writing skills and knowledge of your chosen topic.

Your research paper should be based on in-depth independent research. However, generative AI tools like ChatGPT can be effectively used throughout the research process to:

• Brainstorm research questions
• Develop a methodology
• Create an outline
• Find sources
• Summarise and paraphrase text
• Provide feedback

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Table of contents

Brainstorming research questions, developing a methodology, creating an outline, finding sources, summarising or paraphrasing text, receiving feedback, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

You can use ChatGPT to help formulate research questions , brainstorm potential thesis statements , or narrow down a broad subject area to a specific topic that interests you.

However, make sure that the outputs make sense and meet the requirements of your assignment. You can adapt these outputs manually, or use further prompts to ensure they meet your needs. For more information, see our tips for creating effective ChatGPT prompts .

• Generate three possible research questions for a research paper on the following topic: “The role of virtual reality in enhancing training and skill development in various industries.”
• “What are the cognitive and skill development benefits of virtual reality-based training compared to traditional training methods across different industries?”
• “How does the level of immersion in virtual reality training impact knowledge retention and skill transfer in fields such as medicine, aviation, and manufacturing?”
• “What are the key factors that influence the successful integration and adoption of virtual reality technology for training purposes in diverse industries, and what challenges hinder its widespread implementation?”

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Your paper should clearly indicate the data collection and analysis methods you used in your research.

You can use ChatGPT to help decide what kind of research you will conduct (e.g., qualitative or quantitative ), how you will analyse the data, and how you will mitigate potential research bias .

Bear in mind that you should be able to rationalize your chosen methodology . For example, you should ensure that it is either a standard methodology in the field or can be justified.

• Suggest three quantitative research methods appropriate to the following question: “What are the cognitive and skill development benefits of virtual reality-based training compared to traditional training methods in the field of healthcare?”
• Experimental Study: Conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) where healthcare professionals are randomly assigned to either a virtual reality-based training group or a traditional training group. Both groups would receive training in specific healthcare tasks, and their cognitive and skill development outcomes would be measured and compared. Performance metrics, such as accuracy, speed, and efficiency, could be quantitatively assessed to determine the benefits of virtual reality-based training over traditional methods.
• Survey Research: Design a comprehensive survey targeting healthcare professionals who have undergone both virtual reality-based training and traditional training. The survey could include Likert-scale questions and structured response options to gauge their perceived cognitive and skill development benefits from each training method. Additionally, open-ended questions could be included to gather qualitative insights on specific strengths and weaknesses of each training approach.
• Task Performance Analysis: Implement a task-based assessment that simulates real-life healthcare scenarios, where participants are evaluated on their ability to handle critical situations. Participants would go through both virtual reality-based training and traditional training before being assessed in the simulated scenarios. Their performance in the assessment could be objectively measured using predefined criteria, allowing for a quantitative comparison of skill development between the two training methods.

A clear outline can help structure your paper, organise your arguments effectively, and make your research more efficient.

You can use generative AI tools like ChatGPT to formulate a potential outline to help guide your research. You can be as specific as you like, giving an overview of your research objectives , main arguments, and any evidence you intend to include in your paper.

However, ChatGPT outputs sometimes contain factual inaccuracies. It’s important to check the headings and subheadings suggested in the output and adapt them to meet your needs.

• Create an outline for an academic research paper with the following research question:“What are the cognitive and skill development benefits of virtual reality-based training compared to traditional training methods in the field of healthcare?” The paper will be about 10 pages long.

B. Existing studies on cognitive and skill development benefits of virtual reality training

C. Comparison of virtual reality-based training with traditional training methods

D. Gaps in the literature and research limitations

III. Theoretical Framework

A. Theoretical basis for cognitive and skill development in training

B. Application of cognitive theories to virtual reality-based training

C. The role of immersive learning environments in skill acquisition

D. Conceptual framework for the study

IV. Research Methodology

A. Research design and approach (e.g., quasi-experimental, pre-post intervention)

B. Selection of participants and sample size calculation

C. Description of the virtual reality-based training and traditional training programs

D. Instruments and measures for assessing cognitive and skill development

E. Data collection procedures and ethical considerations

V. Data Analysis

A. Overview of statistical methods used for data analysis

B. Treatment of data and data cleaning

C. Quantitative analysis of cognitive and skill development outcomes

D. Presentation of findings with charts and tables

VI. Results

A. Presentation of the results of the cognitive and skill development assessments

B. Comparison of outcomes between virtual reality-based training and traditional training

C. Statistical significance and effect size analysis

D. Interpretation of the results and implications

VII. Discussion

A. Interpretation of findings in the context of the research question

B. Comparison of results with existing literature

C. Explanation of how virtual reality-based training impacts cognitive processes and skill development

D. Limitations of the study and areas for future research

VIII. Practical Implications

A. Practical applications of virtual reality-based training in healthcare settings

B. Recommendations for integrating virtual reality training in healthcare education

C. Benefits of virtual reality for continuous professional development in healthcare

IX. Conclusion

A. Summary of key findings

B. Reiteration of the research question and hypothesis

C. Contributions of the study to the field of healthcare training

D. Concluding remarks

X. References

You can use ChatGPT to help find sources relevant to your research. However, it’s important to be aware of the limitations of ChatGPT (for example, it occasionally cites nonexistent sources).

Instead of asking ChatGPT for specific source recommendations, try asking it for recommendations on the types of sources relevant to your research topic. You can also use it to generate a list of relevant keywords to use in your literature search.

• What types of sources could I use to write a research paper on the following research question? “What are the cognitive and skill development benefits of virtual reality-based training compared to traditional training methods in the field of healthcare?”
• Academic Journals: Peer-reviewed journals are valuable sources of scholarly research. Look for articles in medical education, cognitive psychology, virtual reality applications in healthcare, and technology-enhanced learning.
• Research Studies: Seek out published research studies that specifically investigate the impact of virtual reality-based training on cognitive and skill development in healthcare professionals.
• Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: These studies provide comprehensive overviews of existing research on a specific topic, making them a valuable source for summarizing and analyzing the overall evidence.
• Books and Book Chapters: Academic books and book chapters authored by experts in the fields of medical education, virtual reality, cognitive science, or instructional design can provide in-depth insights and theoretical foundations.
• Conference Proceedings: Proceedings from relevant conferences and symposiums may present the latest findings and advancements in virtual reality-based training and healthcare education.
• Educational Institution Websites: Universities and medical schools often publish research papers, case studies, and whitepapers related to medical education and virtual reality training.
• Industry Reports: Reports and whitepapers from healthcare organizations or technology companies exploring the benefits of virtual reality-based training in the healthcare sector.
• Government and Non-profit Organisations: Look for reports and publications from government agencies and non-profit organisations that focus on medical education and healthcare training.
• Online Databases: Utilize academic databases such as PubMed, Google Scholar, IEEE Xplore, and ScienceDirect to search for peer-reviewed research articles and conference papers.
• Expert Interviews: If possible, conduct interviews with experts in medical education, cognitive science, and virtual reality to gain valuable insights and perspectives.
• Surveys and Polls: Refer to reputable surveys and polls related to virtual reality-based training in the healthcare industry for additional statistical data.

You can use ChatGPT to paraphrase or summarise text. This can help you to condense sources to their most important points and explore new ways of expressing your ideas.

Alternatively you can use the more specialised tools featured on Scribbr’s AI writing resources page, which are designed specifically for these purposes and will give a smoother user experience.

• Provide a short summary of the following text:“One of the most profound applications of VR in healthcare is its use in surgical training. Traditionally, surgical training has relied on a combination of didactic lectures, observation of procedures, and hands-on experience in the operating room. However, these methods may not provide the ideal environment for novices to develop the necessary dexterity and spatial understanding essential for complex surgeries. VR overcomes these limitations by offering immersive, true-to-life simulations that allow surgeons to navigate through intricate anatomical structures, practice incisions, and learn to manage unexpected challenges that may arise during surgeries. This hands-on experience in a risk-free environment not only enhances technical skills but also builds confidence and reduces the learning curve for new surgical techniques.”
• Virtual Reality (VR) has a profound impact on healthcare, particularly in surgical training, as it provides immersive simulations that help surgeons develop dexterity, spatial understanding, and confidence for complex surgeries in a risk-free environment, ultimately enhancing their technical skills and reducing the learning curve.

When you’ve finished writing your research paper, you can use ChatGPT to receive feedback. You can be as specific as you like, selecting particular aspects the output should focus on (e.g., tone, clarity of structure, appropriateness of evidence to support your arguments).

You can also use ChatGPT to check grammar, spelling, and punctuation. However, it’s not designed for this purpose and occasionally misses errors. We recommend using a more specialised tool like Scribbr’s free grammar checker . Or, for more comprehensive feedback, Scribbr’s proofreading and editing service .

• Feedback the above text with regard to appropriateness of evidence and coherence of structure.
• The research paper demonstrates a well-structured and coherent presentation of the cognitive and skill development benefits of VR-based surgical training. The introduction effectively sets the context and rationale, while the literature review incorporates relevant historical and empirical evidence. The theoretical framework strengthens the foundation for the analysis.The methodology section could provide more details on the research design and study selection criteria. However, the sections on cognitive and skill development benefits present compelling evidence, supported by appropriate sub-sections.The exploration of improved patient outcomes lacks concrete examples but effectively outlines potential benefits. The section on challenges and future directions raises relevant points, but suggestions for solutions could enhance practicality.Overall, the paper combines theoretical, empirical, and practical evidence, offering a well-rounded approach. It establishes the significance of VR-based surgical training and concludes with a concise summary of key findings.

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.

No, having ChatGPT write your college essay can negatively impact your application in numerous ways. ChatGPT outputs are unoriginal and lack personal insight.

Furthermore, Passing off AI-generated text as your own work is considered academically dishonest . AI detectors may be used to detect this offense, and it’s highly unlikely that any university will accept you if you are caught submitting an AI-generated admission essay.

However, you can use ChatGPT to help write your college essay during the preparation and revision stages (e.g., for brainstorming ideas and generating feedback).

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, August 17). How to Write a Paper with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 30 May 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/using-ai-tools/chatgpt-paper/

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5 Things To Know About ChatGPT

Generative ai tools and resources at ut-austin.

ChatGPT is one of many generative AI tools now being used in educational contexts. We expect that new tools designed for specific purposes and applicable to different disciplinary contexts will be rapidly emerging in the near future. To that end, this resource, focused on ChatGPT, is designed to be adapted to fit different tools and pedagogical approaches. The CTL will continue to update our site with links to UT resources, News articles focusing on generative AI tools, and outlines of suggested approaches to adopting these tools. 

The following is a list of existing UT resources. We will continue to add to this list as new resources are developed. 

• Recommended Practices for Requiring the Use of Generative AI in the Classroom : The Office of Academic Technology (OAT) and the Office of Academic Affairs have developed recommendations for instructors who wish to require the use of generative AI tools in their classrooms. This guidance will be updated on an ongoing basis. If you have questions about these recommendations, please contact the OAT at  [email protected] .
• Addressing the Limitations of Using Generative AI for Learning : The Office of Academic Technology (OAT) has developed a set of guidelines for evaluating the limitations of generative AI tools. 
• Acceptable Use of ChatGPT and Similar AI Tools : This policy-based resource, from the Information Security Office (ISO) at UT-Austin, provides guidance on how to use generative AI Tools safely, without putting institutional, personal, or proprietary information at risk
• Statement on Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools in Art & Design Courses : Developed by the AI Tools in Education Taskforce, Arts and Design faculty subcommittee at UT Austin, this document includes resources on best practices for instructors specific to the adoption and use of tools in their classrooms, including syllabus script recommendations.
• Statement on Artificial Intelligence in Writing Flag Classes : The Faculty Writing Committee in the Center for the Skills and Experience Flags has been reviewing ChatGPT in light of other writing-related AI tools such as grammar checkers, plagiarism detection services, and automated citation systems. This resource is a summary of the committee's guidance, followed by a fuller discussion of high-level key points. Suggestions are grounded in essential writing pedagogy for the use of AI, including chatGPT, in the writing classroom.
• Texas McCombs' Instructional Innovation Resources : Developed by the the McCombs School of Business, this Canvas resource provides guidance on integrating technology into courses. It contains a rich set of resources and recommendations for ChatGPT/Generative AI. 
• "Reconsider ChatGPT for Academic Use" ( Daily Texan , February 16, 2023): This article offers the perspective of several students on the use of ChatGPT and generative AI tools. 
• Summer 2023 Webinars Recordings : Playlist of Summer 2023 CTL sessions on ChatGPT and GenerativeAI 

While questions about the impact of artificial intelligence in higher education are not new, the emergence of a new tool called ChatGPT that uses increasingly popular chatbot technology to generate human-like, long-form writing has opened the door to new curiosities and concerns.

