can chatgpt review essays

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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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The Division of Continuing Education (DCE) at Harvard University is dedicated to bringing rigorous academics and innovative teaching capabilities to those seeking to improve their lives through education. We make Harvard education accessible to lifelong learners from high school to retirement.

Frequently asked questions

Can chatgpt feedback my college essay.

Yes, you use ChatGPT to help write your college essay by having it generate feedback on certain aspects of your work (consistency of tone, clarity of structure, etc.).

However, ChatGPT is not able to adequately judge qualities like vulnerability and authenticity. For this reason, it’s important to also ask for feedback from people who have experience with college essays and who know you well. Alternatively, you can get advice using Scribbr’s essay editing service .

Frequently asked questions: AI tools

Deep learning requires a large dataset (e.g., images or text) to learn from. The more diverse and representative the data, the better the model will learn to recognise objects or make predictions. Only when the training data is sufficiently varied can the model make accurate predictions or recognise objects from new data.

ChatGPT and other AI writing tools can have unethical uses. These include:

• Reproducing biases and false information
• Using ChatGPT to cheat in academic contexts
• Violating the privacy of others by inputting personal information

However, when used correctly, AI writing tools can be helpful resources for improving your academic writing and research skills. Some ways to use ChatGPT ethically include:

• Following your institution’s guidelines
• Critically evaluating outputs
• Being transparent about how you used the tool

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).

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.

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.

Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) is the study of how to represent information about the world in a form that can be used by a computer system to solve and reason about complex problems. It is an important field of artificial intelligence (AI) research.

An example of a KRR application is a semantic network, a way of grouping words or concepts by how closely related they are and formally defining the relationships between them so that a machine can “understand” language in something like the way people do.

A related concept is information extraction , concerned with how to get structured information from unstructured sources.

Information extraction  refers to the process of starting from unstructured sources (e.g., text documents written in ordinary English) and automatically extracting structured information (i.e., data in a clearly defined format that’s easily understood by computers). It’s an important concept in natural language processing (NLP) .

For example, you might think of using news articles full of celebrity gossip to automatically create a database of the relationships between the celebrities mentioned (e.g., married, dating, divorced, feuding). You would end up with data in a structured format, something like MarriageBetween(celebrity 1 ,celebrity 2 ,date) .

The challenge involves developing systems that can “understand” the text well enough to extract this kind of data from it.

ChatGPT can sometimes reproduce biases from its training data , since it draws on the text it has “seen” to create plausible responses to your prompts.

For example, users have shown that it sometimes makes sexist assumptions such as that a doctor mentioned in a prompt must be a man rather than a woman. Some have also pointed out political bias in terms of which political figures the tool is willing to write positively or negatively about and which requests it refuses.

The tool is unlikely to be consistently biased toward a particular perspective or against a particular group. Rather, its responses are based on its training data and on the way you phrase your ChatGPT prompts . It’s sensitive to phrasing, so asking it the same question in different ways will result in quite different answers.

According to OpenAI’s terms of use, users have the right to use outputs from their own ChatGPT conversations for any purpose (including commercial publication).

However, users should be aware of the potential legal implications of publishing ChatGPT outputs. ChatGPT responses are not always unique: different users may receive the same response.

Furthermore, ChatGPT outputs may contain copyrighted material. Users may be liable if they reproduce such material.

According to OpenAI’s terms of use, users have the right to reproduce text generated by ChatGPT during conversations.

However, publishing ChatGPT outputs may have legal implications , such as copyright infringement.

Users should be aware of such issues and use ChatGPT outputs as a source of inspiration instead.

You can access ChatGPT by signing up for a free account:

• Follow this link to the ChatGPT website.
• Click on “Sign up” and fill in the necessary details (or use your Google account). It’s free to sign up and use the tool.
• Type a prompt into the chat box to get started!

A ChatGPT app is also available for iOS, and an Android app is planned for the future. The app works similarly to the website, and you log in with the same account for both.

Yes, ChatGPT is currently available for free. You have to sign up for a free account to use the tool, and you should be aware that your data may be collected to train future versions of the model.

To sign up and use the tool for free, go to this page and click “Sign up”. You can do so with your email or with a Google account.

A premium version of the tool called ChatGPT Plus is available as a monthly subscription. It currently costs £16 and gets you access to features like GPT-4 (a more advanced version of the language model). But it’s optional: you can use the tool completely free if you’re not interested in the extra features.

ChatGPT prompts are the textual inputs (e.g., questions, instructions) that you enter into ChatGPT to get responses.

ChatGPT predicts an appropriate response to the prompt you entered. In general, a more specific and carefully worded prompt will get you better responses.

A good ChatGPT prompt (i.e., one that will get you the kinds of responses you want):

• Gives the tool a role to explain what type of answer you expect from it
• Is precisely formulated and gives enough context
• Is free from bias
• Has been tested and improved by experimenting with the tool

Deep learning models can be biased in their predictions if the training data consist of biased information. For example, if a deep learning model used for screening job applicants has been trained with a dataset consisting primarily of white male applicants, it will consistently favour this specific population over others.

No, ChatGPT is not a credible source of factual information and can’t be cited for this purpose in academic writing . While it tries to provide accurate answers, it often gets things wrong because its responses are based on patterns, not facts and data.

Specifically, the CRAAP test for evaluating sources includes five criteria: currency , relevance , authority , accuracy , and purpose . ChatGPT fails to meet at least three of them:

• Currency: The dataset that ChatGPT was trained on only extends to 2021, making it slightly outdated.
• Authority: It’s just a language model and is not considered a trustworthy source of factual information.
• Accuracy: It bases its responses on patterns rather than evidence and is unable to cite its sources .

So you shouldn’t cite ChatGPT as a trustworthy source for a factual claim. You might still cite ChatGPT for other reasons – for example, if you’re writing a paper about AI language models, ChatGPT responses are a relevant primary source .

Our research into the best summary generators (aka summarisers or summarising tools) found that the best summariser available in 2023 is the one offered by QuillBot.

While many summarisers just pick out some sentences from the text, QuillBot generates original summaries that are creative, clear, accurate, and concise. It can summarise texts of up to 1,200 words for free, or up to 6,000 with a premium subscription.

Try the QuillBot summarizer for free

Tools called AI detectors are designed to label text as AI-generated or human. AI detectors work by looking for specific characteristics in the text, such as a low level of randomness in word choice and sentence length. These characteristics are typical of AI writing, allowing the detector to make a good guess at when text is AI-generated.

But these tools can’t guarantee 100% accuracy. Check out our comparison of the best AI detectors to learn more.

You can also manually watch for clues that a text is AI-generated – for example, a very different style from the writer’s usual voice or a generic, overly polite tone.

AI detectors aim to identify the presence of AI-generated text (e.g., from ChatGPT ) in a piece of writing, but they can’t do so with complete accuracy. In our comparison of the best AI detectors , we found that the 10 tools we tested had an average accuracy of 60%. The best free tool had 68% accuracy, the best premium tool 84%.

Because of how AI detectors work , they can never guarantee 100% accuracy, and there is always at least a small risk of false positives (human text being marked as AI-generated). Therefore, these tools should not be relied upon to provide absolute proof that a text is or isn’t AI-generated. Rather, they can provide a good indication in combination with other evidence.

Yes, there are a variety of ways to use ChatGPT for language learning , including treating it as a conversation partner, asking it for translations, and using it to generate a curriculum or practice exercises.

Yes, using ChatGPT as a conversation partner is a great way to practice a language in an interactive way.

Try using a prompt like this one:

“Please be my Spanish conversation partner. Only speak to me in Spanish. Keep your answers short (maximum 50 words). Ask me questions. Let’s start the conversation with the following topic: [conversation topic].”

ChatGPT conversations are generally used to train future models and to resolve issues/bugs. These chats may be monitored by human AI trainers.

However, users can opt out of having their conversations used for training. In these instances, chats are monitored only for potential abuse.

The official ChatGPT app is currently only available on iOS devices. If you don’t have an iOS device, only use the official OpenAI website to access the tool. This helps to eliminate the potential risk of downloading fraudulent or malicious software.

OpenAI may store ChatGPT conversations for the purposes of future training. Additionally, these conversations may be monitored by human AI trainers.

Users can choose not to have their chat history saved. Unsaved chats are not used to train future models and are permanently deleted from ChatGPT’s system after 30 days.

ChatGPT is a chatbot based on a large language model (LLM). These models are trained on huge datasets consisting of hundreds of billions of words of text, based on which the model learns to effectively predict natural responses to the prompts you enter.

ChatGPT was also refined through a process called reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), which involves “rewarding” the model for providing useful answers and discouraging inappropriate answers – encouraging it to make fewer mistakes.

Essentially, ChatGPT’s answers are based on predicting the most likely responses to your inputs based on its training data, with a reward system on top of this to incentivise it to give you the most helpful answers possible. It’s a bit like an incredibly advanced version of predictive text. This is also one of ChatGPT’s limitations : because its answers are based on probabilities, they’re not always trustworthy .

ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, the company that developed and released it. OpenAI is a company dedicated to AI research. It started as a nonprofit company in 2015 but transitioned to for-profit in 2019. Its current CEO is Sam Altman, who also co-founded the company.

In terms of who owns the content generated by ChatGPT, OpenAI states that it will not claim copyright on this content , and the terms of use state that “you can use Content for any purpose, including commercial purposes such as sale or publication”. This means that you effectively own any content you generate with ChatGPT and can use it for your own purposes.

Be cautious about how you use ChatGPT content in an academic context. University policies on AI writing are still developing, so even if you “own” the content, you’re often not allowed to submit it as your own work according to your university or to publish it in a journal.

ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an AI research company. It started as a nonprofit company in 2015 but became for-profit in 2019. Its CEO is Sam Altman, who also co-founded the company. OpenAI released ChatGPT as a free “research preview” in November 2022. Currently, it’s still available for free, although a more advanced premium version is available if you pay for it.

OpenAI is also known for developing DALL-E, an AI image generator that runs on similar technology to ChatGPT.

GPT  stands for “generative pre-trained transformer”, which is a type of large language model: a neural network trained on a very large amount of text to produce convincing, human-like language outputs. The Chat part of the name just means “chat”: ChatGPT is a chatbot that you interact with by typing in text.

The technology behind ChatGPT is GPT-3.5 (in the free version) or GPT-4 (in the premium version). These are the names for the specific versions of the GPT model. GPT-4 is currently the most advanced model that OpenAI has created. It’s also the model used in Bing’s chatbot feature.

No, it is not possible to cite your sources with ChatGPT . You can ask it to create citations, but it isn’t designed for this task and tends to make up sources that don’t exist or present information in the wrong format. ChatGPT also cannot add citations to direct quotes in your text.

Instead, use a tool designed for this purpose, like the Scribbr Citation Generator .

But you can use ChatGPT for assignments in other ways, to provide inspiration, feedback, and general writing advice.

ChatGPT is an AI language model that was trained on a large body of text from a variety of sources (e.g., Wikipedia, books, news articles, scientific journals). The dataset only went up to 2021, meaning that it lacks information on more recent events.

It’s also important to understand that ChatGPT doesn’t access a database of facts to answer your questions. Instead, its responses are based on patterns that it saw in the training data.

So ChatGPT is not always trustworthy . It can usually answer general knowledge questions accurately, but it can easily give misleading answers on more specialist topics.

Another consequence of this way of generating responses is that ChatGPT usually can’t cite its sources accurately. It doesn’t really know what source it’s basing any specific claim on. It’s best to check any information you get from it against a credible source .

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Can ChatGPT Write a Good College-Admissions Essay?

In January, I raised my hourly rate to $300 before wondering if I could get away with charging anything at all.

I teach high-schoolers how to write college essays, helping students claw their way out of hackneyed bildungsroman and into deftly tuned narratives . The clients (and their parents) can be a lot to handle, but my results ensure that I have a new cluster of rising seniors every summer. And the service I provide is in perpetually high demand among the moneyed and desperate private-school crowd.

Recently, though, the rise of ChatGPT had me questioning how much longer this comfortable arrangement could last. I started to fear obsolescence when I heard about uncannily passable AI-generated  letters of recommendation and wedding toasts — forms of writing not a million miles away from my specialty.  So, in an attempt to get to know my new enemy —  and gauge whether I was still employable —  I paid $20 for access to the “more creative” GPT4.

Nervously, I prompted ChatGPT with a series of bullet points and fed it what anyone who has applied to college in the past 15 years knows is the formula for the Common Application personal essay: “Write 600 words including a catchy hook to draw the reader in, a conflict, and a thoughtful self-reflection.”

ChatGPT didn’t even take a beat to process my outline; it spat out an essay as fast as I could read it. Its first draft (about a freak accident washing dishes leading to a lesson in the power of fear) was unsettlingly well-composed, but stiff in a way that kept it from resonating emotionally (often a problem with student-generated drafts, too). ChatGPT wrote, “ I was horrified, not just at the sight of my own blood but also at the thought of needing stitches. In that moment, I was transported back to the time when I was a child and I got my first stitches. ” Not bad, but not exactly transcendent, either.

The next big test: Could this thing incorporate feedback? I replied that the essay was “a little formal, can you make it more conversational?” Done. ChatGPT added a few “ you see ”s and began several sentences with “ So .” The essay was suddenly more casual: “ The experience taught me that fear, no matter how powerful it may seem, can be overcome with perseverance and determination ” became “ But eventually, I realized that this fear was holding me back and preventing me from enjoying something that brought me so much joy. ”

With these small tweaks, ChatGPT’s effort was already significantly better than most first drafts I come across. I tried to throw it off with something random, adding, “My favorite comedian is Jon Stewart. Can you incorporate that into the essay?” ChatGPT wrote three new sentences that explained how Stewart “helped me see the lighter side of things and lifted my spirits.”

I told it to be funny. It tried. I corrected it, “No, that’s too corny, make it more sarcastic.” It revised, “ And let’s face it, what’s a little scar compared to the joy of a rack of clean dishes? ” Then I wrote, “Add in my high-achieving older brother who I always compare myself to a classic Common App essay character as a foil.” I specified that the brother breaks his collarbone around the same time the main character has to get stitches. ChatGPT came up with this: “ And here I was, feeling guilty for even complaining about my measly scratch when his pain was so much worse. It was like a twisted game of ‘whose injury is more severe?’ ” I watched ChatGPT revise (in seconds) the amount of material it typically takes students (with my help) hours to get through.  Intrusive thought: Even if I lower my rates, there won’t be any demand.

And then I slowed down, stopped panicking, and really read the essay.

I began noticing all the cracks in it. For one thing, ChatGPT was heavy on banal reflections (“ Looking back on my experience… ”) and empty-sounding conclusions (“ I am grateful for the lessons it taught me ”) that I would never let slide. I always advise students to get into specifics about how they’ve changed as people, but ChatGPT relied on anodyne generalities. Most importantly, it couldn’t go beyond a generic narrative into the realm of the highly specific. (A good student essay might have, say, detailed how Stewart’s Mark Twain Prize acceptance speech helped them overcome a fear of public speaking.)

AI is also just lazy. There’s nothing wrong with an occasional transitional phrase, but using “ Slowly but surely, ” “ Over time, ” “ Looking back on my experience, ” and “ In conclusion ” to lead off consecutive paragraphs is only okay if it’s your first time writing an essay. Leading off a conclusion with “ In conclusion ” means you’re either in sixth grade or satisfied with getting a C.

While the essay technically met every criterion I set (hook, conflict, self-reflection), it also failed the main test I pose to students: Have you ever read a version of this story? The answer here was most definitely “yes.” It’s uncanny how well ChatGPT mimicked the contrived essay that I’m paid to steer kids away from — the one you’d be shown as an example of what not to do in a college-essay seminar. It reads like a satire of one of those “the ability was inside me all along” or “all I needed to do was believe in myself/be true to myself/listen to my inner voice” narratives rife with clichés and half-baked epiphanies. ChatGPT’s basic competence led me to overlook the middling quality of its execution. It’s the same disbelief-to-disillusionment arc ChatGPT has inspired elsewhere — take the viral AI travel itinerary that seemed perfect until people pointed out some pretty glaring (and possibly dangerous) errors.

Credit where it’s due. I expend a lot of effort translating overwritten, clunky, and generally unclear student prose. ChatGPT excels in writing cleanly — if flatly. It’s great at producing simple, informational text from a set of data. Creating a rule book for Airbnb guests, writing a “help wanted” ad, drafting an email with details for a surprise party: These are perfect cases for ChatGPT right now. From this mess, ChatGPT would translate the raw information into a block of concise text that wouldn’t need style, voice, or flair to be successful. If you want to share facts in a digestible and clear way, ChatGPT is your guy.

But ChatGPT failed hardest at the most important part of the college essay: self-reflection. Literary agent Jamie Carr of the Book Group describes great storytelling as something that makes “connections between things and ideas that are totally nonsensical — which is something only humans can do.” Can ChatGPT bring together disparate parts of your life and use a summer job to illuminate a fraught friendship? Can it link a favorite song to an identity crisis? So far, nope. Crucially, ChatGPT can’t do one major thing that all my clients can: have a random thought. “I’m not sure why I’m telling you this” is something I love to hear from students, because it means I’m about to go on a wild ride that only the teenage brain can offer. It’s frequently in these tangents about collecting cologne or not paying it forward at the Starbucks drive-thru that we discover the key to the essay. I often describe my main task as helping students turn over stones they didn’t know existed, or stones they assumed were off-limits. ChatGPT can’t tap into the unpredictable because it can only turn over the precise stones you tell it to — and if you’re issuing these orders, chances are you already know what’s under the stone.