This document provides suggestions for instructors who wonder how this tool may affect their course design and teaching. The content has been generated by our team, our campus community, and nationally/internationally recognized teaching and learning professionals. Please note this is a rapidly evolving issue with new perspectives, articles, and resources emerging regularly. CTL will continue to monitor developments and share them with the campus community as we are able, as well as create new resources and opportunities for interactions to guide our collective thinking.

1. What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a type of artificial intelligence model trained to generate coherent, human-like pieces of writing on a given topic. “ChatGPT was optimized for dialogue,” (1) which means users interact with a chatbot in a conversational context, and the chatbot will compose text based upon the user’s prompts. The bot is capable of generating text on a variety of topics and in a variety of styles, “you simply type in a question or give it a command and it generates text for you.” (2)

You may be interested in experimenting with the tool to learn more: https://chat.openai.com   Please be aware that ChatGPT is “free” because it collects information from its users (e.g., when and how users interact with the tool, users’ IP address, browser type, time zone, type of device, operating system, and country) and may share information with third-party vendors and affiliates (3). For those reasons, we suggest you avoid submitting any sensitive or personal information. In addition, we suggest you review the privacy policy and terms of service with students as a learning exercise.

For more information about ChatGPT, our colleague from the Office of Academic Technology Dr. Juile Schell created this brief video on what ChatGPT is, how to sign up for it, and how it works.

Another helpful resource to learn more about Chat GPT is this presentation developed by Dr. Torrey Trust (U Mass Amherst) that includes a variety of previously submitted prompts and completed output. (4)

2. Why is ChatGPT significant?

Students can enter an assignment prompt and receive a product they can turn in as their work. The text generated by the chatbot could be a well-composed and accurate response depending on the complexity of the assignment and the student’s skill in creating effective prompts. Many higher education instructors and scholars testing the tool report mixed responses, including: 

• ChatGPT-generated papers received B+ to A- minus grades according to a set rubric. 
• A ChatCPT-generated paper did not flag the Turnitin plagiarism detector tool (i.e., no plagiarism was detected).
• ChatGPT chatbot produced grammatically well-written papers relevant to the topic, but struggled with creating detailed responses that demonstrate deep understanding
• ChatGPT was able to do everything asked, including using APA formatting and correct citation; for Nursing content, it was accurate and specific.

In addition, many higher education scholars and practitioners have noted that the tool might be appealing for students in large courses where it can be a challenge to integrate personal approaches to teaching writing and providing in-depth feedback.

3. What are the downsides?

• Submitting personal information to the OpenAI website without an awareness of how the data will be used by OpenAI
• Students not mastering skills needed to succeed, such as audience design, global organization, and researching a topic
• Ethical violations, a lack of integrity
• Uncritical use of digital technologies

At the same time, there is also a downside to banning this technology and neglecting to understand why it was created and the problems it is attempting to solve.

4. Where is ChatGPT going?

The applications of artificial intelligence technology will continue to evolve in ways that currently may not be clear, requiring ongoing conversations focused on ethics, instructional values, and effective pedagogy.

5. What are the implications for UT Austin instructors?

As a first step, learning about this tool will help instructors gain awareness and know to seek assistance when issues related to ChatGPT arise. In addition, the release of ChatGPT encourages us to revisit the best ways to assess student learning in a variety of instructional contexts (5). It invites us to ask important questions, such as:

• Why and how do we best equip students as strong writers?
• What other ways can students demonstrate learning in addition to written papers? 
• What is the best way to solicit student writing that is meaningful and authentic?
• If students rely on ChatGPT as a source of information to answer factual questions, how will that affect their development of research skills?

This focus on the relationship between students and instructors and the educational mission of the university fits with broader efforts underway to reinforce the importance of the process of learning, including making and correcting mistakes. The university is in the process of refreshing our honor code and honor code affirmation to renew our commitment to supporting students in their journey to master complex knowledge and skills. 

With these types of questions and issues in mind, we have gathered a variety of suggestions you can pick and choose to incorporate in your teaching practice if students’ use of ChatGPT is relevant for you.

Incorporating one or two of the following approaches may help ease concerns and challenges that could arise with the introduction of the ChatGPT tool:

As you get ready to begin your class by preparing course documents and resources, make sure that you address appropriate or inappropriate uses of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT in a section of your syllabus. You may choose to place it within or near statements address academic integrity. Please explore the Provost's "Your Syllabus at UT Austin" website as well as UT's Student Conduct and Academic Integrity site for additional options and resources.  

As you craft your syllabus statements, you may wish to adopt one of the following three models and use them as templates: 

"The use of artificial intelligence tools (such as ChatGPT) in this class:

• …is strictly prohibited. This includes using AI to generate ideas, to outline an approach, to answer questions, to solve problems, or to create original language. All work in this course must be your own or created in group work, where allowed).
• …shall be permitted on a limited basis. You will be informed as to the assignments for which AI may be utilized. You are also welcome to seek my prior-approval to use AI writing tools on any assignment. In either instance, AI writing tools should be used with caution and proper citation, as the use of AI should be properly attributed. Using AI writing tools without my permission or authorization, or failing to properly cite AI even where permitted, shall constitute a violation of UT Austin’s Institutional Rules on academic integrity.
• …is permitted for students who wish to use them, provided the content generated by AI is properly cited.

If you are considering the use of AI writing tools but are unsure if you are allowed or the extent to which they may be utilized appropriately, please ask."

For additional suggested syllabi statements, please visit our CTL webpage that contains a range of different statements that you may use and adapt.

• Be clear on what you want your students to know and be able to do or demonstrate by the end of the course and why that knowledge is valuable to their lives. (See this resource for assistance in developing learning outcomes for your course.) Help students see that the ways you are assessing their learning are key to understanding what they are gaining from the course and where they may need extra coaching and support. (6)
• In particular, “If you can explain to students the value of writing, and convince them that you are genuinely interested in their ideas, they are less likely to reach for the workaround.” (7)
• Have an open discussion with your students about the ethical implications of ChatGPT and the value of authentic learning for students’ lifelong development as learners. This may include having conversations around digital literacy and bias in research and scholarship, as AI writing tools like ChatGPT are limited to the public source material they have access to on the internet. Don’t feel you have to have all of the answers, as this is a continually evolving issue. (6)
• Ask students to reference and/or cite class materials, notes, and sources ( particularly sources that are normally behind paywalls but available through the UT Libraries subscription databases and journals. ) in their written assignments. This instruction is valuable because ChatGPT draws on text models from public websites.
• “Require students to reflect more deeply and critically on course topics. This tip is always a good assessment strategy and ChatGPT currently performs better on more superficial and less detailed responses.” (8)
• Use in-class time for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding in a variety of ways through low-tech, low stakes in-person activities like freewriting and live presentations.
• Craft an assignment where you generate a ChatGPT output based on a prompt and ask your students to critique the response, indicating where it did a good job of articulating key points and what nuances it missed. (For 10 other ways to creatively use ChatGPT in course assignments, see “Update your course syllabus for ChatGPT” ; keep in mind that asking students to engage with ChatGPT may generate privacy concerns, so it may be better practice to provide them with a copy of ChatGPT responses that they can use.)
• Give a hug: empathy, collaboration, communication, and leadership skills;
• Solve a mystery: generating questions and problem finding; and
• Tell a story: finding what's relevant in a sea of data or applying values, ethics, morals, or aesthetic principles to a situation. (9)
• Carefully scaffold assignments with time and space for students to complete each step along the way, and consider whether the number of time-intensive tasks might require more bandwidth than students have to spend. Students are more likely to utilize a tool like ChatGPT when they are short on time. (6)
• Treat ChatGPT as a tool that some students may want to use to help get started writing. For example, students who have difficulty starting writing assignments might be encouraged to generate a paragraph with ChatGPT as a stub that enables them to continue writing. As long as the student ultimately adds significant new material and thoroughly edits or ultimately eliminates the output from ChatGPT, they are producing a document that reflects their own work.

One way to help encourage students to make better decisions about using tools such as ChatGPT is to design your classroom climate to engender mastery approaches to learning, which involve a focus on deeply understanding the knowledge and skills rather than simply achieving a particular score on an assessment. In a mastery-oriented classroom, students are more likely to engage in strategies that will help them truly learn the material rather than for the goal of performing a task and receiving a grade for their work.

Three simple tips for encouraging mastery approaches in higher education classrooms include:

• offering flexible evaluation design: consider providing opportunities for students to revise and redo specific portions of assignments; 
• focusing feedback on process and effort: offer feedback oriented toward student effort and their learning processes rather than on high grades and performance relative to others. When possible offer elaborative feedback rather than feedback based simply on correctness.
• building a sense of belonging: discuss, emphasize, and model that making errors and mistakes is part of everyone's learning processes rather than something that only poor performers or people who "don't get it" do.

Larger, Ongoing Issues for UT Austin & Higher Education

UT Austin is putting in place a structure to respond to new developments such as ChatGPT. The Academic Affairs team consists of experts in teaching and learning, assessment, and academic technology. The team also engages with faculty from across campus and welcomes your participation in our activities. This portfolio will convene campus conversations to evaluate investments in tools, technologies, and instructional practices that help us accomplish the objectives articulated in the strategic plan. Excellence in these areas of work can be achieved through strong partnerships and collaborative vision. 

Next Steps for CTL 

• Continue to learn about the tool and stay updated on new developments
• Convene campus conversations to hear from multiple perspectives
• Create resources to support the teaching community
• Identify policies and practices that advance authentic assessment in courses

In-text citations

• ChatGPT FAQ | OpenAI Help Center
• AI ChatGPT Overview.pdf, Center for Teaching and Learning, American University of Armenia
• ChatGPT, Dr. Torrey Trust
• ChatGPT & Education, Dr. Torrey Trust
• What If We Create a Culture of “Transparent Assessment” (AI & AI), Maha Bali
• Update Your Course Syllabus for chatGPT | by Ryan Watkins | Dec, 2022 | Medium
• Will ChatGPT Change the Way You Teach? EdSurge Podcast
• https://utexas.instructure.com/courses/1293240/pages/chatgpt-faculty-resources (unauthorized)
• 3 Things People Can Do In The Classroom That Robots Can't : NPR Ed

Additional resources

• Faculty Writing Committee Statement on AI in Writing Flag Classes
• "Teaching" Newsletter, Jan. 5, 2022, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Some ill-formed thoughts about AI, robot colleagues, resistance, refusal. Anne-Marie Scott
• Teaching Experts Are Worried About ChatGPT, but Not for the Reasons You Think, Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education
• How People Learn II  (See page 121) - Mastery Learning Resources

Acknowledgements:

The content of this document is inspired by the format from the Educause “7 Things You Should Know About” series.

In addition, many of the perspectives and strategies shared in this document were formed through conversation with our colleagues on campus who support teaching and learning at UT, including Brandon Campitelli, Mary Crawford, Linda Neavel Dickens, Rachelle (Shelly) Furness, Mario Guerra, Jeannette Herman, Kristie Loescher, Art Markman, Michele Ostrow, Julie Schell, George Schorn, and Sean White. We are grateful for this growing network of partners that help us respond to rapid changes affecting higher education.

An empirical study to understand how students use ChatGPT for writing essays and how it affects their ownership

As large language models (LLMs) become more powerful and ubiquitous, systems like ChatGPT are increasingly used by students to help them with writing tasks. To better understand how these tools are used, we investigate how students might use an LLM for essay writing, for example, to study the queries asked to ChatGPT and the responses that ChatGPT gives. To that end, we plan to conduct a user study that will record the user writing process and present them with the opportunity to use ChatGPT as an AI assistant. This study’s findings will help us understand how these tools are used and how practitioners — such as educators and essay readers — should consider writing education and evaluation based on essay writing.

1. Introduction

Over the past few years, HCI researchers have been looking into how we can use Large Language Models(LLMs) as tools to enhance the creation process   (Gero et al . , 2023 ; Zhang et al . , 2023 ; Han et al . , 2023 ) . One side of the research examines how AI has become relevant to writers  (Gero et al . , 2023 ; Zhang et al . , 2023 ) . For example, ChatGPT can provide assistance in creating ideas or proofreading an essay. Although there is concern about how students might use these LLMs to do the work for them, many instructors view the increasing use of these tools as inevitable and believe that students can still learn effectively through the thoughtful use of AI coding assistants   (Wang et al . , 2023 ) . Writing assistant tools have emerged in different ways over the last two decades, and there have been numerous papers looking into their effectiveness on essay writing for students, especially for ESL writers  (Huang et al . , 2020 ; Dong and Shi, 2021 ; Jayavalan and Razali, 2018 ; Karyuatry, 2018 ; ONeill and Russell, 2019 ; Koltovskaia, 2020 ) . While most students find increased performance with Grammarly, for example, they do not effectively use the tool, and only make moderate changes to their drafts. ChatGPT has also been investigated as a tool to help students and researchers in the creation process for natural and computer languages (Shoufan, 2023 ; Liu et al . , 2023 ; Murillo and D’Angelo, 2023 ; Stark et al . , 2023 ) . As LLMs serve as practical support tools and can produce work of comparable quality to that of humans, it can be a challenge for readers to consider these tools when they consume written content

One particular domain that shares such challenges is writing education. As these systems become stronger and more efficient, students might use ChatGPT to write their papers. This presents new, unique challenges for education. Several articles have been published in recent years on the creation of policies and expectations of LLM assistance in education (Adams et al . , 2022 ; Cotton et al . , 2023 ; Halaweh, 2023 ; Biswas, 2023 ) , and most of them have come to the conclusion that while the use of LLM will become more prevalent in the future, instructors should prepare ways for students to use it effectively. Other investigators have investigated the different risks and benefits of using these LLMs in educational environments  (Anders, 2023 ; Sok and Heng, 2023 ; Joyner, 2023 ; Warner, 2023 ; Mosaiyebzadeh et al . , 2023 ) . These papers discuss the different ways in which we can implement policies to help use LLM assistants. Other researchers have looked at the effectiveness of ChatGPT in problem-solving process (Shoufan, 2023 ; Rudolph et al . , 2023 ; Ali et al . , 2023 ; Moore et al . , 2022 ) . These papers have all found that while ChatGPT is effective at replicating human work. However, we do not understand how ChatGPT will impact how students learn essential academic skills such as writing. To understand the impact, we first need to understand how writers may use ChatGPT in their writing practice in an educational context.

Our user study seeks to answer the following research questions.

RQ1: In what ways do students use LLM-powered tools, in our case ChatGPT, in essay writing?

RQ2: How does using LLM-powered tools affect students’ perceived ownership?

Understanding the answers to these questions will help us refine how we should design writing assistant tools that integrate LLM-powered intelligence into the tools. Furthermore, this research can be leveraged to grasp the level of trust students place in LLMs, and the various approaches — policy and learning activities — instructors can adopt to prepare their students to learn writing skills and utilize these tools effectively.

To understand the different ways students use ChatGPT, we need to track the queries they make and the responses that ChatGPT provides. Since ChatGPT is an independent app, we built a system that makes ChatGPT available within the writing platform so that we can record user interactions on a large scale. Using the tool, we plan to conduct a study asking students to write an essay with ChatGPT assistance and collect data — query, response, and writing — for further analysis. We outline the details of the study below.

2.1. Instrument Development

Our application has two main features: the ChatGPT feature and a text editor. Both features are developed to track how the essay was written and what kinds of queries and responses are generated in ChatGPT, and we chose a web application to replicate ChatGPT. We want to simulate the experience of using ChatGPT in our design, so we use a tab feature to simulate a modern browser.

The first ’tab’ (Fig  1 ) of our application is a writing platform that can record the essay writing process at keystroke levels. The participant will be asked to answer an essay question in a text box that records inputs from the user, tracking cursor position, insertions, deletions, cuts, and pastes performed. We also record the timestamp so that we can see when the user made each edit. Then, we will take this recording to observe and analyze their writing process asynchronously. Having the time stamps allows us to see how they alternate between the editor and the in-house ChatGPT and how they integrated ChatGPT responses into their writing (e.g., pasted text). Later, we plan on using the recorded scenarios for an educator to evaluate what level of ChatGPT reliance is considered cheating or plagiarism. All of this will be sent to a database on submission. These features were implemented using CodeMirror 5 API and the CodeMirror-Record (Jisuanke., 2023 ) files.

To track how users use LLM chat tools like ChatGPT, we implement a chat-bot with the Open AI API (model GPT3.5-turbo), shown in Fig  2 . Users are allowed to ask any question, but the bot will be pre-prompted to be an essay assistance tool. As users use the tool, we record their query and time stamp to see how and when ChatGPT was prompted for assistance during the creation process. This will also be sent to the database on submission.

2.2. Study Details

We will ask the user to write the response to a pre-selected essay question that we have chosen and received from a professor at our university who teaches a junior-level ethics course, i.e., Professionalism in Computing. Using this prompt, we will see how university students might use ChatGPT for help with assignments.

Lastly, we will ask the user to complete an exit survey to see how users felt about using ChatGPT when writing their essays. These questions will be focused on how the tool impacts their writing performance and their perceived ownership of the essay (shown in Appendix A.1). As mentioned above, we want to simulate browser tabs for a few reasons. We want the writers to feel that ChatGPT is available to them but not forced upon them. They can choose whether or not to use it, and it is not always on the screen when writing as a distraction.

For recruitment, we will collect our data from students in an ethics and professionalism course at our university. Most of these students are in their third year and are familiar with essay writing. We will give them a monetary incentive to help with the recruitment process.

2.3. Data Analysis

We plan to analyze our data in multiple different ways. First, we will look directly at the queries made to ChatGPT. Using open coding, we will categorize these questions to see how users prompt the LLM. This will provide us with a better understanding of how people use ChatGPT in the essay creation process.

Next, we look at the essay itself. As previously stated, the recording features track the user’s inputs and store them in our database with timestamps. With this data, we can understand how the response they received from ChatGPT contributes to the writing process by comparing the responses that they get and what new content is added or how the essay is revised immediately after the responses from ChatGPT. This provides us with insight into how the users use LLM-powered tools and their effectiveness. The example metrics that we planned to use include the number of words copied ChatGPT and eventually contributed to the final text, the pace of writing, and the types of generation (e.g., keystroke, pasted text, deleted text, cut-and-pasted text) and how that correlates to ChatGPT usage.

We also plan to look at where users made changes to their code. As ChatGPT is available throughout the creation process, understanding where the changes in the writing were made is important, for example, if users backtrack and use ChatGPT as a proofreader. This could cause changes to the first line of their writing at the end of the submission, and we will be able to visualize it. Other users could potentially ignore the ChatGPT response and continue with their writing task, so looking at the location will also increase our understanding of how users utilize the LLM in their writing.

3. Expected Contributions

Overall, we expect to gain insight into how users use ChatGPT when writing essays. We will be able to identify patterns in the questions asked and to what extent they implement ChatGPT in their writing. This will be beneficial to instructors who intend to better understand how their students might use ChatGPT and allow them to recognize the level at which their students might use an LLM in their assignment or how to better integrate ChatGPT into their course. This will also benefit software engineers or individuals who wish to create an LLM-powered writing assistant because they can see what features and questions are most common, leading to the development of a better tool.