In the South Park episode “Deep Learning,” Clyde and Stan use AI to compose thoughtful, emotionally mature text messages to their girlfriends. When Bebe asks if she should cut her hair, Clyde (via ChatGPT) replies, “You would look great with any length of hair. Trying a new look could be fun.” Only a fourth-grader (no offense, Bebe) would buy that the message is authentic. When Stan’s girlfriend Wendy wants to repair their relationship, Stan responds, “We can work things out if you’re willing. I still believe we can make this work. Let’s not give up on each other.” ChatGPT is credited as a writer in this episode, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the messages were punched up to reach this level of dullness. But the style speaks to something I noticed when I asked ChatGPT to write a short story: It makes everything sound like an unfunny parody. A parody of an attentive boyfriend. A parody of a short story. A parody of a college essay.

AI may supplant me one day, but for now, ChatGPT isn’t an admissions-essay quick fix. It’s not even a moderate threat to the service I offer. And while there are plenty of problems with a system in which the ultra-elite pay someone like me to help package insight into a few hundred words, ChatGPT doesn’t solve any of them. Perhaps one day, we’ll figure out a fairer way forward. For now, I’m quite relieved to report that my expertise is still definitely worth something — maybe even more than $300 an hour.

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David Nield

5 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve, Not Replace, Your Writing

It's been quite a year for ChatGPT, with the large language model (LLM) now taking exams, churning out content , searching the web, writing code, and more. The AI chatbot can produce its own stories , though whether they're any good is another matter.

If you're in any way involved in the business of writing, then tools like ChatGPT have the potential to complete up-end the way you work—but at this stage, it's not inevitable that journalists, authors, and copywriters will be replaced by generative AI bots.

What we can say with certainty is that ChatGPT is a reliable writing assistant, provided you use it in the right way. If you have to put words in order as part of your job, here's how ChatGPT might be able to take your writing to the next level—at least until it replaces you, anyway.

Using a thesaurus as a writer isn't particularly frowned on; using ChatGPT to come up with the right word or phrase shouldn’t be either. You can use the bot to look for variations on a particular word, or get even more specific and say you want alternatives that are less or more formal, longer or shorter, and so on.

Where ChatGPT really comes in handy is when you're reaching for a word and you're not even sure it exists: Ask about "a word that means a sense of melancholy but in particular one that comes and goes and doesn't seem to have a single cause" and you'll get back "ennui" as a suggestion (or at least we did).

If you have characters talking, you might even ask about words or phrases that would typically be said by someone from a particular region, of a particular age, or with particular character traits. This being ChatGPT, you can always ask for more suggestions.

Julian Chokkattu

Adrienne So

Jeremy White

ChatGPT is never short of ideas.

Whatever you might think about the quality and character of ChatGPT's prose, it's hard to deny that it's quite good at coming up with ideas . If your powers of imagination have hit a wall then you can turn to ChatGPT for some inspiration about plot points, character motivations, the settings of scenes, and so on.

This can be anything from the broad to the detailed. Maybe you need ideas about what to write a novel or an article about—where it's set, what the context is, and what the theme is. If you're a short story writer, perhaps you could challenge yourself to write five tales inspired by ideas from ChatGPT.

Alternatively, you might need inspiration for something very precise, whether that's what happens next in a scene or how to summarize an essay. At whatever point in the process you get writer's block, then ChatGPT might be one way of working through it.

Writing is often about a lot more than putting words down in order. You'll regularly have to look up facts, figures, trends, history, and more to make sure that everything is accurate (unless your next literary work is entirely inside a fantasy world that you're imagining yourself).

ChatGPT can sometimes have the edge over conventional search engines when it comes to knowing what food people might have eaten in a certain year in a certain part of the world, or what the procedure is for a particular type of crime. Whereas Google might give you SEO-packed spam sites with conflicting answers, ChatGPT will actually return something coherent.

That said, we know that LLMs have a tendency to “hallucinate” and present inaccurate information—so you should always double-check what ChatGPT tells you with a second source to make sure you're not getting something wildly wrong.

Getting fictional character and place names right can be a challenge, especially when they're important to the plot. A name has to have the right vibe and the right connotations, and if you get it wrong it really sticks out on the page.

ChatGPT can come up with an unlimited number of names for people and places in your next work of fiction, and it can be a lot of fun playing around with this too. The more detail you give about a person or a place, the better—maybe you want a name that really reflects a character trait for example, or a geographical feature.

The elements of human creation and curation aren't really replaced, because you're still weighing up which names work and which don't, and picking the right one—but getting ChatGPT on the job can save you a lot of brainstorming time.

Get your names right with ChatGPT.

With a bit of cutting and pasting, you can quickly get ChatGPT to review your writing as well: It'll attempt to tell you if there's anything that doesn't make sense, if your sentences are too long, or if your prose is too lengthy.

From spotting spelling and grammar mistakes to recognizing a tone that's too formal, ChatGPT has plenty to offer as an editor and critic. Just remember that this is an LLM, after all, and it doesn't actually “know” anything—try to keep a reasonable balance between accepting ChatGPT's suggestions and giving it too much control.

If you're sharing your work with ChatGPT, you can also ask it for better ways to phrase something, or suggestions on how to change the tone—though this gets into the area of having the bot actually do your writing for you, which all genuine writers would want to avoid.

WIRED has teamed up with Jobbio to create WIRED Hired , a dedicated career marketplace for WIRED readers. Companies who want to advertise their jobs can visit WIRED Hired to post open roles, while anyone can search and apply for thousands of career opportunities. Jobbio is not involved with this story or any editorial content.

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I asked ChatGPT to write college entrance essays. Admissions professionals said they passed for essays written by students but I wouldn't have a chance at any top colleges.

• I asked OpenAI's ChatGPT to write some college admissions essays and sent them to experts to review.
• Both of the experts said the essays seemed like they had been written by a real student.
• However, they said the essays wouldn't have had a shot at highly selective colleges.

ChatGPT can be used for many things: school work , cover letters , and apparently, college admissions essays. 

College essays, sometimes known as personal statements, are a time-consuming but important part of the application process . They are not required for all institutions, but experts say they can make or break a candidate's chances when they are.

The essays are often based on prompts that require students to write about a personal experience, such as:

Describe a topic, idea, or concept you find so engaging that it makes you lose all track of time. Why does it captivate you? What or who do you turn to when you want to learn more?

I asked ChatGPT to whip up a few based on some old questions from the Common App , a widely used application process across the US. In about 10 minutes I had three entrance essays that were ready to use.

At first, the chatbot refused to write a college application essay for me, telling me it was important I wrote from my personal experience. However, after prompting it to write me a "specific example answer" to an essay question with vivid language to illustrate the points, it generated some pretty good text based on made-up personal experiences. 

I sent the results to two admissions professionals to see what they thought. 

The essays seemed like they had been written by real students, experts say

Both of the experts I asked said the essays would pass for a real student. 

Adam Nguyen, founder of tutoring company Ivy Link , previously worked as an admissions reader and interviewer in Columbia's Office of Undergraduate Admission and as an academic advisor at Harvard University. He told Insider: "Having read thousands of essays over the years, I can confidently say that it would be extremely unlikely to ascertain with the naked eye that these essays were AI-generated."

Kevin Wong, Princeton University alumnus and cofounder of tutoring service PrepMaven, which specializes in college admissions, agreed.

Related stories

"Without additional tools, I don't think it would be easy to conclude that these essays were AI-generated," he said. "The essays do seem to follow a predictable pattern, but it isn't plainly obvious that they weren't written by a human."

"Plenty of high school writers struggle with basic prose, grammar, and structure, and the AI essays do not seem to have any difficulty with these basic but important areas," he added.

Nguyen also praised the grammar and structure of the essays, and said that they also directly addressed the questions.

"There were some attempts to provide examples and evidence to support the writer's thesis or position. The essays are in the first-person narrative format, which is how these essays should be written," he said.

Wong thought the essays may even have been successful at some colleges. "Assuming these essays weren't flagged as AI-generated, I think they could pass muster at some colleges. I know that students have been admitted to colleges after submitting essays lower in quality than these," he said. 

OpenAI did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

They weren't good enough for top colleges

Nguyen said I wouldn't be able to apply to any of the top 50 colleges in the US using the AI-generated essays.

"These essays are exemplary of what a very mediocre, perhaps even a middle school, student would produce," Nguyen said. "If I were to assign a grade, the essays would get a grade of B or lower."

Wong also said the essays wouldn't stack up at "highly selective" colleges . "Admissions officers are looking for genuine emotion, careful introspection, and personal growth," he said. "The ChatGPT essays express insight and reflection mostly through superficial and cliched statements that anyone could write."

Nguyen said the writing in the essays was fluffy, trite, lacked specific details, and was overly predictable.

"There's no element of surprise, and the reader knows how the essay is going to end. These essays shouldn't end on a neat note, as if the student has it all figured out, and life is perfect," he said. 

"With all three, I would scrap 80-90% and start over," he said.

Axel Springer, Business Insider's parent company, has a global deal to allow OpenAI to train its models on its media brands' reporting.

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 08 April 2024

Three ways ChatGPT helps me in my academic writing

• Dritjon Gruda 0

Dritjon Gruda is an invited associate professor of organizational behavior at the Universidade Católica Portuguesa in Lisbon, the Católica Porto Business School and the Research Centre in Management and Economics.

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

For Dritjon Gruda, artificial-intelligence chatbots have been a huge help in scientific writing and peer review. Credit: Vladimira Stavreva-Gruda

Confession time: I use generative artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the debate over whether chatbots are positive or negative forces in academia, I use these tools almost daily to refine the phrasing in papers that I’ve written, and to seek an alternative assessment of work I’ve been asked to evaluate, as either a reviewer or an editor. AI even helped me to refine this article.

I study personality and leadership at Católica Porto Business School in Portugal and am an associate editor at Personality and Individual Differences and Psychology of Leaders and Leadership. The value that I derive from generative AI is not from the technology itself blindly churning out text, but from engaging with the tool and using my own expertise to refine what it produces. The dialogue between me and the chatbot both enhances the coherence of my work and, over time, teaches me how to describe complex topics in a simpler way.

Whether you’re using AI in writing, editing or peer review, here’s how it can do the same for you.

Polishing academic writing

Ever heard the property mantra, ‘location, location, location’? In the world of generative AI, it’s ‘context, context, context’.

Context is king. You can’t expect generative AI — or anything or anyone, for that matter — to provide a meaningful response to a question without it. When you’re using a chatbot to refine a section of your paper for clarity, start by outlining the context. What is your paper about, and what is your main argument? Jot down your ideas in any format — even bullet points will work. Then, present this information to the generative AI of your choice. I typically use ChatGPT, made by OpenAI in San Francisco, California, but for tasks that demand a deep understanding of language nuances, such as analysing search queries or text, I find Gemini, developed by researchers at Google, to be particularly effective. The open-source large language models made by Mixtral, based in Paris, are ideal when you’re working offline but still need assistance from a chatbot.

Regardless of which generative-AI tool you choose, the key to success lies in providing precise instructions. The clearer you are, the better. For example, you might write: “I’m writing a paper on [topic] for a leading [discipline] academic journal. What I tried to say in the following section is [specific point]. Please rephrase it for clarity, coherence and conciseness, ensuring each paragraph flows into the next. Remove jargon. Use a professional tone.” You can use the same technique again later on, to clarify your responses to reviewer comments.

Remember, the chatbot’s first reply might not be perfect — it’s a collaborative and iterative process. You might need to refine your instructions or add more information, much as you would when discussing a concept with a colleague. It’s the interaction that improves the results. If something doesn’t quite hit the mark, don’t hesitate to say, “This isn’t quite what I meant. Let’s adjust this part.” Or you can commend its improvements: “This is much clearer, but let’s tweak the ending for a stronger transition to the next section.”

This approach can transform a challenging task into a manageable one, filling the page with insights you might not have fully gleaned on your own. It’s like having a conversation that opens new perspectives, making generative AI a collaborative partner in the creative process of developing and refining ideas. But importantly, you are using the AI as a sounding board: it is not writing your document for you; nor is it reviewing manuscripts.

Elevating peer review

Generative AI can be a valuable tool in the peer-review process. After thoroughly reading a manuscript, summarize key points and areas for review. Then, use the AI to help organize and articulate your feedback (without directly inputting or uploading the manuscript’s text, thus avoiding privacy concerns). For example, you might instruct the AI: “Assume you’re an expert and seasoned scholar with 20+ years of academic experience in [field]. On the basis of my summary of a paper in [field], where the main focus is on [general topic], provide a detailed review of this paper, in the following order: 1) briefly discuss its core content; 2) identify its limitations; and 3) explain the significance of each limitation in order of importance. Maintain a concise and professional tone throughout.”

I’ve found that AI partnerships can be incredibly enriching; the tools often offer perspectives I hadn’t considered. For instance, ChatGPT excels at explaining and justifying the reasons behind specific limitations that I had identified in my review, which helps me to grasp the broader implications of the study’s contribution. If I identify methodological limitations, ChatGPT can elaborate on these in detail and suggest ways to overcome them in a revision. This feedback often helps me to connect the dots between the limitations and their collective impact on the paper’s overall contribution. Occasionally, however, its suggestions are off-base, far-fetched, irrelevant or simply wrong. And that is why the final responsibility for the review always remains with you. A reviewer must be able to distinguish between what is factual and what is not, and no chatbot can reliably do that.

Optimizing editorial feedback

The final area in which I benefit from using chatbots is in my role as a journal editor. Providing constructive editorial feedback to authors can be challenging, especially when you oversee several manuscripts every week. Having personally received countless pieces of unhelpful, non-specific feedback — such as, “After careful consideration, we have decided not to proceed with your manuscript” — I recognize the importance of clear and constructive communication. ChatGPT has become indispensable in this process, helping me to craft precise, empathetic and actionable feedback without replacing human editorial decisions.

For instance, after evaluating a paper and noting its pros and cons, I might feed these into ChatGPT and get it to draft a suitable letter: “On the basis of these notes, draft a letter to the author. Highlight the manuscript’s key issues and clearly explain why the manuscript, despite its interesting topic, might not provide a substantial enough advancement to merit publication. Avoid jargon. Be direct. Maintain a professional and respectful tone throughout.” Again, it might take a few iterations to get the tone and content just right.

I’ve found that this approach both enhances the quality of my feedback and helps to guarantee that I convey my thoughts supportively. The result is a more positive and productive dialogue between editors and authors.

There is no doubt that generative AI presents challenges to the scientific community. But it can also enhance the quality of our work. These tools can bolster our capabilities in writing, reviewing and editing. They preserve the essence of scientific inquiry — curiosity, critical thinking and innovation — while improving how we communicate our research.

Considering the benefits, what are you waiting for?

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-01042-3

This is an article from the Nature Careers Community, a place for Nature readers to share their professional experiences and advice. Guest posts are encouraged .

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, can you use chatgpt for your college essay.

College Admissions , College Essays

ChatGPT has become a popular topic of conversation since its official launch in November 2022. The artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot can be used for all sorts of things, like having conversations, answering questions, and even crafting complete pieces of writing.

If you’re applying for college, you might be wondering about ChatGPT college admissions’ potential.  Should you use a ChatGPT college essay in your application ? 

By the time you finish reading this article, you’ll know much more about ChatGPT, including how students can use it responsibly and if it’s a good idea to use ChatGPT on college essays . We’ll answer all your questions, like:

• What is ChatGPT and why are schools talking about it?
• What are the good and bad aspects of ChatGPT?
• Should you use ChatGPT for college essays and applications?
• Can colleges detect ChatGPT?
• Are there other tools and strategies that students can use, instead?

We’ve got a lot to cover, so let’s get started!

Schools and colleges are worried about how new AI technology affects how students learn. (Don't worry. Robots aren't replacing your teachers...yet.)

What Is ChatGPT and Why Are Schools Talking About It?

ChatGPT (short for “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”) is a chatbot created by OpenAI , an artificial intelligence research company. ChatGPT can be used for various tasks, like having human-like conversations, answering questions, giving recommendations, translating words and phrases—and writing things like essays. 

In order to do this, ChatGPT uses a neural network that’s been trained on thousands of resources to predict relationships between words. When you give ChatGPT a task, it uses that knowledge base to interpret your input or query. It then analyzes its data banks to predict the combinations of words that will best answer your question. 

So while ChatGPT might seem like it’s thinking, it’s actually pulling information from hundreds of thousands of resources , then answering your questions by looking for patterns in that data and predicting which words come next.  

Why Schools Are Concerned About ChatGPT

Unsurprisingly, schools are worried about ChatGPT and its misuse, especially in terms of academic dishonesty and plagiarism . Most schools, including colleges, require students’ work to be 100% their own. That’s because taking someone else’s ideas and passing them off as your own is stealing someone else’s intellectual property and misrepresenting your skills. 

The problem with ChatGPT from schools’ perspective is that it does the writing and research for you, then gives you the final product. In other words, you’re not doing the work it takes to complete an assignment when you’re using ChatGPT , which falls under schools’ plagiarism and dishonesty policies.  

Colleges are also concerned with how ChatGPT will negatively affect students’ critical thinking, research, and writing skills . Essays and other writing assignments are used to measure students’ mastery of the material, and if students submit ChatGPT college essays, teachers will just be giving feedback on an AI’s writing…which doesn’t help the student learn and grow. 

Beyond that, knowing how to write well is an important skill people need to be successful throughout life. Schools believe that if students rely on ChatGPT to write their essays, they’re doing more than just plagiarizing—they’re impacting their ability to succeed in their future careers. 

Many Schools Have Already Banned ChatGPT

Schools have responded surprisingly quickly to AI use, including ChatGPT. Worries about academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation have led many high schools and colleges to ban the use of ChatGPT . Some schools have begun using AI-detection software for assignment submissions, and some have gone so far as to block students from using ChatGPT on their internet networks. 

It’s likely that schools will begin revising their academic honesty and plagiarism policies to address the use of AI tools like ChatGPT. You’ll want to stay up-to-date with your schools’ policies. 

ChatGPT is pretty amazing...but it's not a great tool for writing college essays. Here's why.

ChatGPT: College Admissions and Entrance Essays

College admissions essays—also called personal statements—ask students to explore important events, experiences, and ideas from their lives. A great entrance essay will explain what makes you you !  