• Adams et al . (2022) Catherine Adams, Patti Pente, Gillian Lemermeyer, Joni Turville, and Geoffrey Rockwell. 2022. Artificial Intelligence and Teachers’ New Ethical Obligations. The International Review of Information Ethics 31, 1 (Nov. 2022). https://doi.org/10.29173/irie483 Number: 1.
• Ali et al . (2023) Jamal Kaid Mohammed Ali, Muayad Abdulhalim Ahmad Shamsan, Taha Ahmed Hezam, and Ahmed A. Q. Mohammed. 2023. Impact of ChatGPT on Learning Motivation: Teachers and Students’ Voices. Journal of English Studies in Arabia Felix 2, 1 (March 2023), 41–49. https://doi.org/10.56540/jesaf.v2i1.51 Number: 1.
• Anders (2023) Brent A. Anders. 2023. Is using ChatGPT cheating, plagiarism, both, neither, or forward thinking? Patterns (N Y) 4, 3 (Feb. 2023), 100694. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.patter.2023.100694
• Biswas (2023) Som Biswas. 2023. Role of Chat GPT in Education. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=4369981
• Cotton et al . (2023) Debby R. E. Cotton, Peter A. Cotton, and J. Reuben Shipway. 2023. Chatting and cheating: Ensuring academic integrity in the era of ChatGPT. Innovations in Education and Teaching International 0, 0 (2023), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148 Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2023.2190148.
• Dong and Shi (2021) Yanning Dong and Ling Shi. 2021. Using Grammarly to support students’ source-based writing practices. Assessing Writing 50 (Oct. 2021), 100564. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2021.100564
• Gero et al . (2023) Katy Ilonka Gero, Tao Long, and Lydia B Chilton. 2023. Social Dynamics of AI Support in Creative Writing. In Proceedings of the 2023 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems . ACM, Hamburg Germany. https://doi.org/10.1145/3544548.3580782
• Halaweh (2023) Mohanad Halaweh. 2023. ChatGPT in education: Strategies for responsible implementation. (2023). https://digitallibrary.aau.ac.ae/handle/123456789/980 Accepted: 2023-04-13T06:53:37Z Publisher: Bastas.
• Han et al . (2023) Jieun Han, Haneul Yoo, Yoonsu Kim, Junho Myung, Minsun Kim, Hyunseung Lim, Juho Kim, Tak Yeon Lee, Hwajung Hong, So-Yeon Ahn, and Alice Oh. 2023. RECIPE: How to Integrate ChatGPT into EFL Writing Education. In Proceedings of the Tenth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale (L@S ’23) . Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 416–420. https://doi.org/10.1145/3573051.3596200
• Huang et al . (2020) Hui-Wen Huang, Zehui Li, and Linda Taylor. 2020. The Effectiveness of Using Grammarly to Improve Students’ Writing Skills. In Proceedings of the 5th International Conference on Distance Education and Learning (ICDEL ’20) . Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 122–127. https://doi.org/10.1145/3402569.3402594
• Jayavalan and Razali (2018) Kalpana Jayavalan and Abu Bakar Razali. 2018. Effectiveness of Online Grammar Checker to Improve Secondary Students’ English Narrative Essay Writing. 2, 1 (2018).
• Jisuanke. (2023) Jisuanke. 2023. CodeMirror-Record. https://github.com/Jisuanke/CodeMirror-Record .
• Joyner (2023) David A. Joyner. 2023. ChatGPT in Education: Partner or Pariah? XRDS 29, 3 (April 2023), 48–51. https://doi.org/10.1145/3589651
• Karyuatry (2018) Laksnoria Karyuatry. 2018. Grammarly as a Tool to Improve Students’ Writing Quality: Free Online-Proofreader across the Boundaries. JSSH (Jurnal Sains Sosial dan Humaniora) 2, 1 (May 2018), 83–89. https://doi.org/10.30595/jssh.v2i1.2297 Number: 1.
• Koltovskaia (2020) Svetlana Koltovskaia. 2020. Student engagement with automated written corrective feedback (AWCF) provided by Grammarly : A multiple case study. Assessing Writing 44 (April 2020), 100450. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asw.2020.100450
• Liu et al . (2023) Zeyan Liu, Zijun Yao, Fengjun Li, and Bo Luo. 2023. Check Me If You Can: Detecting ChatGPT-Generated Academic Writing using CheckGPT. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2306.05524 arXiv:2306.05524 [cs].
• Moore et al . (2022) Steven Moore, Huy A. Nguyen, Norman Bier, Tanvi Domadia, and John Stamper. 2022. Assessing the Quality of Student-Generated Short Answer Questions Using GPT-3. In Educating for a New Future: Making Sense of Technology-Enhanced Learning Adoption , Isabel Hilliger, Pedro J. Muñoz-Merino, Tinne De Laet, Alejandro Ortega-Arranz, and Tracie Farrell (Eds.). Vol. 13450. Springer International Publishing, Cham, 243–257. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-16290-9_18 Series Title: Lecture Notes in Computer Science.
• Mosaiyebzadeh et al . (2023) Fatemeh Mosaiyebzadeh, Seyedamin Pouriyeh, Reza Parizi, Nasrin Dehbozorgi, Mohsen Dorodchi, and Daniel Macêdo Batista. 2023. Exploring the Role of ChatGPT in Education: Applications and Challenges. In Proceedings of the 24th Annual Conference on Information Technology Education (SIGITE ’23) . Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 84–89. https://doi.org/10.1145/3585059.3611445
• Murillo and D’Angelo (2023) Ambar Murillo and Sarah D’Angelo. 2023. An Engineering Perspective on Writing Assistants for Productivity and Creative Code. in2Writing (2023).
• ONeill and Russell (2019) Ruth ONeill and Alex Russell. 2019. Stop! Grammar time: University students’ perceptions of the automated feedback program Grammarly. Australasian Journal of Educational Technology 35, 1 (March 2019). https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.3795 Number: 1.
• Rudolph et al . (2023) Jürgen Rudolph, Samson Tan, and Shannon Tan. 2023. ChatGPT: Bullshit spewer or the end of traditional assessments in higher education? Journal of Applied Learning and Teaching 6, 1 (Jan. 2023), 342–363. https://doi.org/10.37074/jalt.2023.6.1.9 Number: 1.
• Shoufan (2023) Abdulhadi Shoufan. 2023. Can students without prior knowledge use ChatGPT to answer test questions? An empirical study. ACM Trans. Comput. Educ. (Oct. 2023). https://doi.org/10.1145/3628162 Just Accepted.
• Sok and Heng (2023) Sarin Sok and Kimkong Heng. 2023. ChatGPT for Education and Research: A Review of Benefits and Risks. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4378735
• Stark et al . (2023) Jessi Stark, Anthony Tang, Young-Ho Kim, Joonsuk Park, and Daniel Wigdor. 2023. Can AI Support Fiction Writers Without Writing For Them? in2Writing (2023).
• Wang et al . (2023) Tianjia Wang, Daniel Vargas Díaz, Chris Brown, and Yan Chen. 2023. Exploring the Role of AI Assistants in Computer Science Education: Methods, Implications, and Instructor Perspectives. In 2023 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC) . IEEE, 92–102.
• Warner (2023) John Warner. 2023. ChatGPT Can’t Kill Anything Worth Preserving. https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/chatgpt-cant-kill-anything-worth . https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/chatgpt-cant-kill-anything-worth
• Zhang et al . (2023) Zheng Zhang, Jie Gao, Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal, and Toby Jia-Jun Li. 2023. VISAR: A Human-AI Argumentative Writing Assistant with Visual Programming and Rapid Draft Prototyping. In Proceedings of the 36th Annual ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology . ACM, San Francisco CA USA, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1145/3586183.3606800

Appendix A Appendix

A.1. exit survey.

Thank you for participating in our study. Please answer the following questions as part of our exit survey.

For the following questions, please answer based on your perceived ownership of the essay:

I feel that this is my essay

strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree, neutral, somewhat disagree, disagree, strongly disagree

I feel that this essay belongs to me

I feel a high degree of ownership towards this essay

I feel the need to protect my ideas from being used by others.

I feel that this essays success is my success

I feel this essay was written by me

I feel the need to protect the ideas written in the essay

I do not feel like anyone else wrote this essay.

For the following questions, please answer based on your usage of ChatGPT:

I feel like ChatGPT helped me in the creation process of my writing

I feel like ChatGPT helped me with proofreading my essay

I feel like ChatGPT made my essay better

I liked using ChatGPT as an assistant during my essay writing

My writing would have been better without ChatGPT assistance

Thank you for completing our survey. Winners of the essay writing competition will receive an email after the study is complete.

• Artificial Intelligence /

ChatGPT, explained

Why is everybody talking about gpt-4o is chatgpt going to take over the world your questions, answered..

By Sheena Vasani , a writer covering commerce, e-readers, and tech news. She previously wrote about everything from web development to AI at Inside.

Share this story

Some writers have declared that the debut of ChatGPT on November 30th, 2022, marked the beginning of a new chapter in history akin to the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution . Others have been more skeptical , wondering if this is just another overhyped tech, like blockchain or the metaverse .

What history will call ChatGPT remains to be seen, but here’s one thing I do know for sure: nobody has shut up about it since.

From injecting itself into presidential debates and Saturday Night Live sketches to creepily flirting with talking to you Her -style (well, briefly at least ), ChatGPT has captured the public imagination in a way few technologies have. It’s not hard to see why. The bot can code, compose music, craft essays... you name it. And with the release of GPT-4o , it’s even better than ever.

Yet, as it gets smarter, the tech is also becoming less comprehensible. People are also getting more scared of what it can do, which is understandable given some are already losing their jobs to AI. It doesn’t help that a lot of sensationalism surrounds the subject, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction.

That’s why we decided to throw together this explainer so we can cut through all the BS together. You ready? Let’s begin.

What is ChatGPT?

Do you want the simplistic answer or the complex one?

The easy answer is that ChatGPT is a chatbot that can answer your questions by using data it’s gathered from the internet.

The complex answer is that ChatGPT is an AI chatbot powered by language models created by OpenAI that are known as generative pre-trained transformers (GPTs), a kind of AI that can actually generate new content altogether as opposed to just analyzing data. (If you’ve heard of large language models, or LLMs, a GPT is a type of LLM. Got it? Good.)

So what’s OpenAI?

OpenAI is an AI company founded in December 2015. It created ChatGPT, but it’s also responsible for other products, like the AI image generator DALL-E .

Doesn’t Microsoft own it? Or was that Elon Musk?

No, but Microsoft is a major investor , pouring billions into the tech. Elon Musk co-founded OpenAI along with fired and rehired OpenAI CEO Sam Altman , Ilya Sutskever (who has since left), Greg Brockman, Wojciech Zaremba, and John Schulman. However, Musk eventually cut ties to create his own chatbot called Grok .

So, will ChatGPT take over the world?

It will most definitely replace people with machines and — along with other AI bots like Amazon’s Alexa — basically take over the world. So you’d better start playing nice with them.

Nah, I’m messing with you. I mean, nobody knows for sure, but I highly doubt we’re going to see a job apocalypse and have to welcome in our new robot overlords anytime soon. I’ll explain more in a minute. 

Phew! But how is it so smart?

Well, like I said, ChatGPT runs on GPTs, which OpenAI regularly updates with new versions, the most recent being GPT-4o. Trained by humans and a ton of internet data, each model can generate human-like conversations so you can complete all kinds of tasks.  

Where do I begin? The possibilities are practically endless, from composing essays and writing code to analyzing data, solving math problems, playing games, providing customer support, planning trips, helping you prepare for job interviews, and so much more.

Here’s just a short list of what it’s capable of: 

• Passing MBA exams
• Being your girlfriend
• Writing really uncreative TV scripts
• Helping with medical diagnoses
• Explaining complex scientific concepts
• Drafting college essays
• Advertising Coke (the soda)

I mean, honestly, it could probably summarize this entire explainer. The AI world is your oyster.

So what you’re saying is, it’s basically smarter than me. Should I be worried?

Eh, not really. For all its hype, at its current level, ChatGPT — like other generative AI chatbots — is very much a dim-witted computer that sits on a throne of lies. For one thing, it hallucinates. 

Oh, sorry, not that kind of hallucination. Hallucination in the AI world refers to an AI-generated process in which the tool tries to extrapolate and create from collected data but gets it absurdly wrong, in turn creating a new reality. 

Honestly, I’m not a big fan of the word. It doesn’t really bear resemblance to actual human hallucinations , and I think it makes light of mental health issues — but that’s another subject. 

In other words, sometimes ChatGPT generates incorrect information? 

Incorrect information is a weak way of putting it. 

Sometimes ChatGPT actually fabricates facts altogether, which can lead to the spread of misinformation with serious consequences. It’s made up news stories , academic papers , and books . Lawyers using it for case research have gotten in trouble when it cited nonexistent laws .

And then, there are times when it gives the middle finger to both reality and human language and just spouts out pure gibberish. Earlier this year, for example, a malfunctioning ChatGPT that was asked for a Jackson family biography started saying stuff like , “Schwittendly, the sparkle of tourmar on the crest has as much to do with the golver of the ‘moon paths’ as it shifts from follow.” Which is probably the worst description of Michael Jackson’s family in the world.

Right, but isn’t ChatGPT getting better?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Many AI researchers are trying to fix this issue. However, a lot of AI researchers think hallucinations are fundamentally unsolvable, as a study out of the National University of Singapore suggests. 

But hallucinations aren’t the only issue ChatGPT needs to iron out. Remember, ChatGPT essentially just regurgitates material it scrapes off the internet, whether it’s accurate or not. That means, sometimes, ChatGPT plagiarizes other people’s work without attributing it to them, even sparking copyright infringement lawsuits .

It can also pick up some really bad data. Likely drawing from the more unpleasant parts of the internet, it’s gone so far as to insult and manipulate users . Hell, sometimes it’s just downright racist and sexist .

So, basically, what I’m hearing is ChatGPT — like other generative AI chatbots — has a lot of critical flaws, and we humans are still needed to keep them in check. 

But isn’t it possible openai could iron out these issues in time.

Anything’s possible. But I would say that one thing is for sure: AI is here to stay, and so it wouldn’t hurt to learn how to leverage these tools. Plus, they really can make life easier in the here and now if you know how to use them. 

So, how do I start playing around with it?

If you’re on a desktop, simply visit chat.openai.com and start chatting away. Alternatively, you can also access ChatGPT via an app on your iPhone or Android device.

Great! Is it free?

Absolutely. The free version of ChatGPT runs on an older model in the GPT-3.5 series but does offer limited access to the newer and faster GPT-4o. That means free users, for example, will soon be able to access previously paywalled features, like custom GPTs, through the GPT Store .

ChatGPT also now freely supports the chatbot’s web browsing tool, meaning it can now search the internet in real time to deliver up-to-date, accurate results. The new model can also recall earlier conversations, allowing it to better understand the context of your request, while users can now upload photos and files for ChatGPT to analyze.

Why would I want one of the paid tiers?