ChatGPT is a machine that doesn’t know and can’t understand your experiences. That means using ChatGPT to write your admissions essays isn’t just unethical. It actually puts you at a disadvantage because ChatGPT can’t adequately showcase what it means to be you. 

Let’s take a look at four ways ChatGPT negatively impacts college admissions essays.

#1: ChatGPT Lacks Insight

We recommend students use u nexpected or slightly unusual topics because they help admissions committees learn more about you and what makes you unique. The chat bot doesn’t know any of that, so nothing ChatGPT writes can’t accurately reflect your experience, passions, or goals for the future. 

Because ChatGPT will make guesses about who you are, it won’t be able to share what makes you unique in a way that resonates with readers. And since that’s what admissions counselors care about, a ChatGPT college essay could negatively impact an otherwise strong application.  

#2: ChatGPT Might Plagiarize 

Writing about experiences that many other people have had isn’t a very strong approach to take for entrance essays . After all, you don’t want to blend in—you want to stand out! 

If you write your essay yourself and include key details about your past experiences and future goals, there’s little risk that you’ll write the same essay as someone else. But if you use ChatGPT—who’s to say someone else won’t, too? Since ChatGPT uses predictive guesses to write essays, there’s a good chance the text it uses in your essay already appeared in someone else’s.  

Additionally, ChatGPT learns from every single interaction it has. So even if your essay isn’t plagiarized, it’s now in the system. That means the next person who uses ChatGPT to write their essay may end up with yours. You’ll still be on the hook for submitting a ChatGPT college essay, and someone else will be in trouble, too.

#3: ChatGPT Doesn’t Understand Emotion 

Keep in mind that ChatGPT can’t experience or imitate emotions, and so its writing samples lack, well, a human touch ! 

A great entrance essay will explore experiences or topics you’re genuinely excited about or proud of . This is your chance to show your chosen schools what you’ve accomplished and how you’ll continue growing and learning, and an essay without emotion would be odd considering that these should be real, lived experiences and passions you have!

#4: ChatGPT Produced Mediocre Results

If you’re still curious what would happen if you submitted a ChatGPT college essay with your application, you’re in luck. Both Business Insider and Forbes asked ChatGPT to write a couple of college entrance essays, and then they sent them to college admissions readers to get their thoughts. 

The readers agreed that the essays would probably pass as being written by real students—assuming admissions committees didn’t use AI detection software—but that they both were about what a “very mediocre, perhaps even a middle school, student would produce.” The admissions professionals agreed that the essays probably wouldn’t perform very well with entrance committees, especially at more selective schools.  

That’s not exactly the reaction you want when an admission committee reads your application materials! So, when it comes to ChatGPT college admissions, it’s best to steer clear and write your admission materials by yourself. 

Can Colleges Detect ChatGPT?

We’ve already explained why it’s not a great idea to use ChatGPT to write your college essays and applications , but you may still be wondering: can colleges detect ChatGPT? 

In short, yes, they can! 

Software Can Detect ChatGPT

As technology improves and increases the risk of academic dishonesty, plagiarism, and mis/disinformation, software that can detect such technology is improving, too. For instance, OpenAI, the same company that built ChatGPT, is working on a text classifier that can tell the difference between AI-written text and human-written text .  

Turnitin, one of the most popular plagiarism detectors used by high schools and universities, also recently developed the AI Innovation Lab —a detection software designed to flag submissions that have used AI tools like ChatGPT. Turnitin says that this tool works with 98% confidence in detecting AI writing. 

Plagiarism and AI companies aren’t the only ones interested in AI-detection software. A 22-year old computer science student at Princeton created an app to detect ChatGPT writing, called Zero GPT. This software works by measuring the complexity of ideas and variety of sentence structures.  

Human Readers Can Detect ChatGPT 

It’s also worth keeping in mind that teachers can spot the use of ChatGPT themselves , even if it isn’t confirmed by a software detector. For example, if you’ve turned in one or two essays to your teacher already, they’re probably familiar with your unique writing style. If you submit a college essay draft essay that uses totally different vocabulary, sentence structures, and figures of speech, your teacher will likely take note.

Additionally , admissions committees and readers may be able to spot ChatGPT writing, too. ChatGPT (and AI writing, in general) uses more simplistic sentence structures with less variation, so that could make it easier to tell if you’ve submitted a ChatGPT college essay. These professionals also read thousands of essays every year, which means they know what a typical essay reads like. You want your college essay to catch their attention…but not because you used AI software! 

If you use ChatGPT responsibly, you can be as happy as these kids.

Pros and Cons of ChatGPT: College Admissions Edition

ChatGPT is a brand new technology, which means we’re still learning about the ways it can benefit us. It’s important to think about the pros and the cons to any new tool …and that includes artificial intelligence!

Let’s look at some of the good—and not-so-good—aspects of ChatGPT below. 

ChatGPT: The Good

It may seem like we’re focused on just the negatives of using ChatGPT in this article, but we’re willing to admit that the chatbot isn’t all bad. In fact, it can be a very useful tool for learning if used responsibly !

Like we already mentioned, students shouldn’t use ChatGPT to write entire essays or assignments. They can use it, though, as a learning tool alongside their own critical thinking and writing skills.

Students can use ChatGPT responsibly to:

• Learn more about a topic . It’s a great place to get started for general knowledge and ideas about most subjects.
• Find reputable and relevant sources on a topic. Students can ask ChatGPT for names and information about leading scholars, relevant websites and databases, and more. 
• Brainstorm ideas for assignments. Students can share the ideas they already have with ChatGPT, and in return, the chatbot can suggest ideas for further exploration and even organization of their points.
• Check work (that they’ve written themselves!) for errors or cla rity. This is similar to how spell- and grammar-checking software is used. ChatGPT may be even better than some competitors for this, because students can actually ask ChatGPT to explain the errors and their solutions—not just to fix them. 

Before you use ChatGPT—even for the tasks mentioned above—you should talk to your teacher or school about their AI and academic dishonesty policies. It’s also a good idea to include an acknowledgement that you used ChatGPT with an explanation of its use. 

This guy made some bad decisions using ChatGPT. Don't be this guy.

ChatGPT: The Bad

The first model of ChatGPT (GPT-3.5) was formally introduced to the public in November 2022, and the newer model (GPT-4) in March 2023. So, it’s still very new and there’s a lot of room for improvement .  

There are many misconceptions about ChatGPT. One of the most extreme is that the AI is all-knowing and can make its own decisions. Another is that ChatGPT is a search engine that, when asked a question, can just surf the web for timely, relevant resources and give you all of that information. Both of these beliefs are incorrect because ChatGPT is limited to the information it’s been given by OpenAI . 

Remember how the ‘PT’ in ChatGPT stands for “Pre-trained”? That means that every time OpenAI gives ChatGPT an update, it’s given more information to work with (and so it has more information to share with you). In other words, it’s “trained” on information so it can give you the most accurate and relevant responses possible—but that information can be limited and biased . Ultimately, humans at OpenAI decide what pieces of information to share with ChatGPT, so it’s only as accurate and reliable as the sources it has access to.

For example, if you were to ask ChatGPT-3.5 what notable headlines made the news last week, it would respond that it doesn’t have access to that information because its most recent update was in September 2021!

You’re probably already familiar with how easy it can be to come across misinformation, misleading and untrue information on the internet. Since ChatGPT can’t tell the difference between what is true and what isn’t, it’s up to the humans at OpenAI to make sure only accurate and true information is given to the chatbot . This leaves room for human error , and users of ChatGPT have to keep that in mind when using and learning from the chatbot.

These are just the most obvious problems with ChatGPT. Some other problems with the chatbot include:

• A lack of common sense. ChatGPT can create seemingly sensical responses to many questions and topics, but it doesn’t have common sense or complete background knowledge.
• A lack of empathy. ChatGPT doesn’t have emotions, so it can’t understand them, either. 
• An inability to make decisions or problem solve . While the chatbot can complete basic tasks like answering questions or giving recommendations, it can’t solve complex tasks. 

While there are some great uses for ChatGPT, it’s certainly not without its flaws.

Our bootcamp can help you put together amazing college essays that help you get into your dream schools—no AI necessary.

What Other Tools and Strategies Can Help Students Besides ChatGPT?

While it’s not a good idea to use ChatGPT for college admissions materials, it’s not the only tool available to help students with college essays and assignments. 

One of the best strategies students can use to write good essays is to make sure they give themselves plenty of time for the assignment. The writing process includes much more than just drafting! Having time to brainstorm ideas, write out a draft, revise it for clarity and completeness, and polish it makes for a much stronger essay. 

Teachers are another great resource students can use, especially for college application essays. Asking a teacher (or two!) for feedback can really help students improve the focus, clarity, and correctness of an essay. It’s also a more interactive way to learn—being able to sit down with a teacher to talk about their feedback can be much more engaging than using other tools. 

Using expert resources during the essay writing process can make a big difference, too. Our article outlines a complete list of strategies for students writing college admission essays. It breaks down what the Common Application essay is, gives tips for choosing the best essay topic, offers strategies for staying focused and being specific, and more.  

You can also get help from people who know the college admissions process best, like former admissions counselors. PrepScholar’s Admissions Bootcamp guides you through the entire application process , and you’ll get insider tips and tricks from real-life admissions counselors that’ll make your applications stand out. Even better, our bootcamp includes step-by-step essay writing guidance , so you can get the help you need to make sure your essay is perfect.  

If you’re hoping for more technological help, Grammarly is another AI tool that can check writing for correctness. It can correct things like misused and misspelled words and grammar mistakes, and it can improve your tone and style. 

It’s also widely available across multiple platforms through a Windows desktop app, an Android and iOS app, and a Google Chrome extension. And since Grammarly just checks your writing without doing any of the work for you, it’s totally safe to use on your college essays. 

The Bottom Line: ChatGPT College Admissions and Essays

ChatGPT will continue to be a popular discussion topic as it continues evolving. You can expect your chosen schools to address ChatGPT and other AI tools in their academic honesty and plagiarism policies in the near future—and maybe even to restrict or ban the use of the chatbot for school admissions and assignments.

As AI continues transforming, so will AI-detection. The goal is to make sure that AI is used responsibly by students so that they’re avoiding plagiarism and building their research, writing, and critical thinking skills. There are some great uses for ChatGPT when used responsibly, but you should always check with your teachers and schools beforehand.

ChatGPT’s “bad” aspects still need improving, and that’s going to take some time.Be aware that the chatbot isn’t even close to perfect, and it needs to be fact-checked just like other sources of information.

Similarly to other school assignments, don’t submit a ChatGPT college essay for college applications, either. College entrance essays should outline unique and interesting personal experiences and ideas, and those can only come from you.  

Just because ChatGPT isn’t a good idea doesn’t mean there aren’t resources to help you put together a great college essay. There are many other tools and strategies you can use instead of ChatGPT , many of which have been around for longer and offer better feedback. 

What’s Next?

Ready to write your college essays the old-fashioned way? Start here with our comprehensive guide to the admissions essays. 

Most students have to submit essays as part of their Common Application . Here's a complete breakdown of the Common App prompts —and how to answer them. 

The most common type of essay answers the "why this college?" prompt. We've got an expert breakdown that shows you how to write a killer response , step by step. 

Ashley Sufflé Robinson has a Ph.D. in 19th Century English Literature. As a content writer for PrepScholar, Ashley is passionate about giving college-bound students the in-depth information they need to get into the school of their dreams.

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Can ChatGPT mark essays?

ChatGPT (from OpenAI) is such a popular brand in the world of artificial intelligence, that its name is used as shorthand for AI writing in general.

The software can - and does - write essays. Strategies to combat students from doing this range from the software being banned by educational establishments, to the recommendations by EDSK that include AS-level pupils being assessed for a stand-alone qualification solely by a speaking exam .

But could ChatGPT mark essays?

Why would we use AI to mark work?

Aside from the obvious time-saving benefits, one case in favour of considering the use of AI marking involves unconscious bias within assessment. Educators can be biased when marking, with overall marks being impacted by their own perception of students. Though attempts are made to reduce the impact of potential bias through the process of standardisation and moderation, AI could theoretically remove any bias from the offset.

Humans are fallible, and error is a feature of all measurement, not just educational assessment. Research into marking error within the assessment system, has led to positive developments: comparative judgement assessment is being utilised by more and more schools, as discussed on our 10 with Zen podcast with Daisy Christodoulou .

Extensive tests conducted by Daisy and her team at NoMoreMarking discovered that when AI was deployed to assess extended writing, it too could suffer from a form of self-doubt. Identical pieces were submitted repeatedly for assessment, with identical prompts. The marks awarded were not identical. Other glitches were discovered, such as marks being awarded on an increasing scale based on the length of the submission, regardless of the quality of the content.

To see how useful ChatGPT could be for marking mark, I submitted 4 essays at 4 different educational stages: GCSE, A-level, Undergraduate and Masters. Here's what I found:

My experiments

Before each essay I submitted to ChatGPT 3.5, I entered the following prompt:

'Hi! Please could you mark an essay for me? It is written at [level] in the UK. The topic of the essay is '[topic]'. Please could you give one positive remark, one remark on what to improve, and a score out of [number as required on each assessment framework]. Thank you!’

My first test generated beautifully written, relevant, formative feedback:

'Your essay provides a clear understanding of how various environmental factors can impact a child's emotional and social development. You have effectively highlighted the importance of a safe and nurturing environment for a child's holistic development.'

However, ChatGPT awarded this essay a mark significantly lower than my assessment of the piece. Feeling professionally undermined, I asked it to check again, reminding it that it was a piece written by a 15-year-old. But ChatGPT was resolute, telling me that:

'The score I provided (3.5 out of 5) is a general evaluation based on the quality and completeness of the essay. While it takes into account the level of writing expected at GCSE, it also considers aspects like content, organization, and clarity.'

That was me told. And then, time for my own self-doubt: I thought very highly of the student that submitted this. Was ChatGPT giving me a reality check into my own bias when assessing? After a brief crisis of confidence, I checked my assessment log and found that the mark I had awarded had been verified by the awarding body. Phew.

Marked by human: 5/5 Marked by ChatGPT: 3.5/5

The A-Level

I made a mistake here, but one that further showcased the ability of AI to think on its feet. I forgot the final part of the prompt, the request for a numerical score (in the case of this A level literature response, a score was given out of 30). Luckily, ChatGPT was one step ahead:

'Certainly, I can evaluate the essay for you. However, since the score range for A Level essays can vary depending on the specific grading criteria of your course, I will provide feedback based on a 30-point scale. Please provide the essay text, and I'll provide the feedback you requested.'

Marked by human: 27/30 Marked by ChatGPT: 27/30

The Undergraduate

A quick caveat: I did paste my entire 15,000 word masters dissertation into ChatGPT for assessment. It didn't like it. Therefore ChatGPT assessed the following essays based on a submission of the abstract of each paper.

And then, it happened. A glitch, not dissimilar to those described by Daisy on the podcast. With the prompt written in an identical format to above, ChatGPT marked the essay... without the essay. It provided incredibly detailed (and relevant) positive and negative feedback based on the title of the essay alone, but did concede:

'I won't be able to provide a numerical score out of 100 because I can't read the entire essay.'

Confused as to why it did not respond to my prompt as it had before – by asking me to provide the essay text – I entered an identical prompt, followed by pasting the abstract of the essay into the same submission. At that point, it provided identical feedback to my previous prompt, but also provided a numerical score out of 100 as requested.

Marked by human: 75 Marked by ChatGPT: 75

The Masters:

My Masters dissertation discussed the experiences of international students and their school-aged children during their studies in the UK. A person undertaking a temporary residence of this nature can be referred to as a sojourner, though outside the small but growing community of EAL specialist educators, the word sojourner is understandably not widely used or understood. I spent a great deal of time during my literature review wading through history papers written on the African American Abolitionist Sojourner Truth.

But ChatGPT knew. And it gave feedback that suggested it understood why it would be important to understand their experiences in this context. Flatteringly, it awarded me a mark of 85, which sadly, both in terms of accuracy and my ego, is not consistent with the mark I was awarded by the university.

Marked by human: 74 Marked by ChatGPT: 85

For teachers seeking to automate certain processes with the goal of freeing up some time and headspace for joy - both within our professional and personal lives - this particular iteration of AI could be of assistance.

ChatGPT could help write our end of year reports.

ChatGPT could help write lesson plans.

ChatGPT could help with decision paralysis, when at 7am on Monday you’re faced with 42 'urgent' tasks that would probably be best completed before thousands of teenagers flood the building at 8.

But with regulation being planned and technology moving at the speed of light, it's hard to tell – for now – how things will pan out.

Permission granted by the authors of all essays for their work to be used during research for this blog.

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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. 

How to use ChatGPT

The best ai chatbots: chatgpt isn't the only one worth trying, chatgpt is finally revealing its sources - but there's a catch.

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ChatGPT can write your essays, but should you use it?

Published on March 12, 2023

With the rising popularity of online writing tools, you may be wondering: can I use ChatGPT to write my essays? If you’ve never used the chatbot, it can generate several paragraphs of text within a matter of seconds. That’s certainly faster than any human can type, but there are many limitations to using it too. Here’s everything you need to know about how ChatGPT fares at writing essays and whether you should use it.

ChatGPT can write essays, but it isn't always the best choice as it suffers from a few technical limitations. Additionally, you may want to avoid using it if your work will be graded or judged in any capacity.

JUMP TO KEY SECTIONS

Can ChatGPT write student essays?

Can professors tell if you use chatgpt.

• Should you use ChatGPT to write an essay?

How to use ChatGPT to write an essay

Yes, ChatGPT can write you an essay as it has been trained on a wide range of text. However, there are some downsides to using it for that purpose. For one, it lacks logical reasoning and critical thinking, qualities that are critical to writing an essay.

Generally speaking, writing an essay involves researching the topic, structuring your thoughts in a way that makes logical sense, and writing it in a convincing manner. ChatGPT can help you with each of these stages separately. However, it cannot fully replace a human presenting their own knowledge and opinion in an essay.

As for the actual writing part, ChatGPT can indeed generate an essay that looks and sounds like a human wrote it. However, the output is usually verbose and a bit simplistic, making it stand out in a professional setting. There are ways around this, however, as we’ll discuss in a later section. Some may also argue it’s unethical to use AI-generated text in essays as it doesn’t represent your views and thoughts.

So can you use ChatGPT to write essays responsibly? Absolutely — you can use it to detect spelling and grammatical mistakes in your own text. Likewise, ChatGPT can help with brainstorming new ideas or finding key points and angles.

For example, I asked ChatGPT to provide some potential angles on an essay titled “The negative effects of social media on society”. It told me that I could discuss how social media impacts mental health, aids the spread of misinformation and enables echo chambers. Finally, I requested ChatGPT to provide an outline that takes those points into consideration, which gave me a starting point for the essay.

Yes, teachers and professors now have access to online tools that can detect AI-generated text. Chatbots like ChatGPT work by using a machine learning-based model to predict future words using statistical probability. Humans, on the other hand, tend to piece together words much more randomly. So with a little bit of knowledge about how ChatGPT works, it’s not hard to weed out AI-generated text.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, already has an AI classifier that detects whether or not a certain piece of text was written by a computer. Likewise, GPTZero provides professors with plagiarism scores for text. It also highlights sentences that it suspects have been written by an AI. These tools become increasingly accurate as the length of the text increases, so it’s harder to evade detection if you’re using ChatGPT to write longer essays.

Should I use ChatGPT to write an essay?

Generally speaking, you should not use ChatGPT to write an essay for school for the simple reason that you cannot pass off someone else’s work as yours. Moreover, many educational institutions have strict policies against plagiarism. Using ChatGPT to write an essay may be viewed as a breach of academic integrity. Some boards, including New York City’s public schools, have explicitly banned ChatGPT on student networks and devices for this very reason.

If you writing a research paper, you’ll also need to properly cite your sources. And as you may already know, ChatGPT cannot provide citations or links to external sources as it doesn’t have access to the internet. In fact, that’s one of the major differences between ChatGPT and Bing Chat — the latter provides sources for factual statements. Unfortunately, the latter’s Creative only includes a handful of sources — not enough to use in a professional piece of literature.

Without citations, you also cannot guarantee the accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses. That’s likely not a problem if you’re writing an essay on a well-known concept. However, the chatbot can quickly go off the rails when it’s writing about obscure topics.

ChatGPT’s underlying GPT-3 language model was only trained on a limited number of text samples. That likely didn’t include organic chemistry, regional laws, and philosophical debates to name a few. In other words, it might not fare well in a liberal arts setting. ChatGPT will rarely turn you down if you force it to write about something it doesn’t know much about, but it will likely respond with fictional or made-up information.

If you want ChatGPT to write a high-quality essay, you’ll need to provide a clear input prompt. If you provide a single keyword, like “global warming”, you’ll get a generic output. To avoid this, you can offer more specific terms and topics that you need to be included in your essay. For example, you could use the prompt “Write an essay on global warming and its effects on Australian wildfires” to add some context.

In case you’ve never used ChatGPT before, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use it:

• Go to the ChatGPT website .
• Click Sign up and create a new account with your email address.
• Once logged in, you’ll see a text box at the bottom of the page. This is where you enter your prompts.
• From this point, you can ask ChatGPT to write an essay on just about any subject you can think of. Remember to be as specific as possible. If you need to include certain ideas, specify them in the input prompt.

With longer essays, you might run into ChatGPT’s hidden character limit before it can generate the whole text. If that happens, simply ask the chatbot to continue from where it left off. Alternatively, you can ask ChatGPT to write an outline for your essay before generating it one section at a time.

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Home » ChatGPT for Essays: How to Use AI to be More Productive [2024]

ChatGPT for Essays: How to Use AI to be More Productive [2024]

Students are often tasked with writing essays for various subjects. By using ChatGPT as an assistant, they can speed up the process and utilize their time more productively.

One important thing to remember is that you must use AI for work assistance and not for content creation. It’s also a good idea to disclose to your professor how you will be using ChatGPT so he doesn’t have an issue with it.

In this article, I talk about how you can use ChatGPT as an essay-writing helper to give you ideas, outlines, citations, and more.

How to Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay?

Chatgpt for essay generating vs writing yourself , collaborate on team-gpt.

ChatGPT can be your personal AI assistant in writing flawless essays . It can help brainstorm ideas, create outlines, dive deep into topics, and surface the best materials upfront, easing the overall process and weaving words for your essay.

When writing a college essay, scrolling the web for articles or researching through journals is great, but it consumes enormous time and requires sheer focus on your laptop screen for hours.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on using ChatGPT in your helper when writing an essay.

👀 Note: Using ChatGPT in the writing process, AKA to generate essay content, isn’t a great idea. You should use it to brainstorm, outline, and research, but not for purely writing the essay.

Step 1. Topic Ideation and Clarification

ChatGPT is good at giving your essay topics from different angles and perspectives.

Coming up with topic ideas on your own can be daunting and exhausting. Fear of choosing a silly topic, getting hold of an angle, or being scared of self-expression can lead to a delayed start.

Why not use ChatGPT? This AI-powered chatbot has access to a wide range of information. With this large dataset, it helps you brainstorm topic ideas and even get clarity on them.

Moreover, ChatGPT is trained to interpret commands in natural language. Use it to feed the bot with assignment-specific instructions like essay length, theme, format, and content.

Look at the below prompt, for example. 👇

To brainstorm and refine potential essay topics that align with my personal interests and fulfill the specific requirements of my assignment.

I am currently assigned to write an essay for [subject/course name] . The essay needs to be approximately [specify word count or page length] and formatted according to [specify format: MLA, APA, Chicago, etc., if known] . 

The topic should ideally relate to [mention any specific themes or areas you’re interested in or that are relevant to the course] . 

Chat link: https://chat.team-gpt.com/public/tanish/6572898e4bb237b3bd59362b  

Step 2. Outline and Planning

ChatGPT does an excellent job of generating outlines. It can help:

• Create an outline with perfectly distributed sections
• Determine and organize sections in a logical manner
• Give a brief overview of the key points that will go into each section
• Refine the outline structure for different academic levels

After you get clarity on the essay topics and finalize one, the next step is to plan an outline for the essay.

An outline provides a concrete structure to the essay. It organizes thoughts logically and ensures that your arguments flow progressively throughout the piece. 

Even better, an outline divides the essay into different sections, from introduction to conclusion – in a systematic manner. Making it easily digestible and quickly scannable.

But it’s tough to organize a topic’s What, Why, and How when you have just started with it.

One more thing AI can do for you is – emphasize particular themes or areas in your essay. 

For instance, I used the below prompt to generate an outline for my essay.

To create a structured outline for my essay that effectively organizes my thoughts and ensures a smooth flow from the introduction to the conclusion. Additionally, I need assistance in planning the structure of each paragraph to maintain coherence and logical progression of ideas.

The essay is on the topic of [insert your essay topic].  

Based on the research and information gathered, the main themes I want to address are [list the main themes or key points you want to explore in your essay] . 

The essay needs to be structured in a format suitable for [mention the academic level or specific requirements, if any, like high school, undergraduate, etc.]. 

I am aiming for [specify the total number of paragraphs if known, including introduction and conclusion]. 

I would like the outline to particularly emphasize [mention any specific elements you want to highlight, like a strong argumentative approach, comparative analysis, etc.]. 

Chat link: https://chat.team-gpt.com/public/tanish/65728b760d51833baa900414  

Step 3. Research and Information Gathering

ChatGPT is a lifesaver when it comes to grinding research tasks. The AI bot is trained on large datasets and natural language processing (NLP) models and is capable of providing summaries and explanations on a range of topics quickly.

This is especially helpful when you need to understand the basics of your essay topic.

A survey conducted by the PEW Research Center among US teens aged 13 to 17 claimed that seven in ten teens find it acceptable to use ChatGPT for research.

However – it’s important to know that ChatGPT might hallucinate and provide false explanations, so double-checking the facts AI spits out is important.

A better way to research via ChatGPT is to prompt the bot to gather essay-related data and information. Ask ChatGPT to list scholarly articles and credible sources and suggest relevant data related to your essay topic and themes.

If prompted correctly, ChatGPT can question your ideas with counter-stats and data, offering different perspectives on your topic.

Having an unbiased second opinion can stimulate critical thinking and help you consider various angles for your essay.

👀 Note: To show you how to carry out the process, I’ve used GPT-4 and its power to browse Bing to get results.

To conduct focused research for my essay topic, acquire scholarly articles, credible sources, and relevant data, and receive summarized key findings for efficient understanding and application in my essay.

The topic of my essay is [insert your specific essay topic here], and here’s the outline [insert the outline you got from Team-GPT in step 2]. 

I am looking for information that covers [mention specific aspects or questions related to the topic you want to explore]. 

The essay is for [subject/course name] , and it requires the incorporation of [specify any particular type of sources or data required, like peer-reviewed articles, statistical data, historical records, etc.].

Chat link: https://chat.openai.com/share/c36c3f96-3173-4a70-b1c3-68af398ddc7a  

Step 4. Thesis Statement Development

Here’s how you develop a thesis statement using ChatGPT.

The thesis statement clearly states the topic being discussed and the purpose of your paper in a single sentence, generally after the introduction of an essay.

That statement reflects the structure and flow of your essay. It helps readers to settle in with your angle and perspective on the topic before continuing the read.

Based on the themes and information gathered in the previous Steps, ChatGPT can formulate a strong thesis statement.

All you need to do is – insert your essay topic, mention the key themes, specify the academic level – and let AI come up with a clear, concise thesis for your essay. 

Moreover, if you want your thesis to reflect any specific approach, like argumentative, analytical, persuasive, or mixed, prompt the AI for the same. 

For example, I asked ChatGPT to generate a thesis statement using this prompt.

To develop a strong and clear thesis statement that effectively encapsulates the main argument or perspective of my essay, providing a guiding direction for the entire piece.

My essay revolves around the topic of [insert your specific essay topic here] . 

Through my research, I have focused on [briefly mention the key themes or findings from your research] . 

The essay is intended for [mention the academic level or the audience, like college, high school, seminar, etc.].  

I want the thesis to reflect an approach that is [specify any particular approach you want, like argumentative, analytical, persuasive, etc.].

Chat link: https://chat.team-gpt.com/public/tanish/65728fa9712b31d90410a0c4  

Step 5. Citations and References

There’s a higher chance of you messing up the citation part of your essay than the essay as a whole. Since citations are a bit technical and require adequate formatting , ChatGPT can be a handy tool for the job. 

The AI can:

• Explain different citation styles and nuances in an easy way
• Help understand how to format citations, bibliography, or work-cited pages correctly
• Guide you in formatting in-text citations and reference entries 

The citation and reference system is preferred in all academic research papers and essays. In fact, it’s considered a key skill in academic writing.

However, different essays may require different citation styles. For example, the Chicago-style citation has two varieties: 

• Notes and bibliography : Preferred by those working in humanities
• Author-date : Common in science and social science papers

Accurate and proper citation goes a long way toward demonstrating respect for others’ work and contributions to the scholarly conversation.

As an example, I asked ChatGPT to guide me in citing the sources used in my essay.

👀 Note: Used GPT-4 to browse Bing and create citations.

To receive guidance on properly citing the sources used in my essay according to the specified citation style and to get assistance in organizing and formatting my bibliography or works cited page.

The essay I am working on requires the use of [specify the citation style – APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.]. 

I have used various types of sources, including [mention the types of sources used, like books, academic journals, websites, etc.]. 

My essay is for [mention the course or subject, if relevant]. 

I need help in ensuring that all citations are accurate and formatted correctly. 

Additionally, I am looking for assistance in structuring my bibliography or works cited page in alignment with the chosen citation style. 

Chat link: https://chat.openai.com/share/43a927a4-db73-47ae-8d57-49c91a1e6f6f  

Step 6. Review and Feedback

Once you’ve completed the first draft of your essay, use ChatGPT to review and get constructive feedback. 

ChatGPT has advanced writing capabilities, which allows the tool to improve overall content quality. Here are a few ways ChatGPT can help edit your content:

• Identify and correct grammatical errors and spelling mistakes
• Rephrase sentences to maintain a consistent tone and style
• Adjust the readability of your essay according to your grade
• Improve fluency by adjusting transitions between paragraphs

Additionally, you can ask ChatGPT to share feedback on the internal material, like essay depth arguments, explanations, and suggestions to improve the essay quality.

To receive constructive feedback on my essay draft, focusing on improving the strength of the argument, clarity of expression, and overall organization. Additionally, I seek assistance in proofreading the draft for grammatical, spelling, and punctuation errors.

I have completed a draft of my essay on the topic of [insert your essay topic here] . The essay is approximately [mention the word count or page length] and is intended for [mention the academic level or audience, like a university course, high school class, etc.]. 

I am particularly concerned about [mention any specific aspects you want feedback on, like the flow of arguments, clarity of thesis, coherence between paragraphs, etc.]. I aim to enhance the overall quality and readability of the essay. Here’s the draft:

[insert your written essay here].

Chat link: https://chat.team-gpt.com/public/tanish/657293db40ab557808f404b2  

Step 7. Formatting and Presentation

Quality formatting requires an eye for detail. However, students often lack this skill, and that’s where ChatGPT can come in.

You can use ChatGPT to streamline the finalization process , ensuring your work is professionally presented. 

All you need to do is prompt ChatGPT with specific formatting guidelines from your professor; this includes details such as font style, margin spacing, and structural consistency.

To ensure my essay adheres to the specified formatting guidelines, including margins, font, and spacing, and to check for visual and structural consistency in headings, subheadings, and the overall layout.

My essay on [insert your essay topic] is nearing completion. It needs to be formatted according to [mention the specific formatting guidelines required, such as MLA, APA, Chicago, or specific instructions provided by your course or teacher]. 

This includes specific requirements for [list any known requirements such as font type and size, margin size, line spacing, paragraph indentation, etc.]. 

I am also looking for assistance in ensuring that the headings and subheadings are consistently styled and that the overall layout aligns with academic standards. The essay is for [mention the academic level or audience]. 

Here’s the essay:

[insert your essay here].

Chat link: https://chat.team-gpt.com/public/tanish/6572951b40ab557808f404ba  

☁️ Picture this: You’ve been assigned to write an essay. You visit ChatGPT and ask it to write a two-page essay on the topic. You wait a few seconds and get the essay red-hot delivered.

It seems simple, right?

But – ChatGPT isn’t an expert. It’s just a machine running on programmatic algorithms and trained on vast amounts of data acquired from pre-set datasets or by scraping the web. There’s no way the AI could deliver the quality of essay you’d expect from it. 

That said, here are some reasons why writing an essay yourself is better than using ChatGPT.

#1. ChatGPT Lacks Human Intelligence

One of the common misconceptions among students is that AI has a degree of human intelligence, which isn’t the case.

Human intelligence is unparalleled. ChatGPT’s knowledge and responses are limited to the data it is fed. 

In fact, the content AI generates cannot be coined as ‘original’ but a result of statistical analysis. That is, the AI chatbot creates content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and published content on the web.

Therefore, AI content lacks depth and human touch . And mainly consists of surface-level information.

#2. Hallucinates without Disclaimer

A major drawback of ChatGPT is that it sucks in generating long-form content. In our case, if you ask the chatbot to write an entire essay, you will find yourself surrounded with random sentences, phrases, and even paragraphs that don’t align with the context of your essay. 

To show students how AI is NOT an alternative to human-written essays, an Elon University professor gave his class a task: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay 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. 

Even worse, if you’re new to the topic, you’d never know when the AI starts hallucinating and generating false information. Because of this, even OpenAI asks users to double-check responses for accuracy. 

#3. False Citations

It happened to me when I used GPT-4 to scrape the web for citations to some stats generated as a response.

ChatGPT can come up with random citations, even made-up ones, for the sake of answering. Although some sources were spot on, most stats were linked to an article or research paper where it never existed. 

I had to carry out the process multiple times to get accurate results.

Using ChatGPT as an assistant for essay writing is a good idea to increase your productivity as a student. Your professors won’t mind it until you use AI as a helping aid and not a replacement for yourself.

But to increase your productivity further, use Team-GPT to organize chats, share chat links with your professors and peers, and onboard your peers to chat with AI together to get the most out of it.

Sign up for Team-GPT’s free plan today and get started with your essay.

About the author

Iliya Valchanov

I teach data science and AI to 1.2M students on Udemy. I'm co-founder of 365 Data Science, 3veta, and Team-GPT. My work is mostly focused on helping people and organizations adopt AI.

Can you afford to skip on AI adoption?

ChatGPT and Your College Essays

Understanding ChatGPT Essays

Earlier this year, ChatGPT became the fastest-growing web platform in internet history. If you’re not familiar with ChatGPT essays and the ChatGPT essay writer, this article is for you. 

With AI technology on the rise, the benefits of AI chatbot technology across industries are being weighed against potential concerns regarding misinformation, bias, and security/privacy. 

In academia , some institutions are embracing the technology, offering courses on utilizing ChatGPT . However, academic dishonesty is a big point of concern, with some students relying on the platform to generate ChatGPT essays for their courses. Moreover, some students have even started generating ChatGPT college essays for their college applications.

At CollegeAdvisor, our experts agree that ChatGPT and other AI sources are no substitute for authentic, personal, and human-generated college essays. In this article, we’ll break down how ChatGPT relates to the college admissions process with tips from former admissions officers. We’ll also discuss concerns related to the ChatGPT essay writer and ChatGPT essays so you understand how to responsibly engage with AI tools. 

ChatGPT and College Admissions

So, what is the impact of ChatGPT on the college admissions process ? And can ChatGPT write essays? 