You do get more advanced capabilities through its paid tiers — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Team, and ChatGPT Enterprise — which start at $20 a month. 

For starters, you have fewer usage restrictions, rendering them the better option if you plan on using ChatGPT often. Free users have usage limits OpenAI has yet to specify but has said that Plus subscribers are allowed to send five times as many messages as free users. The pricier Team and Enterprise subscription plans offer even fewer usage restrictions, though at this point, OpenAI has yet to divulge specifics.

Aside from being able to use ChatGPT longer, paid subscribers can do more. They can, for example, create their own custom GPTs and even monetize them via the GPT Store . Plus, only paid subscribers can access the DALL-E 3 model, which generates images from text prompts. 

Paid subscribers also get early access to the newest AI features. The voice capabilities OpenAI demonstrated onstage should arrive over the next couple of weeks for Plus subscribers, while ChatGPT’s desktop app for Mac computers is already rolling out for Plus users.

Custom GPTs?

Custom GPTs are basically chatbots you can customize. There are millions of versions on the GPT Store that you can use to accomplish all kinds of tasks, from providing tech support to personalized hiking trail recommendations . Some customized GPTs currently trending include an image generating bot , a bot that makes logos , and a chatbot that helps people perform scientific research .

By the way, what’s all this I hear about trouble within OpenAI?

There have been some upheavals in the company — we’ll keep you in the loop.

Are there any ChatGPT alternatives I could check out?

Yes, there are quite a few, and each varies in terms of features, pricing, and specific use cases. One notable example is Google’s AI chat service Gemini. As a Google product, it offers deeper integration with Google services like Workspace, Calendar, Gmail, Search, YouTube, and Flights. The latest version, Gemini 1.5 Pro, also offers a longer 2 million token context window , which refers to the amount of information the AI model can understand.

Anything else you think I should know? 

Yeah! Did you know ChatGPT sounds like “chat j’ai pété” in French, which roughly translates to “cat, I farted.” Somebody even created a website with a cat who farts when you click on it , and I just can’t stop clicking.

I know. I’m sorry.

You should be. 

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A systematic literature review of empirical research on ChatGPT in education

• Open access
• Published: 26 May 2024
• Volume 3 , article number  60 , ( 2024 )

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• Yazid Albadarin   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0005-8068-8902 1 ,
• Mohammed Saqr 1 ,
• Nicolas Pope 1 &
• Markku Tukiainen 1  

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Over the last four decades, studies have investigated the incorporation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) into education. A recent prominent AI-powered technology that has impacted the education sector is ChatGPT. This article provides a systematic review of 14 empirical studies incorporating ChatGPT into various educational settings, published in 2022 and before the 10th of April 2023—the date of conducting the search process. It carefully followed the essential steps outlined in the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) guidelines, as well as Okoli’s (Okoli in Commun Assoc Inf Syst, 2015) steps for conducting a rigorous and transparent systematic review. In this review, we aimed to explore how students and teachers have utilized ChatGPT in various educational settings, as well as the primary findings of those studies. By employing Creswell’s (Creswell in Educational research: planning, conducting, and evaluating quantitative and qualitative research [Ebook], Pearson Education, London, 2015) coding techniques for data extraction and interpretation, we sought to gain insight into their initial attempts at ChatGPT incorporation into education. This approach also enabled us to extract insights and considerations that can facilitate its effective and responsible use in future educational contexts. The results of this review show that learners have utilized ChatGPT as a virtual intelligent assistant, where it offered instant feedback, on-demand answers, and explanations of complex topics. Additionally, learners have used it to enhance their writing and language skills by generating ideas, composing essays, summarizing, translating, paraphrasing texts, or checking grammar. Moreover, learners turned to it as an aiding tool to facilitate their directed and personalized learning by assisting in understanding concepts and homework, providing structured learning plans, and clarifying assignments and tasks. However, the results of specific studies (n = 3, 21.4%) show that overuse of ChatGPT may negatively impact innovative capacities and collaborative learning competencies among learners. Educators, on the other hand, have utilized ChatGPT to create lesson plans, generate quizzes, and provide additional resources, which helped them enhance their productivity and efficiency and promote different teaching methodologies. Despite these benefits, the majority of the reviewed studies recommend the importance of conducting structured training, support, and clear guidelines for both learners and educators to mitigate the drawbacks. This includes developing critical evaluation skills to assess the accuracy and relevance of information provided by ChatGPT, as well as strategies for integrating human interaction and collaboration into learning activities that involve AI tools. Furthermore, they also recommend ongoing research and proactive dialogue with policymakers, stakeholders, and educational practitioners to refine and enhance the use of AI in learning environments. This review could serve as an insightful resource for practitioners who seek to integrate ChatGPT into education and stimulate further research in the field.

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1 Introduction

Educational technology, a rapidly evolving field, plays a crucial role in reshaping the landscape of teaching and learning [ 82 ]. One of the most transformative technological innovations of our era that has influenced the field of education is Artificial Intelligence (AI) [ 50 ]. Over the last four decades, AI in education (AIEd) has gained remarkable attention for its potential to make significant advancements in learning, instructional methods, and administrative tasks within educational settings [ 11 ]. In particular, a large language model (LLM), a type of AI algorithm that applies artificial neural networks (ANNs) and uses massively large data sets to understand, summarize, generate, and predict new content that is almost difficult to differentiate from human creations [ 79 ], has opened up novel possibilities for enhancing various aspects of education, from content creation to personalized instruction [ 35 ]. Chatbots that leverage the capabilities of LLMs to understand and generate human-like responses have also presented the capacity to enhance student learning and educational outcomes by engaging students, offering timely support, and fostering interactive learning experiences [ 46 ].

The ongoing and remarkable technological advancements in chatbots have made their use more convenient, increasingly natural and effortless, and have expanded their potential for deployment across various domains [ 70 ]. One prominent example of chatbot applications is the Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer, known as ChatGPT, which was introduced by OpenAI, a leading AI research lab, on November 30th, 2022. ChatGPT employs a variety of deep learning techniques to generate human-like text, with a particular focus on recurrent neural networks (RNNs). Long short-term memory (LSTM) allows it to grasp the context of the text being processed and retain information from previous inputs. Also, the transformer architecture, a neural network architecture based on the self-attention mechanism, allows it to analyze specific parts of the input, thereby enabling it to produce more natural-sounding and coherent output. Additionally, the unsupervised generative pre-training and the fine-tuning methods allow ChatGPT to generate more relevant and accurate text for specific tasks [ 31 , 62 ]. Furthermore, reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), a machine learning approach that combines reinforcement learning techniques with human-provided feedback, has helped improve ChatGPT’s model by accelerating the learning process and making it significantly more efficient.

This cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) tool is widely recognized as one of today's most advanced LLMs-based chatbots [ 70 ], allowing users to ask questions and receive detailed, coherent, systematic, personalized, convincing, and informative human-like responses [ 55 ], even within complex and ambiguous contexts [ 63 , 77 ]. ChatGPT is considered the fastest-growing technology in history: in just three months following its public launch, it amassed an estimated 120 million monthly active users [ 16 ] with an estimated 13 million daily queries [ 49 ], surpassing all other applications [ 64 ]. This remarkable growth can be attributed to the unique features and user-friendly interface that ChatGPT offers. Its intuitive design allows users to interact seamlessly with the technology, making it accessible to a diverse range of individuals, regardless of their technical expertise [ 78 ]. Additionally, its exceptional performance results from a combination of advanced algorithms, continuous enhancements, and extensive training on a diverse dataset that includes various text sources such as books, articles, websites, and online forums [ 63 ], have contributed to a more engaging and satisfying user experience [ 62 ]. These factors collectively explain its remarkable global growth and set it apart from predecessors like Bard, Bing Chat, ERNIE, and others.

In this context, several studies have explored the technological advancements of chatbots. One noteworthy recent research effort, conducted by Schöbel et al. [ 70 ], stands out for its comprehensive analysis of more than 5,000 studies on communication agents. This study offered a comprehensive overview of the historical progression and future prospects of communication agents, including ChatGPT. Moreover, other studies have focused on making comparisons, particularly between ChatGPT and alternative chatbots like Bard, Bing Chat, ERNIE, LaMDA, BlenderBot, and various others. For example, O’Leary [ 53 ] compared two chatbots, LaMDA and BlenderBot, with ChatGPT and revealed that ChatGPT outperformed both. This superiority arises from ChatGPT’s capacity to handle a wider range of questions and generate slightly varied perspectives within specific contexts. Similarly, ChatGPT exhibited an impressive ability to formulate interpretable responses that were easily understood when compared with Google's feature snippet [ 34 ]. Additionally, ChatGPT was compared to other LLMs-based chatbots, including Bard and BERT, as well as ERNIE. The findings indicated that ChatGPT exhibited strong performance in the given tasks, often outperforming the other models [ 59 ].

Furthermore, in the education context, a comprehensive study systematically compared a range of the most promising chatbots, including Bard, Bing Chat, ChatGPT, and Ernie across a multidisciplinary test that required higher-order thinking. The study revealed that ChatGPT achieved the highest score, surpassing Bing Chat and Bard [ 64 ]. Similarly, a comparative analysis was conducted to compare ChatGPT with Bard in answering a set of 30 mathematical questions and logic problems, grouped into two question sets. Set (A) is unavailable online, while Set (B) is available online. The results revealed ChatGPT's superiority in Set (A) over Bard. Nevertheless, Bard's advantage emerged in Set (B) due to its capacity to access the internet directly and retrieve answers, a capability that ChatGPT does not possess [ 57 ]. However, through these varied assessments, ChatGPT consistently highlights its exceptional prowess compared to various alternatives in the ever-evolving chatbot technology.

The widespread adoption of chatbots, especially ChatGPT, by millions of students and educators, has sparked extensive discussions regarding its incorporation into the education sector [ 64 ]. Accordingly, many scholars have contributed to the discourse, expressing both optimism and pessimism regarding the incorporation of ChatGPT into education. For example, ChatGPT has been highlighted for its capabilities in enriching the learning and teaching experience through its ability to support different learning approaches, including adaptive learning, personalized learning, and self-directed learning [ 58 , 60 , 91 ]), deliver summative and formative feedback to students and provide real-time responses to questions, increase the accessibility of information [ 22 , 40 , 43 ], foster students’ performance, engagement and motivation [ 14 , 44 , 58 ], and enhance teaching practices [ 17 , 18 , 64 , 74 ].

On the other hand, concerns have been also raised regarding its potential negative effects on learning and teaching. These include the dissemination of false information and references [ 12 , 23 , 61 , 85 ], biased reinforcement [ 47 , 50 ], compromised academic integrity [ 18 , 40 , 66 , 74 ], and the potential decline in students' skills [ 43 , 61 , 64 , 74 ]. As a result, ChatGPT has been banned in multiple countries, including Russia, China, Venezuela, Belarus, and Iran, as well as in various educational institutions in India, Italy, Western Australia, France, and the United States [ 52 , 90 ].

Clearly, the advent of chatbots, especially ChatGPT, has provoked significant controversy due to their potential impact on learning and teaching. This indicates the necessity for further exploration to gain a deeper understanding of this technology and carefully evaluate its potential benefits, limitations, challenges, and threats to education [ 79 ]. Therefore, conducting a systematic literature review will provide valuable insights into the potential prospects and obstacles linked to its incorporation into education. This systematic literature review will primarily focus on ChatGPT, driven by the aforementioned key factors outlined above.

However, the existing literature lacks a systematic literature review of empirical studies. Thus, this systematic literature review aims to address this gap by synthesizing the existing empirical studies conducted on chatbots, particularly ChatGPT, in the field of education, highlighting how ChatGPT has been utilized in educational settings, and identifying any existing gaps. This review may be particularly useful for researchers in the field and educators who are contemplating the integration of ChatGPT or any chatbot into education. The following research questions will guide this study:

What are students' and teachers' initial attempts at utilizing ChatGPT in education?