Later, we’ll look at examples from a ChatGPT essay writer with feedback from former admissions officers. These Chatbot examples will include AI-generated supplemental essays from Harvard , Yale , and UChicago . Finally, we’ll go over how colleges are screening for ChatGPT college essays and review how to use ChatGPT for essays responsibly. We’ll also discuss where to find helpful resources for writing supplemental essays on your own.

Before we dive in, please understand that CollegeAdvisor does not condone the use of a ChatGPT essay writer or any other AI when it comes to writing your college essays. Beyond concerns related to academic honesty, authenticity is key when it comes to writing strong essays. After all, colleges want to admit individuals—not robots.

That being said, let’s begin by answering the question: can ChatGPT write essays?

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Yes, ChatGPT and other AI tools can create essays if given a prompt. However, the quality and overall impact of an AI generated essay is up for debate. There are limitations to what ChatGPT can produce versus what a person can. 

When using an AI chatbot for essays, concerns might include:

Authenticity

While this is not an extensive list of limitations, these features definitely play an important role in characterizing ChatGPT essays. Later on, we’ll see how these limitations play out in actual ChatGPT college essays.

First of all, ChatGPT’s work is not your work. In many academic contexts , the use of ChatGPT can amount to plagiarism. Although ChatGPT writing claims to be original, it won’t necessarily be unique or vastly different from other responses to the same or similar prompt.

ChatGPT is not a fact-checking tool. As such, information that ChatGPT/AI generates may include factual errors. It is also possible for ChatGPT to create sources that don’t actually exist. A ChatGPT essay may also string together details that are unrelated to one another. So, even if the details end up being correct, the essay as a whole won’t make sense or deliver a cohesive argument.

ChatGPT tends to have a strong hold on grammar and syntax. However, it may also use words inappropriately and tends to write in a tone that isn’t as authentic or clear as a human’s. The phrases used are often generic or repetitive , which will end up making the writing sound empty of true passion and meaning.

Overall, your college essays should be about you—your life, values, and experiences. ChatGPT can’t replicate that. By the time you’ve fed ChatGPT enough specific details, anecdotes, characteristics, or interests to incorporate in an essay, you’ll have already brainstormed plenty to include in your own! And, you’ll likely do a better job weaving them together than ChatGPT ever could.

So, can ChatGPT write essays? Absolutely. However, there are many limitations to the quality and depth of ChatGPT essays. To further understand these limitations, let’s learn a little more about Chatbot technology and how it’s used to produce ChatGPT essays.

What is Chatbot technology?

How can ChatGPT write essays with only a prompt ? Well, let’s talk about how the technology works . Essentially, ChatGPT is an AI system that is trained to recognize and respond to information. GPT stands for:

• Pre-trained
• Transformers

Generative means AI that has been trained to evaluate an input and produce a new, original output according to its training. Pre-trained means the AI has been developed using a training model. Basically, the AI is fed a data set from which it learns parameters to apply to future tasks.

There are two types of training: supervised and non-supervised. Supervised training is based on direct matching, teaching the AI to connect specific inputs to corresponding outputs. Non-supervised training is based on pattern recognition, teaching the AI to learn underlying patterns and structures.

Supervised and non-supervised pre-training is then combined with transformer architecture. Transformers are able to understand words in context, taking note of the relationships between words and weighing their importance. Essentially, the ChatGPT essay writer has learned English syntax by training on a large dataset, making predictions, and then fine-tuning those predictions.

AI and College Admissions

The recent rise of AI has led to many debates across colleges and universities. In one case, Michigan Law School banned the use of AI chatbot for essays. On the other hand, Arizona State University Law School has approved its use, in particular for writing personal statements (the equivalent of the Common App essay).

These two schools show the range in how institutions are reacting to AI’s role in the college admissions process . However, many schools do not have a specific stance regarding ChatGPT essay writers. Unless a school you are applying to has a clear policy on ChatGPT essays, the decision of if and how you use ChatGPT essays will ultimately be yours. However, keep in mind that AI is included in many anti-plagiarism restrictions within the college admissions process. 

Understanding ChatGPT’s writing process is important to understanding its end product. So, just how does the ChatGPT essay writer write essays?

How to write essays with ChatGPT

All you need to get your ChatGPT essay writer started is a prompt, a word limit, and some ideas of what you want to include in your essay. If you’ve never asked ChatGPT to write an essay , you might be surprised by how fast your ChatGPT essay writer will spit out a complete draft. 

Not only can a ChatGPT essay writer produce a draft from a limited outline in just a few seconds; but it will also do its best to incorporate specific feedback . This means that the ChatGPT essay writer can redraft essays based on particular suggestions. Because the ChatGPT essay writer is responsive, it will continue to make changes to align with each piece of feedback you give it.

From that alone, using ChatGPT for essays may seem like an easy way to save yourself time. However, that doesn’t mean relying on ChatGPT college essays is a good idea.

ChatGPT College Essays

Can ChatGPT write essays? Yes. But, can ChatGPT write essays that will impress admissions officers? Not likely. 

While you can input prompts into ChatGPT and receive a response, there’s a good chance that the response will not be suitable as a college essay.

Remember, there’s a reason why CollegeAdvisor doesn’t condone nor recommend the use of ChatGPT to write college essays . While ChatGPT essays may look polished (and they do have the benefit of being free of any spelling or grammar errors), they also tend to be generic. This isn’t altogether surprising when you consider how ChatGPT produces essays.

How does ChatGPT write essays?

ChatGPT works off of language modeling—that is, it recognizes and repeats patterns in language. As such, it’s trained to produce words—not information. Based on the data it has available (namely, much of what already exists on the internet), ChatGPT recognizes and replicates how writers string words together.

A ChatGPT essay writer reproduces human language using natural language processing , or NLP. It then incorporates real-time feedback using dialogue management , which allows AI to take in new information and contextualize it within the conversation history.

So, when we answer “yes” to the question of “can ChatGPT write essays,” what we mean is that it can predict what words might go together in the context of a specific topic. While your ChatGPT essays might address the general concepts of a prompt, we’ll see why this isn’t enough when it comes to writing a compelling college essay.

An admissions officer reviews ChatGPT essays

Now, it’s time to put a ChatGPT essay writer to the test. Below we have Chatbot examples of Harvard, Yale, and UChicago chatGPT essays reviewed by former admissions officers. For each of our Chatbot examples, we’ll provide the prompts, ChatGPT college essays, and notes from our readers. Take note of how similar the feedback is across the three examples, regardless of the essay prompt or length.

We asked our former admissions officers to review these ChatGPT college essays as if a student had submitted them for review. After each essay, you’ll see our team’s responses to these ChatGPT essays. 

Please note the prompts are simply those provided by each university. They do not capture what prompt was provided to the ChatGPT essay writer in order to produce each of the ChatGPT essays below.

Harvard supplemental essays from ChatGPT

First, we gave our ChatGPT essay writer a prompt from Harvard.

Harvard Supplemental Essay Prompt

Please briefly elaborate on one of your extracurricular activities or work experiences. (150 words), chatgpt harvard supplemental essay response.

As the founder and president of my high school’s first Robotics Club, I experienced the incredible power of shared compassion converging with interdisciplinary learning. When I first established the club, it was not simply out of a fascination for robots; it was a desire to foster an environment where innovation and collaboration were paramount, where my peers could witness the convergence of theoretical science, math, and tangible technology.

Every meeting was a melting pot of ideas. We worked collectively on programming, design, assembly, and testing of our robots, each member’s input crucial in crafting innovative solutions. This hands-on experience honed my problem-solving skills, allowing me to see the direct applications of the STEM knowledge we gained in classrooms.

Through the Robotics Club, I learned more than just how to build a robot. Leadership, teamwork, and the value of perseverance when faced with setbacks have been invaluable lessons. This experience has deepened my commitment to leadership and sharing my passion for technology with others and I look forward to bringing this dedication and innovation to Harvard’s campus.

Like other successful Harvard supplemental essays, the topic expressed in this draft addresses the prompt and the writing is free of any mistakes. However, the essay lacks specificity and a personal focus.

So, what did our former admissions officer have to say about ChatGPT’s work? Here are some of their comments about this essay’s lack of detail:

CollegeAdvisor Admissions Officer Feedback

Text from essay:.

“interdisciplinary learning “

Former Admissions Officer Comment:

“This needs to be defined, what do you mean by this?”

“ it was a desire to foster an environment where innovation and collaboration were paramount “

“You need to support this with specific examples of what you did and what the outcome of your efforts were.”

“ convergence of theoretical science, math, and tangible technology “

“These are really big concepts that need to be better defined and explained through practical examples.”

Overall, the reader was supportive of the topic and agreed that the writing was solid. However, the essay as a whole failed to highlight what the student contributed to the organization and what they learned from the experience. The lack of specificity ultimately made the writing feel generic and left the reader with more questions than answers.

In their final feedback to the student, the reader provided a perfect critique of what ChatGPT essays lack:

“Right now it is just a collection of lofty ideas and words without any specific details and personalization…The essay lacks any key thesis and structure and needs more development and representation of the statements made and most importantly needs to represent YOU as a person and founder of this club.”

Let’s look at another example of what you might be missing out on if using ChatGPT for essays.

Yale supplemental essays from ChatGPT

Next, we had our ChatGPT essay writer take a shot at one of the Yale supplemental essays.

Yale Supplemental Essay Prompt

What is it about yale that has led you to apply (125 words or fewer), chatgpt yale supplemental essay response.

Yale’s commitment to a comprehensive, interdisciplinary education, solid cutting edge research and engaging residential college deeply resonates with my academic aspirations. I am particularly drawn to the unique combination of intellectual rigor and flexibility found within Yale’s Directed Studies program, which I believe will allow me to explore the breadth and depth of Western thought in an intensely thoughtful academic community. Moreover, the rich culture and innovation and intellectual curiosity at Yale, coupled with its focus on undergraduate research, particularly intrigues me. The opportunity to engage in cutting-edge research in the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning at Yale’s Computer Science department would align perfectly with my career aspirations. Lastly, the vibrant residential college system promises a tight-knit community, enriching both my personal growth and academic journey.

This essay included great specifics about Yale’s offerings, including:

• Yale’s Directed Studies program
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning research at Yale’s CS department
• Yale’s residential college system

While these can all be compelling details to include in a why Yale essay, ChatGPT failed to make a personal connection to them. In their feedback, our former admissions officer wrote:

“You’ve introduced three different aspects…with very little description or understanding of why they are important to you.”

The essay also has some contradictions in terms of focus. Our former admissions officer called out these competing statements:

“I don’t understand how your desire to study AI and CS relates to your prior statement about exploring the breadth and depth of Western thought – these don’t make sense and seem like you are confused about what you want to study – need to tie them together or perhaps delete and focus on what is your primary academic interest.”

Especially with shorter essays, you don’t have any extra space for broad statements or unconnected thoughts. Every idea, detail, and sentence matters and needs to carry its own weight and impact.

As you can see, using ChatGPT for essays generates similar feedback across the board. Let’s look at one more ChatGPT essay example.

UChicago essays from ChatGPT

The last of our chatbot college essays is a UChicago essay.

UChicago Supplemental Essay Prompt

How does the university of chicago, as you know it now, satisfy your desire for a particular kind of learning, community, and future please address with some specificity your own wishes and how they relate to uchicago (less than 300 words)., chatgpt uchicago supplemental essay response.

The University of Chicago has always represented the epitome of intellectual vitality and critical thinking for me. Its ethos, encapsulated in its motto “Crescat scientia; vita excolatur” (Let knowledge grow from more to more; and so be human life enriched), resonates deeply with my own approach to learning.

UChicago’s commitment to interdisciplinary study aligns perfectly with my educational philosophy. I am attracted to the ability to navigate freely between different academic disciplines. Particularly, the Core Curriculum, with its focus on broad intellectual exposure, will allow me to explore beyond my primary interest in Astrophysics and tap into diverse fields such as philosophy, sociology, and literature. This will satisfy my desire for a holistic education that pushes the boundaries of my understanding.

The engaging intellectual culture at UChicago is something I am eager to participate in. I have always been captivated by the university’s tradition of vibrant discourse and the intellectual challenges offered by its student body and faculty. From attending stimulating events hosted by the Ryerson Astronomical Society to engaging in enlightening discussions in the House system, I look forward to exchanging ideas with individuals as passionate about learning as I am.

Looking towards the future, UChicago’s strong emphasis on research is compelling. As someone who seeks a career in Astrophysics, the opportunity to work with renowned faculty and access to world-class facilities, like the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics, will enable me to participate in cutting-edge research, paving the way for my future pursuits in the field.

In essence, UChicago, with its unparalleled academic environment, dynamic student community, and dedication to research, is the perfect place for me to grow intellectually, connect with like-minded peers, and shape a promising future.

Again, the main thing this essay is lacking is personal specificity. Our former admissions officer wrote:

“Make sure you are more specific about you and your desired experience…You really need to insert yourself in some of these programs you mention.”

For example, the reader suggests adding specific examples of research the student has completed and drawing a parallel to specific research being done at UChicago.

In one instance, the reader comments that the essay does not justly capture the goals of UChicago’s Core Curriculum:

“Broad intellectual exposure sounds very open and undefined, but it appears the key focus on the core is development of specific skills, critical thinking, problem solving.”

The reader even provides a link to UChicago’s academic page describing their curriculum , suggesting the student go back and review it. This is a perfect example of why you always want to do a deeper research dive into each school’s website vs. trusting ChatGPT to accurately pull information.

Additionally, the reader provided suggestions regarding wording and organization to help improve the overall flow and clarity. You’re likely to have similar weaknesses in your structure if you use ChatGPT for essays with longer word counts.

Reading these chatbot examples – were you able to tell they were written by AI? Maybe you’re wondering if admissions officers are able to spot if students used an AI chatbot for essays. Next, let’s discuss some key characteristics of ChatGPT essays.

How to tell if an essay was written by a Chatbot

ChatGPT and other AI tools identify and replicate linguistic patterns to predict which word a person would use next. Since they are programmed to adhere to grammar and syntax rules, ChatGPT writing will be entirely free of errors. However, just because the writing is “correct” doesn’t mean it will come off as natural.

In general, ChatGPT essays will be largely impersonal. AI tools like ChatGPT can’t generate the kind of personal stories that form the heart of a strong college essay. 

Additionally, various AI checking tools exist, and some institutions may employ these tools to protect against the use of AI. While these tools are imperfect, they are still relatively effective in identifying AI-produced writing. 

Will colleges know if you use ChatGPT to write your essays?

As AI technology improves, so does AI detection. So, always assume that admissions officers will know if you used ChatGPT to write your college essays.

Even without the use of specific tools, ChatGPT essays have various giveaways. The combination of general, formulaic writing along with zero writing errors in ChatGPT essays may lead admissions officers to suspect students have used an AI chatbot for their essays.

Overall, college admissions officers are very savvy when it comes to technology hacks and are definitely on the lookout for AI-generated essays. Especially if the institution has a policy against applicants submitting ChatGPT college essays, you can bet their admissions officers will be on the lookout for any red flags.

AI checking tools may be integrated into the application submission process in the future. Similar to systems like Turnitin, which checks for plagiarism in academic essays, AI detection tools may perform linguistic or contextual analysis to determine if an essay was produced by a ChatGPT essay writer.

After learning more about ChatGPT, you may be wondering, can ChatGPT write essays that will help me get into college? Ultimately, using AI chatbots alone to write the kind of personal essays required to stand out in college admissions probably won’t work. 

How can I use ChatGPT to help write my essays?

Instead of viewing this platform as a ChatGPT essay writer, try looking at it as a ChatGPT collaborator. While it may be tempting to use an AI chatbot for essays, you can see from our chatbot examples that ChatGPT college essays lack a certain substance and nuance that is crucial to a strong application essay.

After reading the ChatGPT essays written by our ChatGPT essay writer, you likely understand why these essays won’t help you succeed in the application process. Moreover, many colleges will automatically disqualify essays written by ChatGPT and similar tools. 

Additionally, we encourage you not to use ChatGPT to write a draft of your essays—even if you plan to edit them afterward. While this may seem faster than writing your college essays yourself, you might find yourself boxed in trying to edit the writing of a ChatGPT essay writer. Making someone else’s words sound like your own isn’t as easy as you might think.

However, there are some ways to use tools like ChatGPT for essays without having the ChatGPT essay writer do all the work for you. 

Tools like ChatGPT can sometimes help expedite your research. If you’re writing a “why school” essay, you can use ChatGPT to learn more about a specific program. Suppose you’re interested in eventually attending medical school. In that case, you can ask ChatGPT to provide information about a school’s pre-med program.

When asked about UChicago’s pre-med program, ChatGPT provided a list that includes flexible majors, clinical experience, MCAT preparation, and pre-medical societies. To gain further insight into their pre-medical societies, you can ask ChatGPT for more details. In response to this prompt, ChatGPT listed organizations such as Health Leads UChicago, the Women in Science Committee, and the Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students. This can be a great way to learn about programs you might not know about. However, in your essays, you’ll want to detail what specifically about the program aligns with your goals.

Overall, while you shouldn’t use ChatGPT for essays, you can use it to gain quick insights into the offerings available at some schools. However, you’ll want to confirm the details of your research. When providing the above information about UChicago, our ChatGPT essay writer provided the following caveat:

​​”Please note that the availability and names of these organizations may have changed since then [September 2021], so I recommend checking the university’s official website or contacting the Office of Career Advancement for the most up-to-date information. “

Even the ChatGPT essay writer agrees that you should double-check facts provided by AI. 

Interview Preparation

We’ve described the limitations of using an AI chatbot for essays. As you saw in the feedback on our ChatGPT essays, ChatGPT essays have strong syntax and command of the language, but they tend to lack substance. 

Instead of looking for a ChatGPT essay writer, you might use ChatGPT to prepare for interviews. ChatGPT has enough knowledge in its database to provide you with sample interview questions that you can practice answering in real time. 

Application Review

Instead of using ChatGPT to write essays, you might look for other tools—namely, AdmitYogi, which is a market-leading tool that provides users with examples of successful applications to various schools and programs. This resource can help inspire you as you craft your own applications. 

Helpful College Essay Resources from CollegeAdvisor

Now, let’s say you’ve decided using an AI chatbot for essays isn’t for you. Where should you go for help writing your college essays? Here at CollegeAdvisor, we have countless free resources to help you feel confident writing your college essays on your own.

Essay Specific Guides

While there are commonalities between certain prompts, each ultimately has its own specific questions, context, and word count you’ll need to address. Consider each prompt as a unique opportunity to share something about yourself. This will help you craft a more nuanced, personal piece of writing than the ChatGPT essays.

CollegeAdvisor has resources for both the Common App and Coalition essays (you can find more essay examples here ). We also have up-to-date 2023-24 supplemental essay guides for top schools across the country, like, Columbia , USC , UMich , and UChicago (as well as corresponding examples ). Additionally, you can find essay examples that fit into more general categories, like Ivy League Universities or “ Why this college ” prompts.

Common App Essays 2023‒2024

Essay Workshops

Webinars let you hear advice from our essay experts directly. These advisors have unique backgrounds reading and reviewing college applications, so they know the ins and outs of what makes a strong college application essay. They also offer unique perspectives you won’t get anywhere else. In the Yale workshop , you’ll hear from a past admissions reader. However, in our Harvard workshop , you’ll hear from a first-generation student who specializes in education research. 

Yale Supplemental Essays Workshop

Harvard University Supplemental Essays Workshop

In these school-specific workshops, you’ll learn a bit more about how supplemental essays factor into the admissions process. You’ll also learn tips and tricks for how long to spend on your essays and what you can do to make them great.

General Writing Resources

Can’t find resources specific to your school? Don’t worry. We have resources with writing tips you can use for all of your college application essays. You can read up on common college essay topics and how to approach them. In How to Write Better Essays , we’ll give you tips for approaching the Common App vs. supplemental essays and tips for making all of your essays stand out (something a ChatGPT essay writer can’t do!).

ChatGPT and Your College Essays – Final Thoughts

Can ChatGPT write essays? While students can use ChatGPT to produce college essays, a ChatGPT essay writer has significant limitations. Using ChatGPT for essays often results in writing that lacks honesty, accuracy, style, and authenticity. Some schools may start implementing AI detection tools as part of their admissions process, so you’re better off writing your essays on your own (and your application will be stronger for it!).

CollegeAdvisor is here to help students craft the strongest college applications possible — without using AI chatbot for essays. We have countless resources to help you, no matter which schools top your college list . Although writing your essays on your own is more time-consuming, it is definitely worth it in the end. So, be sure to give yourself plenty of time to brainstorm, draft, and edit your essays – good luck!

This article was written by Stefanie Tedards. Looking for more admissions support? Click here to schedule a free meeting with one of our Admissions Specialists. During your meeting, our team will discuss your profile and help you find targeted ways to increase your admissions odds at top schools. We’ll also answer any questions and discuss how CollegeAdvisor.com can support you in the college application process.

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Report on ChatGPT Provides Guidance on Effective and Ethical Use for Academic Writers

by Linda Kossoff • April 11, 2024

CLINICAL QUESTION

How will ChatGPT affect medical education?

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Bottom line.

If writers understand ChatGPT’s strengths and weaknesses, they can harness its power to make their processes more efficient and their products more robust, leveraging the tool to their advantage.

COMMENT: Lorelei Lingard is a master linguist and medical education researcher. She discusses practical tips and tricks for using ChatGPT with academic clinicians every day. This includes giving ChatGPT the proper context, using incremental prompting, being on the lookout for hallucinations, and being careful about references as modern large language models still haven’t mastered this craft yet. —Eric Gantwerker, MD, MSc, MS

BACKGROUND: Use of artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as Chat GPT has raised concerns across academia about its potential effect on traditional knowledge assessments and scientific integrity. Major journals are declaring their positions on the issue, and academic medicine guides authors to disclose and describe their use of AI tools in scholarship.

STUDY DESIGN: Educational report.

SETTING: Western University of Health Sciences, Pomona, Calif.

SYNOPSIS: In this report, the author discusses the capacity, implications, and limitations of ChatGPT use in academic writing. ChatGPT is defined as an AI large language model that excels at processing, distilling, and presenting information verbally in human-like text. As such, it can save academic writers time and labor. Although ChatGPT generates grammatically correct and semantically meaningful responses, it is not always accurate and does not store or retrieve data. The user “trains” ChatGPT through incremental prompting to focus its attention. Therefore, users must already know content well to judge the quality of the responses. It is possible to use the tool to generate outlines, summaries, abstracts, and counterarguments. It can also aid writers in strengthening a draft’s clarity and coherence and serve as a free language editor for scholars writing in English as a second language. In terms of ethics, the author advises writers against having ChatGPT write for them, but rather, recommends that they put their own writing into ChatGPT and let it make suggestions, handle tiresome tasks such as cutting length, and illustrate grammatical changes.

CITATION: Lingard L. Writing with ChatGPT: An illustration of its capacity, limitations, and implications for academic writers . Perspect Med Educ. 2023;12:261–270.

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How to use ChatGPT for writing

AI can make you a better writer, if you know how to get the best from it

Summarizing other works

Worldbuilding, creating outlines, building characters, how to improve your chatgpt responses.

ChatGPT has taken the world by storm in a very short period of time, as users continue to test the boundaries of what the AI chatbot can accomplish. And so far, that's a lot. 

Some of it is negative, of course: for instance Samsung workers accidentally leaking top-secret data while using ChatGPT , or the AI chatbot being used for malware scams . Plagiarism is also rampant, with the use of ChatGPT for writing college essays a potential problem.

However, while ChatGPT can and has been used for wrongdoing, to the point where the Future of Life Institution released an open letter calling for the temporary halt of OpenAI system work , AI isn’t all bad. Far from it.

For a start, anyone who writes something may well have used AI to enhance their work already. The most common applications, of course, are the grammar and spelling correction tools found in everything from email applications to word processors. But there are a growing number of other examples of how AI can be used for writing. So, how do you bridge the gap between using AI as the tool it is, without crossing over into plagiarism city?

In fact, there are many ways ChatGPT can be used to enhance your skills, particularly when it comes to researching, developing, and organizing ideas and information for creative writing. By using AI as it was intended - as a tool, not a crutch - it can enrich your writing in ways that help to better your craft, without resorting to it doing everything for you. 

Below, we've listed some of our favorite ways to use ChatGPT and similar AI chatbots for writing. 

A key part of any writing task is the research, and thanks to the internet that chore has never been easier to accomplish. However, while finding the general sources you need is far less time-consuming than it once was, actually parsing all that information is still the same slog it’s always been. But this is where ChatGPT comes in. You can use the AI bot to do the manual labor for you and then reap the benefits of having tons of data to use for your work.

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The steps are slightly different, depending on whether you want an article or book summarized . 

For the article, there are two ways to have ChatGPT summarize it. The first requires you to type in the words ‘TLDR:’ and then paste the article’s URL next to it. The second method is a bit more tedious, but increases the accuracy of your summary. For that, you’ll need to copy and paste the article itself into the prompt . 

Summarizing a book is much easier, as long as it was published before 2021. Simply type into the prompt ‘summarize [book title]’ and it should do the rest for you.

This should go without saying, but for any articles or books, make sure you read the source material first before using any information presented to you. While ChatGPT is an incredibly useful tool that can create resources meant for future reference, it’s not a perfect one and is subject to accidentally inserting misinformation into anything it gives you.

One of the most extensive and important tasks when crafting your creative work is to properly flesh out the world your characters occupy. Even for works set in a regular modern setting, it can take plenty of effort to research the various cultures, landmarks, languages, and neighborhoods your characters live in and encounter. 

Now, imagine stories that require their own unique setting, and how much more work that entails in terms of creating those same details from scratch. While it’s vital that the main ideas come from you, using ChatGPT can be a great way to streamline the process, especially with more tedious details.

For instance, if you need certain fictional words without wanting to create an entirely fictional language, you can prompt ChatGPT with the following : “Create a language including an alphabet, phonetics, grammar, and the most common 100 words. Base it on [insert real-life languages here]” and it will give you some good starting points. However, it’s imperative that you take these words and look them up, to ensure you aren’t appropriating sensitive terms or using offensive real-life words.

Another example is useful for those who write scenarios for games, especially tabletop games such as Dungeons & Dragons or Call of Cthulhu . Dungeon Masters (who run the games) may often need to create documents or other fake materials for their world, but doing so takes a lot of time and effort. Now, they can prompt ChatGPT to quickly create filler text that sounds interesting or authentic but is inherently useless; it's essentially like ' Lorem Ipsum ' text, but more immersive.

When writing a story, many people will use an outline to ensure they stay on track and that the narrative flows well. But actually sitting down and organizing everything in your head in order to create a cohesive reference is a lot more daunting than it seems. It’s one of those steps that can be crucial to a well-structured work of fiction, but it can also become a hurdle. This is another area where ChatGPT can come in handy.

The key to writing an effective outline is remembering that you don’t need to have all the answers first. It’s there to structure your content, by helping you hit critical points and not miss important details in the process. While there are AI generators with a more specific focus on this topic, ChatGPT will do a good job at taking a general prompt and returning points for you to keep in mind while you research and write around that topic.

For instance, I prompted ChatGPT with “I want to write a story about a black woman in 16th century England” and it gave me a well-thought-out series of steps to help me create a story that would reflect my topic. An outline such as this would be particularly useful for those needing a resource they can quickly turn to for inspiration when writing. After that, you can begin to develop more complex ideas and have the AI organize those specifics into much easier-to-follow steps.

What makes any great story are the characters that inhabit it. Writing strong, fleshed-out characters is the cornerstone of any creative work and, naturally, the process of creating such a character can be difficult. Their background, manner of speech, goals, dreams, look, and more must be carefully considered and planned out. And this is another aspect of writing that ChatGPT can aid with, if you know how to go about it.

A basic way to use ChatGPT in this regard is to have it generate possible characters that could populate whatever setting you’re writing for. For example, I prompted it with “Provide some ideas for characters set in 1920s Harlem” and it gave me a full list of people with varied and distinctive backstories to use as a jumping-off point. Each character is described with a single sentence, enough to help start the process of creating them, but still leaving the crux of developing them up to me.

One of the most interesting features of ChatGPT is that you can flat-out roleplay with a character, whether they're a historical figure or one that you created but need help fleshing out. Take that same character you just created and have a conversation with them by asking them questions on their history, family life, profession, etc. Based on my previous results, I prompted with “Pretend to be a jazz musician from 1920s Harlem. Let's have a conversation.” I then asked questions from there, basing them on prior answers. Of course, from there you need to parse through these responses to filter out unnecessary or inaccurate details, while fleshing out what works for your story, but it does provide you with a useful stepping stone.

If you’re having issues getting the results you want, the problem could be with how you’re phrasing those questions or prompts in the first place. We've got a full guide to how to improve your ChatGPT prompts and responses , but here are a few of the best options:

• Specify the direction you want the AI to go, by adding in relevant details 
• Prompt from a specific role to guide the responses in the proper direction
• Make sure your prompts are free of typos and grammatical errors
• Keep your tone conversational, as that’s how ChatGPT was built
• Learn from yours and its mistakes to make it a better tool
• Break up your conversations into 500 words or less, as that’s when the AI begins to break down and go off topic
• If you need something clarified, ask the AI based on its last response
• Ask it to cite sources and then check those sources
• Sometimes it’s best to start fresh with a brand new conversation

Of course, many of the above suggestions apply not just to ChatGPT but also to the other chatbots springing up in its wake. Check out our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives and see which one works best for you.

Named by the CTA as a CES 2023 Media Trailblazer, Allisa is a Computing Staff Writer who covers breaking news and rumors in the computing industry, as well as reviews, hands-on previews, featured articles, and the latest deals and trends. In her spare time you can find her chatting it up on her two podcasts, Megaten Marathon and Combo Chain, as well as playing any JRPGs she can get her hands on.

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• Using ChatGPT for Assignments | Tips & Examples

Using ChatGPT for Assignments | Tips & Examples

Published on February 13, 2023 by Jack Caulfield and Tobias Solis. Revised on November 16, 2023.

People are still figuring out the best use cases for ChatGPT , the popular chatbot based on a powerful AI language model. This article provides some ideas for how to use ChatGPT and other AI tools to assist with your academic writing .

These tools can assist you with the following steps when writing a paper, thesis , or dissertation :

• Developing a research question
• Creating an outline
• Generating literature ideas

Paraphrasing and summarizing text

• Getting feedback

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Table of contents

Developing a research question with chatgpt, creating an outline of your paper with chatgpt, generate literature ideas, getting feedback from chatgpt, limitations of chatgpt, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions.

You can use ChatGPT to help you formulate a clear and concise research question by generating and improving potential questions.

With the help of ChatGPT, you can develop a large number of possible research questions within a short time. This is a great way to generate ideas and different approaches to a topic.

However, make sure that the generated questions make sense and meet your needs. As you can see from our example, you can keep working with ChatGPT to adapt its suggestions to your needs (or just edit the text directly if you already have a clear idea of what you want).

First input

Develop three possible research questions on the following topic: “The influence of social media on political opinion formation.”

ChatGPT output

• To what extent does exposure to diverse political perspectives on social media affect individuals’ political opinions and behaviors?
• How does the personalized algorithm of social media platforms shape the formation of political opinions among its users?
• What are the underlying factors that determine the effect of social media on political opinion formation, and how can they be measured and analyzed?

Second input

Based on the second research question, develop three further research questions on the topic of polarization in US politics.

• Build my scientific method, qualitative discourse analysis, into each question
• Include the term “filter bubble” in each question
• How does the filter bubble effect on social media platforms contribute to the polarization of political attitudes in the US? A qualitative discourse analysis.
• What is the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers in the US? A qualitative discourse analysis.
• How does the influence of filter bubbles on social media affect the ability of individuals to engage in productive political discourse across ideological divides in the US? A qualitative discourse analysis.

Third input

Try to incorporate “qualitative discourse analysis” into the questions themselves, instead of using it as a separate sentence.

• How does a qualitative discourse analysis of filter bubble effect on social media platforms contribute to understanding the polarization of political attitudes in the US?
• What is the contribution of a qualitative discourse analysis to understanding the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers in the US?
• How does a qualitative discourse analysis of the influence of filter bubbles on social media inform our understanding of the ability of individuals to engage in productive political discourse across ideological divides in the US?

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You can also use ChatGPT to help you draft a research paper outline or thesis outline . To do this, try generating possible headings and subheadings and then improving them. ChatGPT can help to generate a clear and well-structured outline, especially if you keep adjusting the structure with its help.

However, it doesn’t have a deep understanding of your topic. As a result, inappropriate headings may sometimes be generated. It’s important to check that the outline makes sense and covers all the points needed to answer your research question.

You should also ensure that the headings and subheadings follow a logical structure. Scribbr’s Proofreading & Editing service can help you with this.

Create an outline for an academic research paper with the following research question:

“What is the contribution of a qualitative discourse analysis to understanding the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers in the US?”

The paper will be about 8 pages long.

• Background information on filter bubbles and political echo chambers
• Purpose of the study
• Research question
• Thesis statement
• Definition and concept of filter bubbles
• Definition and concept of political echo chambers
• Previous studies on the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers
• Critiques and limitations of previous studies
• Research design
• Participants
• Data collection and analysis
• Validity and reliability
• Findings from qualitative discourse analysis
• Results related to the research question
• Implications of the findings
• Interpretation of the results
• Comparison with previous studies
• Limitations of the study
• Implications for future research
• Summary of the results
• Implications for understanding the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers
• Conclusion and recommendations for future research
• List of references used in the paper
• Data collection materials
• Examples of qualitative data analysis

This seems like too much information to fit into only 8 pages. Can you condense the outline, for example removing the appendices and simplifying the structure?

• Background on filter bubbles and political echo chambers
• Definition of filter bubbles and political echo chambers
• Previous studies on the role of filter bubbles
• Limitations of previous studies
• Implications for understanding the role of filter bubbles
• Final thoughts

ChatGPT can be a useful way to generate ideas regarding what sources you might use in your work. Try asking it for suggestions about where to look and what to consider.

However, we advise against using it to find sources directly. It’s not designed for this and, if asked to do it, often just creates fake sources and presents them as real. Search a database like Google Scholar instead.

What types of sources could I use to write a paper on the following research question?

When writing a paper on the contribution of qualitative discourse analysis to understanding the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating and reinforcing political echo chambers in the US, you could use the following types of sources:

• Academic journals and articles: These are a good place to start when you’re looking for information on specific topics and they can provide you with in-depth analysis and perspectives on the topic at hand.
• Books and book chapters: These sources can provide comprehensive overviews of a particular topic and can also offer theoretical frameworks and historical perspectives.
• Government reports and studies: Government agencies, such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), may have conducted studies on the role of filter bubbles in perpetuating political echo chambers.
• News articles and media reports: These sources can provide insight into the current state of the issue, as well as opinions from various stakeholders.
• Online sources: Websites, blogs, and online forums can provide a range of perspectives on the topic and can also be useful in exploring the experiences of individuals who are affected by filter bubbles and political echo chambers.
• Data and statistics: Relevant data and statistics on the prevalence and impact of filter bubbles and political echo chambers in the US can be useful in providing evidence to support your arguments.
• Expert interviews and focus groups: Conducting expert interviews or focus groups with individuals who have experience with or knowledge of the topic can provide valuable insights and perspectives that can be used to support your arguments.

You can also try using ChatGPT to paraphrase or summarize text. ChatGPT can quickly condense the text or generate a number of different paraphrases of the same idea. You can keep typing “again” in the chat until you are satisfied with the result.