What are the main findings derived from empirical studies that have incorporated ChatGPT into learning and teaching?

2 Methodology

To conduct this study, the authors followed the essential steps of the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA 2020) and Okoli’s [ 54 ] steps for conducting a systematic review. These included identifying the study’s purpose, drafting a protocol, applying a practical screening process, searching the literature, extracting relevant data, evaluating the quality of the included studies, synthesizing the studies, and ultimately writing the review. The subsequent section provides an extensive explanation of how these steps were carried out in this study.

2.1 Identify the purpose

Given the widespread adoption of ChatGPT by students and teachers for various educational purposes, often without a thorough understanding of responsible and effective use or a clear recognition of its potential impact on learning and teaching, the authors recognized the need for further exploration of ChatGPT's impact on education in this early stage. Therefore, they have chosen to conduct a systematic literature review of existing empirical studies that incorporate ChatGPT into educational settings. Despite the limited number of empirical studies due to the novelty of the topic, their goal is to gain a deeper understanding of this technology and proactively evaluate its potential benefits, limitations, challenges, and threats to education. This effort could help to understand initial reactions and attempts at incorporating ChatGPT into education and bring out insights and considerations that can inform the future development of education.

2.2 Draft the protocol

The next step is formulating the protocol. This protocol serves to outline the study process in a rigorous and transparent manner, mitigating researcher bias in study selection and data extraction [ 88 ]. The protocol will include the following steps: generating the research question, predefining a literature search strategy, identifying search locations, establishing selection criteria, assessing the studies, developing a data extraction strategy, and creating a timeline.

2.3 Apply practical screen

The screening step aims to accurately filter the articles resulting from the searching step and select the empirical studies that have incorporated ChatGPT into educational contexts, which will guide us in answering the research questions and achieving the objectives of this study. To ensure the rigorous execution of this step, our inclusion and exclusion criteria were determined based on the authors' experience and informed by previous successful systematic reviews [ 21 ]. Table 1 summarizes the inclusion and exclusion criteria for study selection.

2.4 Literature search

We conducted a thorough literature search to identify articles that explored, examined, and addressed the use of ChatGPT in Educational contexts. We utilized two research databases: Dimensions.ai, which provides access to a large number of research publications, and lens.org, which offers access to over 300 million articles, patents, and other research outputs from diverse sources. Additionally, we included three databases, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, and ERIC, which contain relevant research on the topic that addresses our research questions. To browse and identify relevant articles, we used the following search formula: ("ChatGPT" AND "Education"), which included the Boolean operator "AND" to get more specific results. The subject area in the Scopus and ERIC databases were narrowed to "ChatGPT" and "Education" keywords, and in the WoS database was limited to the "Education" category. The search was conducted between the 3rd and 10th of April 2023, which resulted in 276 articles from all selected databases (111 articles from Dimensions.ai, 65 from Scopus, 28 from Web of Science, 14 from ERIC, and 58 from Lens.org). These articles were imported into the Rayyan web-based system for analysis. The duplicates were identified automatically by the system. Subsequently, the first author manually reviewed the duplicated articles ensured that they had the same content, and then removed them, leaving us with 135 unique articles. Afterward, the titles, abstracts, and keywords of the first 40 manuscripts were scanned and reviewed by the first author and were discussed with the second and third authors to resolve any disagreements. Subsequently, the first author proceeded with the filtering process for all articles and carefully applied the inclusion and exclusion criteria as presented in Table  1 . Articles that met any one of the exclusion criteria were eliminated, resulting in 26 articles. Afterward, the authors met to carefully scan and discuss them. The authors agreed to eliminate any empirical studies solely focused on checking ChatGPT capabilities, as these studies do not guide us in addressing the research questions and achieving the study's objectives. This resulted in 14 articles eligible for analysis.

2.5 Quality appraisal

The examination and evaluation of the quality of the extracted articles is a vital step [ 9 ]. Therefore, the extracted articles were carefully evaluated for quality using Fink’s [ 24 ] standards, which emphasize the necessity for detailed descriptions of methodology, results, conclusions, strengths, and limitations. The process began with a thorough assessment of each study's design, data collection, and analysis methods to ensure their appropriateness and comprehensive execution. The clarity, consistency, and logical progression from data to results and conclusions were also critically examined. Potential biases and recognized limitations within the studies were also scrutinized. Ultimately, two articles were excluded for failing to meet Fink’s criteria, particularly in providing sufficient detail on methodology, results, conclusions, strengths, or limitations. The review process is illustrated in Fig.  1 .

The study selection process

2.6 Data extraction

The next step is data extraction, the process of capturing the key information and categories from the included studies. To improve efficiency, reduce variation among authors, and minimize errors in data analysis, the coding categories were constructed using Creswell's [ 15 ] coding techniques for data extraction and interpretation. The coding process involves three sequential steps. The initial stage encompasses open coding , where the researcher examines the data, generates codes to describe and categorize it, and gains a deeper understanding without preconceived ideas. Following open coding is axial coding , where the interrelationships between codes from open coding are analyzed to establish more comprehensive categories or themes. The process concludes with selective coding , refining and integrating categories or themes to identify core concepts emerging from the data. The first coder performed the coding process, then engaged in discussions with the second and third authors to finalize the coding categories for the first five articles. The first coder then proceeded to code all studies and engaged again in discussions with the other authors to ensure the finalization of the coding process. After a comprehensive analysis and capturing of the key information from the included studies, the data extraction and interpretation process yielded several themes. These themes have been categorized and are presented in Table  2 . It is important to note that open coding results were removed from Table  2 for aesthetic reasons, as it included many generic aspects, such as words, short phrases, or sentences mentioned in the studies.

2.7 Synthesize studies

In this stage, we will gather, discuss, and analyze the key findings that emerged from the selected studies. The synthesis stage is considered a transition from an author-centric to a concept-centric focus, enabling us to map all the provided information to achieve the most effective evaluation of the data [ 87 ]. Initially, the authors extracted data that included general information about the selected studies, including the author(s)' names, study titles, years of publication, educational levels, research methodologies, sample sizes, participants, main aims or objectives, raw data sources, and analysis methods. Following that, all key information and significant results from the selected studies were compiled using Creswell’s [ 15 ] coding techniques for data extraction and interpretation to identify core concepts and themes emerging from the data, focusing on those that directly contributed to our research questions and objectives, such as the initial utilization of ChatGPT in learning and teaching, learners' and educators' familiarity with ChatGPT, and the main findings of each study. Finally, the data related to each selected study were extracted into an Excel spreadsheet for data processing. The Excel spreadsheet was reviewed by the authors, including a series of discussions to ensure the finalization of this process and prepare it for further analysis. Afterward, the final result being analyzed and presented in various types of charts and graphs. Table 4 presents the extracted data from the selected studies, with each study labeled with a capital 'S' followed by a number.

This section consists of two main parts. The first part provides a descriptive analysis of the data compiled from the reviewed studies. The second part presents the answers to the research questions and the main findings of these studies.

3.1 Part 1: descriptive analysis

This section will provide a descriptive analysis of the reviewed studies, including educational levels and fields, participants distribution, country contribution, research methodologies, study sample size, study population, publication year, list of journals, familiarity with ChatGPT, source of data, and the main aims and objectives of the studies. Table 4 presents a comprehensive overview of the extracted data from the selected studies.

3.1.1 The number of the reviewed studies and publication years

The total number of the reviewed studies was 14. All studies were empirical studies and published in different journals focusing on Education and Technology. One study was published in 2022 [S1], while the remaining were published in 2023 [S2]-[S14]. Table 3 illustrates the year of publication, the names of the journals, and the number of reviewed studies published in each journal for the studies reviewed.

3.1.2 Educational levels and fields

The majority of the reviewed studies, 11 studies, were conducted in higher education institutions [S1]-[S10] and [S13]. Two studies did not specify the educational level of the population [S12] and [S14], while one study focused on elementary education [S11]. However, the reviewed studies covered various fields of education. Three studies focused on Arts and Humanities Education [S8], [S11], and [S14], specifically English Education. Two studies focused on Engineering Education, with one in Computer Engineering [S2] and the other in Construction Education [S3]. Two studies focused on Mathematics Education [S5] and [S12]. One study focused on Social Science Education [S13]. One study focused on Early Education [S4]. One study focused on Journalism Education [S9]. Finally, three studies did not specify the field of education [S1], [S6], and [S7]. Figure  2 represents the educational levels in the reviewed studies, while Fig.  3 represents the context of the reviewed studies.

Educational levels in the reviewed studies

Context of the reviewed studies

3.1.3 Participants distribution and countries contribution

The reviewed studies have been conducted across different geographic regions, providing a diverse representation of the studies. The majority of the studies, 10 in total, [S1]-[S3], [S5]-[S9], [S11], and [S14], primarily focused on participants from single countries such as Pakistan, the United Arab Emirates, China, Indonesia, Poland, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Spain, Tajikistan, and the United States. In contrast, four studies, [S4], [S10], [S12], and [S13], involved participants from multiple countries, including China and the United States [S4], China, the United Kingdom, and the United States [S10], the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan [S12], Turkey, Sweden, Canada, and Australia [ 13 ]. Figures  4 and 5 illustrate the distribution of participants, whether from single or multiple countries, and the contribution of each country in the reviewed studies, respectively.

The reviewed studies conducted in single or multiple countries

The Contribution of each country in the studies

3.1.4 Study population and sample size

Four study populations were included: university students, university teachers, university teachers and students, and elementary school teachers. Six studies involved university students [S2], [S3], [S5] and [S6]-[S8]. Three studies focused on university teachers [S1], [S4], and [S6], while one study specifically targeted elementary school teachers [S11]. Additionally, four studies included both university teachers and students [S10] and [ 12 , 13 , 14 ], and among them, study [S13] specifically included postgraduate students. In terms of the sample size of the reviewed studies, nine studies included a small sample size of less than 50 participants [S1], [S3], [S6], [S8], and [S10]-[S13]. Three studies had 50–100 participants [S2], [S9], and [S14]. Only one study had more than 100 participants [S7]. It is worth mentioning that study [S4] adopted a mixed methods approach, including 10 participants for qualitative analysis and 110 participants for quantitative analysis.

3.1.5 Participants’ familiarity with using ChatGPT

The reviewed studies recruited a diverse range of participants with varying levels of familiarity with ChatGPT. Five studies [S2], [S4], [S6], [S8], and [S12] involved participants already familiar with ChatGPT, while eight studies [S1], [S3], [S5], [S7], [S9], [S10], [S13] and [S14] included individuals with differing levels of familiarity. Notably, one study [S11] had participants who were entirely unfamiliar with ChatGPT. It is important to note that four studies [S3], [S5], [S9], and [S11] provided training or guidance to their participants before conducting their studies, while ten studies [S1], [S2], [S4], [S6]-[S8], [S10], and [S12]-[S14] did not provide training due to the participants' existing familiarity with ChatGPT.

3.1.6 Research methodology approaches and source(S) of data

The reviewed studies adopted various research methodology approaches. Seven studies adopted qualitative research methodology [S1], [S4], [S6], [S8], [S10], [S11], and [S12], while three studies adopted quantitative research methodology [S3], [S7], and [S14], and four studies employed mixed-methods, which involved a combination of both the strengths of qualitative and quantitative methods [S2], [S5], [S9], and [S13].