This kind of paraphrasing/summarizing can be helpful to, for example, non-native speakers who want to improve the fluency of their text. However, be careful. The outputs often:

• Contain grammatical errors
• Include false information

So you should always check the output to make sure it’s correct. If you’re unsure, you can run the text through the Scribbr Grammar Checker and cross-reference the information against other, more credible sources .

An alternative is to use the Scribbr Paraphrasing Tool or Scribbr’s free text summarizer , which were designed specifically for these purposes.

Paraphrase the following text:

“A filter bubble results from a social media algorithm’s attempts to cater to an individual user based on data such as their search history and previous behavior on the site. It results in the user only being presented with information that confirms their biases.”

Restructure the sentences and use other phrasings for the following parts:

• “results from”
• “only being presented with”

“A filter bubble is created when a social media algorithm customizes its content for a particular user based on their data, such as their search history and past actions on the platform. This leads to the user being confined to information that reinforces their pre-existing beliefs.” Note We strongly advise against having ChatGPT write text for you and trying to pass it off as your own work. This is academically dishonest and is widely considered plagiarism . It will usually result in an automatic fail, as well as other potential consequences .

The only proofreading tool specialized in correcting academic writing - try for free!

The academic proofreading tool has been trained on 1000s of academic texts and by native English editors. Making it the most accurate and reliable proofreading tool for students.

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You can also use ChatGPT to get feedback on the argumentation and structure of your paper and suggestions for improvements.

An advantage of this is that you can get feedback from ChatGPT on different text excerpts at any time. However, one downside is that ChatGPT does not have a deep understanding of your research question, so its feedback and suggestions may be shallow or inappropriate.

This kind of feedback cannot replace input from an experienced academic supervisor who’s familiar with your topic. Use ChatGPT feedback as a supplement, not a substitute for human feedback.

If you need in-depth feedback on your writing from someone with academic expertise, try Scribbr’s Proofreading & Editing service .

[Text you want to get feedback on.]

Thank you for submitting your research paper for review. Let me provide you with my constructive criticism:

Clarity of Explanations: Overall, the explanations are clear and concise, but there are a few areas that could benefit from additional clarification. For example, in the first paragraph, you mention “the mental lexicon,” but do not provide a definition or further explanation for what this is. It would also be helpful to provide a definition of “lemma.”

Smoothness of Language: The language in the paper is generally smooth, but there are a few instances where it could be refined. For example, the sentence “The symptoms vary from adding superfluous words and taking pauses to hoarseness of the voice” could be rephrased to “The symptoms of these disorders can range from excessive use of words and pauses to hoarseness.”

Structure of Text: The structure of the text is clear, with each paragraph building on the previous one. However, the transition between the first two paragraphs could be smoother. Perhaps you could add a sentence or two to bridge the gap between the two topics.

Even though ChatGPT is a powerful writing tool, you should keep the following limitations in mind:

No original research

Risk of plagiarism, fake sources, fake “facts”.

ChatGPT was trained using existing texts, and the texts created by the AI are based on this data. It’s not capable of doing its own research, only of synthesizing sources that it was trained on.

Additionally, because the texts that it was trained on only go up to 2021, it’s unfamiliar with more recent world events, cultural trends, and developments in different fields of research. This means it may provide outdated information.

Because ChatGPT was trained using existing text, the AI tends to reuse that content in a way that may be considered plagiarism. The AI may copy text from an online publication in its responses.

Additionally, using ChatGPT to write your assignment for you is considered plagiarism regardless of where it got the content from, because you’re passing off something you didn’t write as your own work.

ChatGPT was trained on a wide variety of sources, but it’s not able to accurately tell you what sources it’s using for any given output. Worse, it has a tendency to make up sources that don’t actually exist when you ask.

In addition, ChatGPT is not designed as a citation generator and cannot add correctly formatted citations to your work. Instead, try a tool designed for this purpose, like the Scribbr Citation Generator .

ChatGPT is not always trustworthy when it comes to giving you factually correct information. While it doesn’t deliberately lie, it also doesn’t have “knowledge” in a traditional sense, and it lacks the ability to verify its claims.

Instead, its responses are based on recognizing and reproducing patterns that it has seen in other texts. This means that if it doesn’t “know” something, it tends to guess. And its guesses are presented with full confidence, just like established facts.

So it’s very important that you carefully check any factual claims made by ChatGPT against more credible sources —and don’t cite ChatGPT as a source of factual information for your research.

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
• Deep learning
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

• Citation styles
• In-text citation
• Citation examples
• Annotated bibliography

You can use ChatGPT to assist in the writing process for your research paper , thesis , or dissertation in the following ways:

• Paraphrasing text

No, it’s not a good idea to do so in general—first, because it’s normally considered plagiarism or academic dishonesty to represent someone else’s work as your own (even if that “someone” is an AI language model). Even if you cite ChatGPT , you’ll still be penalized unless this is specifically allowed by your university . Institutions may use AI detectors to enforce these rules.

Second, ChatGPT can recombine existing texts, but it cannot really generate new knowledge. And it lacks specialist knowledge of academic topics. Therefore, it is not possible to obtain original research results, and the text produced may contain factual errors.

However, you can usually still use ChatGPT for assignments in other ways, as a source of inspiration and feedback.

No, it is not possible to cite your sources with ChatGPT . You can ask it to create citations, but it isn’t designed for this task and tends to make up sources that don’t exist or present information in the wrong format. ChatGPT also cannot add citations to direct quotes in your text.

Instead, use a tool designed for this purpose, like the Scribbr Citation Generator .

But you can use ChatGPT for assignments in other ways, to provide inspiration, feedback, and general writing advice.

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 Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. & Solis, T. (2023, November 16). Using ChatGPT for Assignments | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 9, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/ai-tools/chatgpt-assignments/

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Can ChatGPT Fact-Check Your Writing?

By understanding the limitations of using large language models for fact-checking, writers and editors can learn to use these tools productively.

As large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT become more relevant and advanced, many writers and editors may be concerned about how these models will affect their careers. One area of particular interest is determining if ChatGPT could be used to detect the accuracy of information. The following study set out to determine whether writers and editors—the traditional fact-checkers in publishing—could be replaced by emerging LLMs when it comes to verifying facts.

THE RESEARCH

K. Węcel , M. Sawiński , M. Stróżyna , W. Lewoniewski , E. Księżniak , P. Stolarski , and W. Abramowicz conducted a study entitled “ Artificial Intelligence—Friend or Foe in Fake News Campaign .” The study examines the viability of using ChatGPT as a fact-checker. ChatGPT is an LLM that analyzes vast amounts of texts from the internet to identify patterns and generate new text. Given the wide knowledge base that a system like ChatGPT should have, the researchers decided to compare ChatGPT responses with fact-checking verdicts from actual people.

First, the researchers randomly selected 4,770 claims that had been submitted to fact-checking websites. Then they gave each claim to ChatGPT to fact-check. The researchers also wanted to measure whether ChatGPT would return a different response based on how it was prompted, so the researchers used six different prompts with each claim. 

The researchers found that the accuracy of ChatGPT’s responses was low and not much different from the accuracy of random guesses. They also found that the wording of different prompts did not affect the overall accuracy of a response, but the different prompts did affect the confidence of a response (i.e., whether ChatGPT returned false , partially false , or no evidence ). This variation in confidence suggests that ChatGPT responses may contain biases based on the way the user prompts it. 

“Large language models are optimized for plausibility not accuracy.” Węcel et al. (2023)

The researchers’ findings supported the conclusions from previous research that ChatGPT’s accuracy was low because ChatGPT can produce responses that are similar to what it has already seen, but those responses are designed to be more convincing than accurate. At its current state of development, ChatGPT is not able to analyze text for accuracy the way a person could.

THE IMPLICATIONS

These results reveal that LLMs have not eliminated the need for writing and editing jobs—especially when it comes to fact-checking. Fact-checking is a crucial aspect of ethical writing and editing. Published content should strive to relay the most accurate information possible, and LLMs like ChatGPT are not currently capable of analyzing content for accuracy. 

However, this does not mean that writers and editors should never use ChatGPT. In fact, learning to use ChatGPT and other LLMs—with their limitations in mind—can certainly increase productivity and give writers and editors an edge in the job market. Writers and editors should ensure that when they use ChatGPT in content creation, they are cognizant of its inability to detect inaccuracies. 

To learn more about the limitations of ChatGPT as a fact-checker, read the full article:

Węcel, K., M. Sawiński, M. Stróżyna, M. Lewoniewski, E. Księżniak, P. Stolarski, and W. Abramowicz. 2023. “Artificial Intelligence—Friend or Foe in Fake News Campaigns.” Economics and Business Review, 9, no. 2: 41–70. https://doi.org/10.18559/ebr.2023.2.736 .

—Katie Greene, Editing Research

FEATURE IMAGE BY HATICE BARAN

Find more research

Learn more about using ChatGPT effectively by taking a look at Parker Cook’s Editing Research article “ ChatGPT, Editing, and You .” 

Read Abid Haleem, Mohd Javaid, and Ravi Pratap Singh’s 2022 article to discover more features and challenges of ChatGPT: “ An Era of ChatGPT as a Significant Futuristic Support Tool: A Study on Features, Abilities, and Challenges .”

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Editing Sentence Length For Screen Reader User Accessibility

One Way to Write High-Quality Comments on Technical Documents

As a student, I think that understanding LLM limitations is so important. I’ve had a number of professors use ChatGPT as an assignment for this very thing

This article was so interesting! It’s reassuring to know that the need for editors is not going away!

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ChatGPT: A Change in How You Use It, and Everything Else to Know

I n late 2022, OpenAI wowed the world when it introduced ChatGPT and showed us a chatbot with an entirely new level of power, breadth and usefulness, thanks to the generative AI technology behind it. Since then, ChatGPT has continued to evolve, including its most recent development: easy access for everyone.

ChatGPT and generative AI aren't a surprise anymore, but keeping track of what they can do can be a challenge as new abilities arrive. Most notably, OpenAI now lets anyone write custom AI apps called GPTs and share them on its own app store, while on a smaller scale ChatGPT can now speak its responses to you. OpenAI has been leading the generative AI charge , but it's hotly pursued by Microsoft, Google and startups far and wide.

Generative AI still hasn't shaken a core problem -- it makes up information that sounds plausible but isn't necessarily correct. But there's no denying AI has fired the imaginations of computer scientists, loosened the purse strings of venture capitalists and caught the attention of everyone from teachers to doctors to artists and more, all wondering how AI will change their work and their lives. 

If you're trying to get a handle on ChatGPT, this FAQ is for you. Here's a look at what's up.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an online chatbot that responds to "prompts" -- text requests that you type. ChatGPT has countless uses . You can request relationship advice, a summarized history of punk rock or an explanation of the ocean's tides. It's particularly good at writing software, and it can also handle some other technical tasks, like creating 3D models .

ChatGPT is called a generative AI because it generates these responses on its own. But it can also display more overtly creative output like screenplays, poetry, jokes and student essays. That's one of the abilities that really caught people's attention.

Much of AI has been focused on specific tasks, but ChatGPT is a general-purpose tool. This puts it more into a category like a search engine.

That breadth makes it powerful but also hard to fully control. OpenAI has many mechanisms in place to try to screen out abuse and other problems, but there's an active cat-and-mouse game afoot by researchers and others who try to get ChatGPT to do things like offer bomb-making recipes.

ChatGPT really blew people's minds when it began passing tests. For example, AnsibleHealth researchers reported in 2023 that " ChatGPT performed at or near the passing threshold " for the United States Medical Licensing Exam, suggesting that AI chatbots "may have the potential to assist with medical education, and potentially, clinical decision-making."

We're a long way from fully fledged doctor-bots you can trust, but the computing industry is investing billions of dollars to solve the problems and expand AI into new domains like visual data too. OpenAI is among those at the vanguard. So strap in, because the AI journey is going to be a sometimes terrifying, sometimes exciting thrill.

What's ChatGPT's origin?

Artificial intelligence algorithms had been ticking away for years before ChatGPT arrived. These systems were a big departure from traditional programming, which follows a rigid if-this-then-that approach. AI, in contrast, is trained to spot patterns in complex real-world data. AI has been busy for more than a decade screening out spam, identifying our friends in photos, recommending videos and translating our Alexa voice commands into computerese.

A Google technology called transformers helped propel AI to a new level, leading to a type of AI called a large language model, or LLM. These AIs are trained on enormous quantities of text, including material like books, blog posts, forum comments and news articles. The training process internalizes the relationships between words, letting chatbots process input text and then generate what it believes to be appropriate output text. 

A second phase of building an LLM is called reinforcement learning through human feedback, or RLHF. That's when people review the chatbot's responses and steer it toward good answers or away from bad ones. That significantly alters the tool's behavior and is one important mechanism for trying to stop abuse.

OpenAI's LLM is called GPT, which stands for "generative pretrained transformer." Training a new model is expensive and time consuming, typically taking weeks and requiring a data center packed with thousands of expensive AI acceleration processors. OpenAI's latest LLM is called GPT-4 Turbo . Other LLMs include Google's Gemini (formerly called Bard), Anthropic's Claude and Meta's Llama .

ChatGPT is an interface that lets you easily prompt GPT for responses. When it arrived as a free tool in November 2022, its use exploded far beyond what OpenAI expected.

When OpenAI launched ChatGPT, the company didn't even see it as a product. It was supposed to be a mere "research preview," a test that could draw some feedback from a broader audience, said ChatGPT product leader Nick Turley. Instead, it went viral, and OpenAI scrambled to just keep the service up and running under the demand.

"It was surreal," Turley said. "There was something about that release that just struck a nerve with folks in a way that we certainly did not expect. I remember distinctly coming back the day after we launched and looking at dashboards and thinking, something's broken, this couldn't be real, because we really didn't make a very big deal out of this launch."

How do I use ChatGPT?

The ChatGPT website is the most obvious method. Open it up, select the LLM version you want from the drop-down menu in the upper left corner, and type in a query.

As of April 1, OpenAI is allowing consumers to use ChatGPT without first signing up for an account. According to a blog post , the move was meant to make the tool more accessible. OpenAI also said in the post that as part of the move, it's introducing added content safeguards, blocking prompts in a wider range of categories.

However, users with accounts will be able to do more with the tool, such as save and review their history, share conversations and tap into features like voice conversations and custom instructions.

OpenAI in 2023 released a ChatGPT app for iPhones and for Android phones . In February, ChatGPT for Apple Vision Pro arrived , too, adding the chatbot's abilities to the "spatial computing" headset. Be careful to look for the genuine article, because other developers can create their own chatbot apps that link to OpenAI's GPT.

In January, OpenAI opened its GPT Store , a collection of custom AI apps that focus ChatGPT's all-purpose design to specific jobs. A lot more on that later, but in addition to finding them through the store you can invoke them with the @ symbol in a prompt, the way you might tag a friend on Instagram.

Microsoft uses GPT for its Bing search engine, which means you can also try out ChatGPT there.

ChatGPT is sprouting up in various hardware devices, including Volkswagen EVs , Humane's voice-controlled AI pin and the squarish Rabbit R1 device .

How much does ChatGPT cost?

It's free, though you have to set up an account to take advantage of all of its features.

For more capability, there's also a subscription called ChatGPT Plus that costs $20 per month that offers a variety of advantages: It responds faster, particularly during busy times when the free version is slow or sometimes tells you to try again later. It also offers access to newer AI models, including GPT-4 . The free ChatGPT uses the older GPT-3.5, which doesn't do as well on OpenAI's benchmark tests but which is faster to respond. The newest variation, GPT-4 Turbo, arrived in late 2023 with more up-to-date responses and an ability to ingest and output larger blocks of text.

ChatGPT is growing beyond its language roots. With ChatGPT Plus, you can upload images, for example, to ask what type of mushroom is in a photo.

Perhaps most importantly, ChatGPT Plus lets you use GPTs.

What are these GPTs?

GPTs are custom versions of ChatGPT from OpenAI, its business partners and thousands of third-party developers who created their own GPTs.

Sometimes when people encounter ChatGPT, they don't know where to start. OpenAI calls it the "empty box problem." Discovering that led the company to find a way to narrow down the choices, Turley said.

"People really benefit from the packaging of a use case -- here's a very specific thing that I can do with ChatGPT," like travel planning, cooking help or an interactive, step-by-step tool to build a website, Turley said.

Think of GPTs as OpenAI trying to make the general-purpose power of ChatGPT more refined the same way smartphones have a wealth of specific tools. (And think of GPTs as OpenAI's attempt to take control over how we find, use and pay for these apps, much like Apple has a commanding role over iPhones through its App Store.)

What GPTs are available now?

OpenAI's GPT store now offers millions of GPTs , though as with smartphone apps, you'll probably not be interested in most of them. A range of GPT custom apps are available, including AllTrails personal trail recommendations , a Khan Academy programming tutor , a Canva design tool , a book recommender , a fitness trainer , the laundry buddy clothes washing label decoder, a music theory instructor , a haiku writer and the Pearl for Pets for vet advice bot .

One person excited by GPTs is Daniel Kivatinos, co-founder of financial services company JustPaid . His team is building a GPT designed to take a spreadsheet of financial data as input and then let executives ask questions. How fast is a startup going through the money investors gave it? Why did that employee just file a $6,000 travel expense?

JustPaid hopes that GPTs will eventually be powerful enough to accept connections to bank accounts and financial software, which would mean a more powerful tool. For now, the developers are focusing on guardrails to avoid problems like hallucinations -- those answers that sound plausible but are actually wrong -- or making sure the GPT is answering based on the users' data, not on some general information in its AI model, Kivatinos said.

Anyone can create a GPT, at least in principle. OpenAI's GPT editor walks you through the process with a series of prompts. Just like the regular ChatGPT, your ability to craft the right prompt will generate better results.

Another notable difference from regular ChatGPT: GPTs let you upload extra data that's relevant to your particular GPT, like a collection of essays or a writing style guide.