In terms of the source(s) of data, the reviewed studies obtained their data from various sources, such as interviews, questionnaires, and pre-and post-tests. Six studies relied on interviews as their primary source of data collection [S1], [S4], [S6], [S10], [S11], and [S12], four studies relied on questionnaires [S2], [S7], [S13], and [S14], two studies combined the use of pre-and post-tests and questionnaires for data collection [S3] and [S9], while two studies combined the use of questionnaires and interviews to obtain the data [S5] and [S8]. It is important to note that six of the reviewed studies were quasi-experimental [S3], [S5], [S8], [S9], [S12], and [S14], while the remaining ones were experimental studies [S1], [S2], [S4], [S6], [S7], [S10], [S11], and [S13]. Figures  6 and 7 illustrate the research methodologies and the source (s) of data used in the reviewed studies, respectively.

Research methodologies in the reviewed studies

Source of data in the reviewed studies

3.1.7 The aim and objectives of the studies

The reviewed studies encompassed a diverse set of aims, with several of them incorporating multiple primary objectives. Six studies [S3], [S6], [S7], [S8], [S11], and [S12] examined the integration of ChatGPT in educational contexts, and four studies [S4], [S5], [S13], and [S14] investigated the various implications of its use in education, while three studies [S2], [S9], and [S10] aimed to explore both its integration and implications in education. Additionally, seven studies explicitly explored attitudes and perceptions of students [S2] and [S3], educators [S1] and [S6], or both [S10], [S12], and [S13] regarding the utilization of ChatGPT in educational settings.

3.2 Part 2: research questions and main findings of the reviewed studies

This part will present the answers to the research questions and the main findings of the reviewed studies, classified into two main categories (learning and teaching) according to AI Education classification by [ 36 ]. Figure  8 summarizes the main findings of the reviewed studies in a visually informative diagram. Table 4 provides a detailed list of the key information extracted from the selected studies that led to generating these themes.

The main findings in the reviewed studies

4 Students' initial attempts at utilizing ChatGPT in learning and main findings from students' perspective

4.1 virtual intelligent assistant.

Nine studies demonstrated that ChatGPT has been utilized by students as an intelligent assistant to enhance and support their learning. Students employed it for various purposes, such as answering on-demand questions [S2]-[S5], [S8], [S10], and [S12], providing valuable information and learning resources [S2]-[S5], [S6], and [S8], as well as receiving immediate feedback [S2], [S4], [S9], [S10], and [S12]. In this regard, students generally were confident in the accuracy of ChatGPT's responses, considering them relevant, reliable, and detailed [S3], [S4], [S5], and [S8]. However, some students indicated the need for improvement, as they found that answers are not always accurate [S2], and that misleading information may have been provided or that it may not always align with their expectations [S6] and [S10]. It was also observed by the students that the accuracy of ChatGPT is dependent on several factors, including the quality and specificity of the user's input, the complexity of the question or topic, and the scope and relevance of its training data [S12]. Many students felt that ChatGPT's answers were not always accurate and most of them believed that it requires good background knowledge to work with.

4.2 Writing and language proficiency assistant

Six of the reviewed studies highlighted that ChatGPT has been utilized by students as a valuable assistant tool to improve their academic writing skills and language proficiency. Among these studies, three mainly focused on English education, demonstrating that students showed sufficient mastery in using ChatGPT for generating ideas, summarizing, paraphrasing texts, and completing writing essays [S8], [S11], and [S14]. Furthermore, ChatGPT helped them in writing by making students active investigators rather than passive knowledge recipients and facilitated the development of their writing skills [S11] and [S14]. Similarly, ChatGPT allowed students to generate unique ideas and perspectives, leading to deeper analysis and reflection on their journalism writing [S9]. In terms of language proficiency, ChatGPT allowed participants to translate content into their home languages, making it more accessible and relevant to their context [S4]. It also enabled them to request changes in linguistic tones or flavors [S8]. Moreover, participants used it to check grammar or as a dictionary [S11].

4.3 Valuable resource for learning approaches

Five studies demonstrated that students used ChatGPT as a valuable complementary resource for self-directed learning. It provided learning resources and guidance on diverse educational topics and created a supportive home learning environment [S2] and [S4]. Moreover, it offered step-by-step guidance to grasp concepts at their own pace and enhance their understanding [S5], streamlined task and project completion carried out independently [S7], provided comprehensive and easy-to-understand explanations on various subjects [S10], and assisted in studying geometry operations, thereby empowering them to explore geometry operations at their own pace [S12]. Three studies showed that students used ChatGPT as a valuable learning resource for personalized learning. It delivered age-appropriate conversations and tailored teaching based on a child's interests [S4], acted as a personalized learning assistant, adapted to their needs and pace, which assisted them in understanding mathematical concepts [S12], and enabled personalized learning experiences in social sciences by adapting to students' needs and learning styles [S13]. On the other hand, it is important to note that, according to one study [S5], students suggested that using ChatGPT may negatively affect collaborative learning competencies between students.

4.4 Enhancing students' competencies

Six of the reviewed studies have shown that ChatGPT is a valuable tool for improving a wide range of skills among students. Two studies have provided evidence that ChatGPT led to improvements in students' critical thinking, reasoning skills, and hazard recognition competencies through engaging them in interactive conversations or activities and providing responses related to their disciplines in journalism [S5] and construction education [S9]. Furthermore, two studies focused on mathematical education have shown the positive impact of ChatGPT on students' problem-solving abilities in unraveling problem-solving questions [S12] and enhancing the students' understanding of the problem-solving process [S5]. Lastly, one study indicated that ChatGPT effectively contributed to the enhancement of conversational social skills [S4].

4.5 Supporting students' academic success

Seven of the reviewed studies highlighted that students found ChatGPT to be beneficial for learning as it enhanced learning efficiency and improved the learning experience. It has been observed to improve students' efficiency in computer engineering studies by providing well-structured responses and good explanations [S2]. Additionally, students found it extremely useful for hazard reporting [S3], and it also enhanced their efficiency in solving mathematics problems and capabilities [S5] and [S12]. Furthermore, by finding information, generating ideas, translating texts, and providing alternative questions, ChatGPT aided students in deepening their understanding of various subjects [S6]. It contributed to an increase in students' overall productivity [S7] and improved efficiency in composing written tasks [S8]. Regarding learning experiences, ChatGPT was instrumental in assisting students in identifying hazards that they might have otherwise overlooked [S3]. It also improved students' learning experiences in solving mathematics problems and developing abilities [S5] and [S12]. Moreover, it increased students' successful completion of important tasks in their studies [S7], particularly those involving average difficulty writing tasks [S8]. Additionally, ChatGPT increased the chances of educational success by providing students with baseline knowledge on various topics [S10].

5 Teachers' initial attempts at utilizing ChatGPT in teaching and main findings from teachers' perspective

5.1 valuable resource for teaching.

The reviewed studies showed that teachers have employed ChatGPT to recommend, modify, and generate diverse, creative, organized, and engaging educational contents, teaching materials, and testing resources more rapidly [S4], [S6], [S10] and [S11]. Additionally, teachers experienced increased productivity as ChatGPT facilitated quick and accurate responses to questions, fact-checking, and information searches [S1]. It also proved valuable in constructing new knowledge [S6] and providing timely answers to students' questions in classrooms [S11]. Moreover, ChatGPT enhanced teachers' efficiency by generating new ideas for activities and preplanning activities for their students [S4] and [S6], including interactive language game partners [S11].

5.2 Improving productivity and efficiency

The reviewed studies showed that participants' productivity and work efficiency have been significantly enhanced by using ChatGPT as it enabled them to allocate more time to other tasks and reduce their overall workloads [S6], [S10], [S11], [S13], and [S14]. However, three studies [S1], [S4], and [S11], indicated a negative perception and attitude among teachers toward using ChatGPT. This negativity stemmed from a lack of necessary skills to use it effectively [S1], a limited familiarity with it [S4], and occasional inaccuracies in the content provided by it [S10].

5.3 Catalyzing new teaching methodologies

Five of the reviewed studies highlighted that educators found the necessity of redefining their teaching profession with the assistance of ChatGPT [S11], developing new effective learning strategies [S4], and adapting teaching strategies and methodologies to ensure the development of essential skills for future engineers [S5]. They also emphasized the importance of adopting new educational philosophies and approaches that can evolve with the introduction of ChatGPT into the classroom [S12]. Furthermore, updating curricula to focus on improving human-specific features, such as emotional intelligence, creativity, and philosophical perspectives [S13], was found to be essential.

5.4 Effective utilization of CHATGPT in teaching

According to the reviewed studies, effective utilization of ChatGPT in education requires providing teachers with well-structured training, support, and adequate background on how to use ChatGPT responsibly [S1], [S3], [S11], and [S12]. Establishing clear rules and regulations regarding its usage is essential to ensure it positively impacts the teaching and learning processes, including students' skills [S1], [S4], [S5], [S8], [S9], and [S11]-[S14]. Moreover, conducting further research and engaging in discussions with policymakers and stakeholders is indeed crucial for the successful integration of ChatGPT in education and to maximize the benefits for both educators and students [S1], [S6]-[S10], and [S12]-[S14].

6 Discussion

The purpose of this review is to conduct a systematic review of empirical studies that have explored the utilization of ChatGPT, one of today’s most advanced LLM-based chatbots, in education. The findings of the reviewed studies showed several ways of ChatGPT utilization in different learning and teaching practices as well as it provided insights and considerations that can facilitate its effective and responsible use in future educational contexts. The results of the reviewed studies came from diverse fields of education, which helped us avoid a biased review that is limited to a specific field. Similarly, the reviewed studies have been conducted across different geographic regions. This kind of variety in geographic representation enriched the findings of this review.

In response to RQ1 , "What are students' and teachers' initial attempts at utilizing ChatGPT in education?", the findings from this review provide comprehensive insights. Chatbots, including ChatGPT, play a crucial role in supporting student learning, enhancing their learning experiences, and facilitating diverse learning approaches [ 42 , 43 ]. This review found that this tool, ChatGPT, has been instrumental in enhancing students' learning experiences by serving as a virtual intelligent assistant, providing immediate feedback, on-demand answers, and engaging in educational conversations. Additionally, students have benefited from ChatGPT’s ability to generate ideas, compose essays, and perform tasks like summarizing, translating, paraphrasing texts, or checking grammar, thereby enhancing their writing and language competencies. Furthermore, students have turned to ChatGPT for assistance in understanding concepts and homework, providing structured learning plans, and clarifying assignments and tasks, which fosters a supportive home learning environment, allowing them to take responsibility for their own learning and cultivate the skills and approaches essential for supportive home learning environment [ 26 , 27 , 28 ]. This finding aligns with the study of Saqr et al. [ 68 , 69 ] who highlighted that, when students actively engage in their own learning process, it yields additional advantages, such as heightened motivation, enhanced achievement, and the cultivation of enthusiasm, turning them into advocates for their own learning.

Moreover, students have utilized ChatGPT for tailored teaching and step-by-step guidance on diverse educational topics, streamlining task and project completion, and generating and recommending educational content. This personalization enhances the learning environment, leading to increased academic success. This finding aligns with other recent studies [ 26 , 27 , 28 , 60 , 66 ] which revealed that ChatGPT has the potential to offer personalized learning experiences and support an effective learning process by providing students with customized feedback and explanations tailored to their needs and abilities. Ultimately, fostering students' performance, engagement, and motivation, leading to increase students' academic success [ 14 , 44 , 58 ]. This ultimate outcome is in line with the findings of Saqr et al. [ 68 , 69 ], which emphasized that learning strategies are important catalysts of students' learning, as students who utilize effective learning strategies are more likely to have better academic achievement.

Teachers, too, have capitalized on ChatGPT's capabilities to enhance productivity and efficiency, using it for creating lesson plans, generating quizzes, providing additional resources, generating and preplanning new ideas for activities, and aiding in answering students’ questions. This adoption of technology introduces new opportunities to support teaching and learning practices, enhancing teacher productivity. This finding aligns with those of Day [ 17 ], De Castro [ 18 ], and Su and Yang [ 74 ] as well as with those of Valtonen et al. [ 82 ], who revealed that emerging technological advancements have opened up novel opportunities and means to support teaching and learning practices, and enhance teachers’ productivity.

In response to RQ2 , "What are the main findings derived from empirical studies that have incorporated ChatGPT into learning and teaching?", the findings from this review provide profound insights and raise significant concerns. Starting with the insights, chatbots, including ChatGPT, have demonstrated the potential to reshape and revolutionize education, creating new, novel opportunities for enhancing the learning process and outcomes [ 83 ], facilitating different learning approaches, and offering a range of pedagogical benefits [ 19 , 43 , 72 ]. In this context, this review found that ChatGPT could open avenues for educators to adopt or develop new effective learning and teaching strategies that can evolve with the introduction of ChatGPT into the classroom. Nonetheless, there is an evident lack of research understanding regarding the potential impact of generative machine learning models within diverse educational settings [ 83 ]. This necessitates teachers to attain a high level of proficiency in incorporating chatbots, such as ChatGPT, into their classrooms to create inventive, well-structured, and captivating learning strategies. In the same vein, the review also found that teachers without the requisite skills to utilize ChatGPT realized that it did not contribute positively to their work and could potentially have adverse effects [ 37 ]. This concern could lead to inequity of access to the benefits of chatbots, including ChatGPT, as individuals who lack the necessary expertise may not be able to harness their full potential, resulting in disparities in educational outcomes and opportunities. Therefore, immediate action is needed to address these potential issues. A potential solution is offering training, support, and competency development for teachers to ensure that all of them can leverage chatbots, including ChatGPT, effectively and equitably in their educational practices [ 5 , 28 , 80 ], which could enhance accessibility and inclusivity, and potentially result in innovative outcomes [ 82 , 83 ].

Additionally, chatbots, including ChatGPT, have the potential to significantly impact students' thinking abilities, including retention, reasoning, analysis skills [ 19 , 45 ], and foster innovation and creativity capabilities [ 83 ]. This review found that ChatGPT could contribute to improving a wide range of skills among students. However, it found that frequent use of ChatGPT may result in a decrease in innovative capacities, collaborative skills and cognitive capacities, and students' motivation to attend classes, as well as could lead to reduced higher-order thinking skills among students [ 22 , 29 ]. Therefore, immediate action is needed to carefully examine the long-term impact of chatbots such as ChatGPT, on learning outcomes as well as to explore its incorporation into educational settings as a supportive tool without compromising students' cognitive development and critical thinking abilities. In the same vein, the review also found that it is challenging to draw a consistent conclusion regarding the potential of ChatGPT to aid self-directed learning approach. This finding aligns with the recent study of Baskara [ 8 ]. Therefore, further research is needed to explore the potential of ChatGPT for self-directed learning. One potential solution involves utilizing learning analytics as a novel approach to examine various aspects of students' learning and support them in their individual endeavors [ 32 ]. This approach can bridge this gap by facilitating an in-depth analysis of how learners engage with ChatGPT, identifying trends in self-directed learning behavior, and assessing its influence on their outcomes.

Turning to the significant concerns, on the other hand, a fundamental challenge with LLM-based chatbots, including ChatGPT, is the accuracy and quality of the provided information and responses, as they provide false information as truth—a phenomenon often referred to as "hallucination" [ 3 , 49 ]. In this context, this review found that the provided information was not entirely satisfactory. Consequently, the utilization of chatbots presents potential concerns, such as generating and providing inaccurate or misleading information, especially for students who utilize it to support their learning. This finding aligns with other findings [ 6 , 30 , 35 , 40 ] which revealed that incorporating chatbots such as ChatGPT, into education presents challenges related to its accuracy and reliability due to its training on a large corpus of data, which may contain inaccuracies and the way users formulate or ask ChatGPT. Therefore, immediate action is needed to address these potential issues. One possible solution is to equip students with the necessary skills and competencies, which include a background understanding of how to use it effectively and the ability to assess and evaluate the information it generates, as the accuracy and the quality of the provided information depend on the input, its complexity, the topic, and the relevance of its training data [ 28 , 49 , 86 ]. However, it's also essential to examine how learners can be educated about how these models operate, the data used in their training, and how to recognize their limitations, challenges, and issues [ 79 ].

Furthermore, chatbots present a substantial challenge concerning maintaining academic integrity [ 20 , 56 ] and copyright violations [ 83 ], which are significant concerns in education. The review found that the potential misuse of ChatGPT might foster cheating, facilitate plagiarism, and threaten academic integrity. This issue is also affirmed by the research conducted by Basic et al. [ 7 ], who presented evidence that students who utilized ChatGPT in their writing assignments had more plagiarism cases than those who did not. These findings align with the conclusions drawn by Cotton et al. [ 13 ], Hisan and Amri [ 33 ] and Sullivan et al. [ 75 ], who revealed that the integration of chatbots such as ChatGPT into education poses a significant challenge to the preservation of academic integrity. Moreover, chatbots, including ChatGPT, have increased the difficulty in identifying plagiarism [ 47 , 67 , 76 ]. The findings from previous studies [ 1 , 84 ] indicate that AI-generated text often went undetected by plagiarism software, such as Turnitin. However, Turnitin and other similar plagiarism detection tools, such as ZeroGPT, GPTZero, and Copyleaks, have since evolved, incorporating enhanced techniques to detect AI-generated text, despite the possibility of false positives, as noted in different studies that have found these tools still not yet fully ready to accurately and reliably identify AI-generated text [ 10 , 51 ], and new novel detection methods may need to be created and implemented for AI-generated text detection [ 4 ]. This potential issue could lead to another concern, which is the difficulty of accurately evaluating student performance when they utilize chatbots such as ChatGPT assistance in their assignments. Consequently, the most LLM-driven chatbots present a substantial challenge to traditional assessments [ 64 ]. The findings from previous studies indicate the importance of rethinking, improving, and redesigning innovative assessment methods in the era of chatbots [ 14 , 20 , 64 , 75 ]. These methods should prioritize the process of evaluating students' ability to apply knowledge to complex cases and demonstrate comprehension, rather than solely focusing on the final product for assessment. Therefore, immediate action is needed to address these potential issues. One possible solution would be the development of clear guidelines, regulatory policies, and pedagogical guidance. These measures would help regulate the proper and ethical utilization of chatbots, such as ChatGPT, and must be established before their introduction to students [ 35 , 38 , 39 , 41 , 89 ].

In summary, our review has delved into the utilization of ChatGPT, a prominent example of chatbots, in education, addressing the question of how ChatGPT has been utilized in education. However, there remain significant gaps, which necessitate further research to shed light on this area.

7 Conclusions

This systematic review has shed light on the varied initial attempts at incorporating ChatGPT into education by both learners and educators, while also offering insights and considerations that can facilitate its effective and responsible use in future educational contexts. From the analysis of 14 selected studies, the review revealed the dual-edged impact of ChatGPT in educational settings. On the positive side, ChatGPT significantly aided the learning process in various ways. Learners have used it as a virtual intelligent assistant, benefiting from its ability to provide immediate feedback, on-demand answers, and easy access to educational resources. Additionally, it was clear that learners have used it to enhance their writing and language skills, engaging in practices such as generating ideas, composing essays, and performing tasks like summarizing, translating, paraphrasing texts, or checking grammar. Importantly, other learners have utilized it in supporting and facilitating their directed and personalized learning on a broad range of educational topics, assisting in understanding concepts and homework, providing structured learning plans, and clarifying assignments and tasks. Educators, on the other hand, found ChatGPT beneficial for enhancing productivity and efficiency. They used it for creating lesson plans, generating quizzes, providing additional resources, and answers learners' questions, which saved time and allowed for more dynamic and engaging teaching strategies and methodologies.

However, the review also pointed out negative impacts. The results revealed that overuse of ChatGPT could decrease innovative capacities and collaborative learning among learners. Specifically, relying too much on ChatGPT for quick answers can inhibit learners' critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Learners might not engage deeply with the material or consider multiple solutions to a problem. This tendency was particularly evident in group projects, where learners preferred consulting ChatGPT individually for solutions over brainstorming and collaborating with peers, which negatively affected their teamwork abilities. On a broader level, integrating ChatGPT into education has also raised several concerns, including the potential for providing inaccurate or misleading information, issues of inequity in access, challenges related to academic integrity, and the possibility of misusing the technology.

Accordingly, this review emphasizes the urgency of developing clear rules, policies, and regulations to ensure ChatGPT's effective and responsible use in educational settings, alongside other chatbots, by both learners and educators. This requires providing well-structured training to educate them on responsible usage and understanding its limitations, along with offering sufficient background information. Moreover, it highlights the importance of rethinking, improving, and redesigning innovative teaching and assessment methods in the era of ChatGPT. Furthermore, conducting further research and engaging in discussions with policymakers and stakeholders are essential steps to maximize the benefits for both educators and learners and ensure academic integrity.

It is important to acknowledge that this review has certain limitations. Firstly, the limited inclusion of reviewed studies can be attributed to several reasons, including the novelty of the technology, as new technologies often face initial skepticism and cautious adoption; the lack of clear guidelines or best practices for leveraging this technology for educational purposes; and institutional or governmental policies affecting the utilization of this technology in educational contexts. These factors, in turn, have affected the number of studies available for review. Secondly, the utilization of the original version of ChatGPT, based on GPT-3 or GPT-3.5, implies that new studies utilizing the updated version, GPT-4 may lead to different findings. Therefore, conducting follow-up systematic reviews is essential once more empirical studies on ChatGPT are published. Additionally, long-term studies are necessary to thoroughly examine and assess the impact of ChatGPT on various educational practices.

Despite these limitations, this systematic review has highlighted the transformative potential of ChatGPT in education, revealing its diverse utilization by learners and educators alike and summarized the benefits of incorporating it into education, as well as the forefront critical concerns and challenges that must be addressed to facilitate its effective and responsible use in future educational contexts. This review could serve as an insightful resource for practitioners who seek to integrate ChatGPT into education and stimulate further research in the field.

Data availability

The data supporting our findings are available upon request.

Abbreviations

• Artificial intelligence

AI in education

Large language model

Artificial neural networks

Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer

Recurrent neural networks

Long short-term memory

Reinforcement learning from human feedback

Natural language processing

Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses

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The paper is co-funded by the Academy of Finland (Suomen Akatemia) Research Council for Natural Sciences and Engineering for the project Towards precision education: Idiographic learning analytics (TOPEILA), Decision Number 350560.

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Yazid Albadarin, Mohammed Saqr, Nicolas Pope & Markku Tukiainen

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YA contributed to the literature search, data analysis, discussion, and conclusion. Additionally, YA contributed to the manuscript’s writing, editing, and finalization. MS contributed to the study’s design, conceptualization, acquisition of funding, project administration, allocation of resources, supervision, validation, literature search, and analysis of results. Furthermore, MS contributed to the manuscript's writing, revising, and approving it in its finalized state. NP contributed to the results, and discussions, and provided supervision. NP also contributed to the writing process, revisions, and the final approval of the manuscript in its finalized state. MT contributed to the study's conceptualization, resource management, supervision, writing, revising the manuscript, and approving it.

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See Table  4

The process of synthesizing the data presented in Table  4 involved identifying the relevant studies through a search process of databases (ERIC, Scopus, Web of Knowledge, Dimensions.ai, and lens.org) using specific keywords "ChatGPT" and "education". Following this, inclusion/exclusion criteria were applied, and data extraction was performed using Creswell's [ 15 ] coding techniques to capture key information and identify common themes across the included studies.

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Albadarin, Y., Saqr, M., Pope, N. et al. A systematic literature review of empirical research on ChatGPT in education. Discov Educ 3 , 60 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00138-2

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Received : 22 October 2023

Accepted : 10 May 2024

Published : 26 May 2024

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s44217-024-00138-2

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