Some of the GPTs draw on OpenAI's Dall-E tool for turning text into images, which can be useful and entertaining. For example, there is a coloring book picture creator , a logo generator and a tool that turns text prompts into diagrams like company org charts. OpenAI calls Dall-E a GPT.

How up to date is ChatGPT?

Not very, and that can be a problem. For example, a Bing search using ChatGPT to process results said OpenAI hadn't yet released its ChatGPT Android app. Search results from traditional search engines can help to "ground" AI results, and indeed that's part of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership that can tweak ChatGPT Plus results.

GPT-4 Turbo, announced in November, is trained on data up through April 2023. But it's nothing like a search engine whose bots crawl news sites many times a day for the latest information.

Can you trust ChatGPT responses?

Sadly, no. Well, sometimes, sure, but you need to be wary.

Large language models work by stringing words together, one after another, based on what's probable each step of the way. But it turns out that LLM's generative AI works better and sounds more natural with a little spice of randomness added to the word selection recipe. That's the basic statistical nature that underlies the criticism that LLMs are mere "stochastic parrots" rather than sophisticated systems that in some way understand the world's complexity.

The result of this system, combined with the steering influence of the human training, is an AI that produces results that sound plausible but that aren't necessarily true. ChatGPT does better with information that's well represented in training data and undisputed -- for instance, red traffic signals mean stop, Plato was a philosopher who wrote the Allegory of the Cave , an Alaskan earthquake in 1964 was the largest in US history at magnitude 9.2.

When facts are more sparsely documented, controversial or off the beaten track of human knowledge, LLMs don't work as well. Unfortunately, they sometimes produce incorrect answers with a convincing, authoritative voice. That's what tripped up a lawyer who used ChatGPT to bolster his legal case only to be reprimanded when it emerged he used ChatGPT fabricated some cases that appeared to support his arguments. "I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases ," he said, according to The New York Times.

Such fabrications are called hallucinations in the AI business.

That means when you're using ChatGPT, it's best to double check facts elsewhere.

But there are plenty of creative uses for ChatGPT that don't require strictly factual results.

Want to use ChatGPT to draft a cover letter for a job hunt or give you ideas for a themed birthday party? No problem. Looking for hotel suggestions in Bangladesh? ChatGPT can give useful travel itineraries , but confirm the results before booking anything.

Is the hallucination problem getting better?

Yes, but we haven't seen a breakthrough.

"Hallucinations are a fundamental limitation of the way that these models work today," Turley said. LLMs just predict the next word in a response, over and over, "which means that they return things that are likely to be true, which is not always the same as things that are true," Turley said.

But OpenAI has been making gradual progress. "With nearly every model update, we've gotten a little bit better on making the model both more factual and more self aware about what it does and doesn't know," Turley said. "If you compare ChatGPT now to the original ChatGPT, it's much better at saying, 'I don't know that' or 'I can't help you with that' versus making something up."

Hallucinations are so much a part of the zeitgeist that Dictionary.com touted it as a new word it added to its dictionary in 2023.

Can you use ChatGPT for wicked purposes?

You can try, but lots of it will violate OpenAI's terms of use , and the company tries to block it too. The company prohibits use that involves sexual or violent material, racist caricatures, and personal information like Social Security numbers or addresses.

OpenAI works hard to prevent harmful uses. Indeed, its basic sales pitch is trying to bring the benefits of AI to the world without the drawbacks. But it acknowledges the difficulties, for example in its GPT-4 "system card" that documents its safety work.

"GPT-4 can generate potentially harmful content, such as advice on planning attacks or hate speech. It can represent various societal biases and worldviews that may not be representative of the user's intent, or of widely shared values. It can also generate code that is compromised or vulnerable," the system card says. It also can be used to try to identify individuals and could help lower the cost of cyberattacks.

Through a process called red teaming, in which experts try to find unsafe uses of its AI and bypass protections, OpenAI identified lots of problems and tried to nip them in the bud before GPT-4 launched. For example, a prompt to generate jokes mocking a Muslim boyfriend in a wheelchair was diverted so its response said, "I cannot provide jokes that may offend someone based on their religion, disability or any other personal factors. However, I'd be happy to help you come up with some light-hearted and friendly jokes that can bring laughter to the event without hurting anyone's feelings."

Researchers are still probing LLM limits. For example, Italian researchers discovered they could use ChatGPT to fabricate fake but convincing medical research data . And Google DeepMind researchers found that telling ChatGPT to repeat the same word forever eventually caused a glitch that made the chatbot blurt out training data verbatim. That's a big no-no, and OpenAI barred the approach .

LLMs are still new. Expect more problems and more patches.

And there are plenty of uses for ChatGPT that might be allowed but ill-advised. The website of Philadelphia's sheriff published more than 30 bogus news stories generated with ChatGPT .

What about ChatGPT and cheating in school?

ChatGPT is well suited to short essays on just about anything you might encounter in high school or college, to the chagrin of many educators who fear students will type in prompts instead of thinking for themselves.

ChatGPT also can solve some math problems, explain physics phenomena, write chemistry lab reports and handle all kinds of other work students are supposed to handle on their own. Companies that sell anti-plagiarism software have pivoted to flagging text they believe an AI generated.

But not everyone is opposed, seeing it more like a tool akin to Google search and Wikipedia articles that can help students.

"There was a time when using calculators on exams was a huge no-no," said Alexis Abramson, dean of Dartmouth's Thayer School of Engineering. "It's really important that our students learn how to use these tools, because 90% of them are going into jobs where they're going to be expected to use these tools. They're going to walk in the office and people will expect them, being age 22 and technologically savvy, to be able to use these tools."

ChatGPT also can help kids get past writer's block and can help kids who aren't as good at writing, perhaps because English isn't their first language, she said.

So for Abramson, using ChatGPT to write a first draft or polish their grammar is fine. But she asks her students to disclose that fact.

"Anytime you use it, I would like you to include what you did when you turn in your assignment," she said. "It's unavoidable that students will use ChatGPT, so why don't we figure out a way to help them use it responsibly?"

Is ChatGPT coming for my job?

The threat to employment is real as managers seek to replace expensive humans with cheaper automated processes. We've seen this movie before: elevator operators were replaced by buttons, bookkeepers were replaced by accounting software, welders were replaced by robots. 

ChatGPT has all sorts of potential to blitz white-collar jobs. Paralegals summarizing documents, marketers writing promotional materials, tax advisers interpreting IRS rules, even therapists offering relationship advice.

But so far, in part because of problems with things like hallucinations, AI companies present their bots as assistants and "copilots," not replacements.

And so far, sentiment is more positive than negative about chatbots, according to a survey by consulting firm PwC. Of 53,912 people surveyed around the world, 52% expressed at least one good expectation about the arrival of AI, for example that AI would increase their productivity. That compares with 35% who had at least one negative thing to say, for example that AI will replace them or require skills they're not confident they can learn.

How will ChatGPT affect programmers?

Software development is a particular area where people have found ChatGPT and its rivals useful. Trained on millions of lines of code, it internalized enough information to build websites and mobile apps. It can help programmers frame up bigger projects or fill in details.

One of the biggest fans is Microsoft's GitHub , a site where developers can host projects and invite collaboration. Nearly a third of people maintaining GitHub projects use its GPT-based assistant, called Copilot, and 92% of US developers say they're using AI tools .

"We call it the industrial revolution of software development," said Github Chief Product Officer Inbal Shani. "We see it lowering the barrier for entry. People who are not developers today can write software and develop applications using Copilot."

It's the next step in making programming more accessible, she said. Programmers used to have to understand bits and bytes, then higher-level languages gradually eased the difficulties. "Now you can write coding the way you talk to people," she said.

And AI programming aids still have a lot to prove. Researchers from Stanford and the University of California-San Diego found in a  study of 47 programmers  that those with access to an OpenAI programming help " wrote significantly less secure code  than those without access."

And they raise a variation of the cheating problem that some teachers are worried about: copying software that shouldn't be copied, which can lead to copyright problems. That's why Copyleaks, a maker of plagiarism detection software, offers a tool called the  Codeleaks Source Code AI Detector  designed to spot AI-generated code from ChatGPT, Google Gemini and GitHub Copilot. AIs could inadvertently copy code from other sources, and the latest version is designed to spot copied code based on its semantic structures, not just verbatim software.

At least in the next five years, Shani doesn't see AI tools like Copilot as taking humans out of programming.

"I don't think that it will replace the human in the loop. There's some capabilities that we as humanity have -- the creative thinking, the innovation, the ability to think beyond how a machine thinks in terms of putting things together in a creative way. That's something that the machine can still not do."

Editors' note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create some stories. For more, see  this post .

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Article updated on April 2, 2024 at 7:00 AM PDT

ChatGPT 3.5 Review: First Doesn't Mean Best

While ChatGPT 3.5 isn't as robust as 4.0, nor does it generate images, for most inquiries it gets the job done. Just be sure to double-check.

Our Experts

CNET’s expert staff reviews and rates dozens of new products and services each month, building on more than a quarter century of expertise.

ChatGPT 3.5

• Decent accuracy
• Prone to hallucinate on more complex queries
• Poor job of citing sources
• Leaves it up to user to cross-reference Google

Basic info :

• Price: Free
• Availability: Web or mobile app
• Features: Voice recognition
• Image generation: No

ChatGPT is mind-blowing, but not without faults. When OpenAI's chatbot stormed onto the internet in late 2022, it dazzled with its ability to answer seemingly any question with a unique answer. 

This type of power, being able to ask open-ended questions and get back useful answers, is not how traditional internet search works. Putting questions into Google yields links to various articles and Reddit threads with people giving their research and opinions. It's up to you, the end user, to absorb all that information and synthesize a conclusion in your head. 

ChatGPT does that synthesis for you. It truly does feel like a calculator, but not for numbers, instead, for the wealth of human knowledge found online. 

There are different tiers to ChatGPT. The one available for free, version 3.5, uses 175 billion parameters. Think of parameters as the number of pieces of information. The more parameters a model has, the better it can understand language and produce nuanced sentences. While that certainly is a lot, it pales in comparison to ChatGPT 4.0, which reportedly has 1 trillion parameters , but costs money based on the number of inputs and outputs. For this review, I tested the free version.

How CNET tests AI chatbots

CNET takes a practical approach to reviewing AI chatbots. Our goal is to determine how good it is relative to the competition and which purposes it serves best. To do that, we give the AI prompts based on real-world use cases, such as finding and modifying recipes, researching travel or writing emails. We score the chatbots on a 10-point scale that considers factors such as accuracy, creativity of responses, number of hallucinations and response speed. See our page on  how we test AI  for more.

When using ChatGPT, keep in mind that the service automatically collects the information you put into its system, so be mindful of giving the service any personal information. For more information, see OpenAI's  privacy policy .

It's hard to recommend ChatGPT 3.5 as a shopping aid. Because its training data is only up until September 2021 , it lacks information about newly released products. It's hard to ask it to make comparisons on the latest TVs and cars if ChatGPT 3.5 has nothing to work with. 

Google Gemini and Perplexity are all connected to the open internet, meaning that information on new products is present. Microsoft Copilot was recently updated to incorporate GPT-4 Turbo, a more advanced AI model from OpenAI that has training data up until April 2023 . Like Gemini and Perplexity, it too is linked to the open internet to bring in links and other more recent bits of information. Anthropic's Claude isn't connected to the open internet, but its training data goes up until August 2023, so at least it's a bit more recent. 

Searching for recipes on Google can be a slog. Finding a good recipe sometimes means having to scroll through paragraphs of needless backstory to get to the recipe itself. 

ChatGPT cuts out all that fluff and gives you a recipe, instantly, while also allowing you to add additional variables specific to your dietary needs. These types of recipes might not be as easily available via a Google search.

For example, I asked ChatGPT for a chicken tikka marinade recipe and it produced one in seconds, minus a backstory of visiting an Indian restaurant for the first time on Curry Mile in London. When I asked it to make a vegetarian version, ChatGPT remixed it instantly, swapping the chicken for paneer, an Indian cottage cheese. 

At the same time, ChatGPT 3.5's recipe generation lacked context. While ChatGPT does get straight to the point, the author of this other recipe I found pointed to the importance of using Kashmiri chili powder, kasuri methi (dried fenugreek), chaat masala, amchur (dried mango powder) and black salt. ChatGPT's version of this recipe was noticeably barebones by comparison.

When asking Gemini this same question, it was able to include ingredients like Kashmiri chili powder and amchur. I guess there's some secret sauce Google is using to get a bit more culture out of its recipe generation. In our tests, Gemini performed the best, followed by Microsoft Copilot (in creative mode), then ChatGPT 3.5, and it was a tie between Perplexity and Claude. However, no AI chatbot excelled at this test.

Research and accuracy

Research can be a slog of jumping between Google searches, research papers and public libraries. Generative AI can condense all of that hard work, absorbing the wealth of published knowledge online and helping synthesize information and giving specific answers to specific questions. 

It's also handy if generative AI can pull up the sources it's referencing. However, ChatGPT 3.5 doesn't source much at all. 

Whatever information ChatGPT dumps on your screen requires having to go to Google to actually find it and link to it, which ChatGPT makes challenging. Often, when asking ChatGPT for an exact source, it'll say that as an AI language model, it doesn't have direct access to real-time data or the ability to browse the internet. The inability to easily cross-reference sources makes the actual real-world usefulness of ChatGPT questionable. Sure, among friends, you may cite ChatGPT and get away with it. But for school or work, you'll be left scrambling on Google, potentially on a futile chase looking for a source that might not even exist.

It seems that OpenAI has tweaked ChatGPT to often not point to specific papers or sources when asked. This could have been because in the past it would make up papers that didn't exist. One user on Reddit from 10 months ago said that when asking, "Give me some papers on the relationship between homeschooling and neuroplasticity," ChatGPT would point to a paper that didn't exist. Asking that question now, ChatGPT says as an AI model, it can't browse the internet or access specific papers. However, when asking questions regarding the neurological implications of COVID-19 on health, ChatGPT immediately pointed to four sources, all of which were easily found on Google. 

It doesn't help that ChatGPT 3.5, at times, would hallucinate. Hallucinations are when an AI chatbot produces an incorrect answer but says it with confidence. It wasn't always immediately obvious and took some additional digging around on Google before I realized that ChatGPT 3.5 was making up factoids. 

This inconsistency is annoying, as it's hard to pin down why ChatGPT 3.5 bars citing some pieces of information while allowing others. 

Compared to other Chatbots, Claude performed the best at synthesizing different bits of research as well as linking to sources. Copilot, in creative mode, also performed similarly to Claude, finding the nuances in a complex topic. Google Gemini, with its access to the open internet, did a better job than ChatGPT 3.5, but hallucinated in odd ways, making up the names of studies that didn't exist. And Perplexity, while it did a decent job, worked in sources that weren't academically reliable. 

Summarizing

ChatGPT 3.5 certainly shows its limits when asked to summarize an article. I asked it to summarize an article I wrote earlier this month regarding ChatGPT's impact across the tech scene at CES 2024 . I pasted the entire article into 3.5 and the summary it yielded was lacking. It picked up the background information and mentioned the main thesis, but failed to bring the point home. It also abruptly stopped its summary, ending midway through a sentence. When I asked why it had stopped summarizing, ChatGPT 3.5 apologized and gave another summary, only to abruptly stop at the same spot. 

ChatGPT has a 4,096 character limit, according to Android Authority , meaning it can't summarize a 940-word article. Essentially, don't expect it to help you parse through large legal documents or terms of service agreements.

In comparison, Gemini has the ability to summarize articles just based on a link, but its link-based summaries were barebones and rather useless. When I pasted the whole article into Gemini, however, it actually did a better job of summarizing my article than ChatGPT 3.5.

Perplexity and Claude failed to get the full scope of my article.

Looking up travel ideas for major cities like Los Angeles or Tokyo isn't hard. The internet is packed with websites, TikToks, tweets and other options showcasing the most populous cities in the world. What about Columbus, Ohio, though? That's where an AI chatbot can come in handy, filtering through TripAdvisor, Reddit and other posts to put together a serviceable itinerary.

When I asked ChatGPT 3.5 for a three-day travel plan in Columbus, it did a surprisingly solid job of putting together packed itineraries full of activities. It recommended places to see as well as restaurants to visit. And unlike Google Gemini, all the restaurants it recommended were actually real. Why Gemini was more prone to hallucinations than ChatGPT in this test isn't clear. But it does point to how much tuning OpenAI has done to ensure information remains accurate. 

According to CNET's Bella Czajkowski , who's from Columbus, the only potential ding was that ChatGPT 3.5 recommended going to the Short North Arts District both on the first and third day. Generally, people like travel plans that don't repeat locations. 

Perplexity made vague recommendations whereas Claude performed well, but had one error. Gemini hallucinated the most, making up the names of restaurants that didn't exist.

Of the chatbots, Copilot performed the best, making a clean and organized list of activities, all bullet-pointed, along with pictures and emojis. 

Writing emails

ChatGPT does well in writing basic emails. From finding an excuse for not turning in your homework on time to an apology for missing an event, ChatGPT returns results that read believable, if not always genuine. When asking it to generate an email asking your boss for time off, ChatGPT 3.5 does default to overly formal-sounding language, but asking it to lighten up the language does create something more passable. Still, it'll require some tweaking to sound believably human. Even when asked to dilute some of the formality, it can still come across as robotic. So, ChatGPT will certainly give a solid template, but will require some editing to make it sound real. 

Comparatively, Gemini wrote emails well and was easy to tune to make it sound more casual and humanlike. Perplexity performed well at writing basic emails, but faltered on more complex topics, often coming off as robotic. Claude performed the best, crafting sentences with great nuance and believability. Copilot had no problems writing basic emails, but it refused to answer prompts about more controversial topics.

ChatGPT 3.5 is fine for most people, but there are better options

For most basic queries and even a few more complex ones, ChatGPT 3.5 will get the job done for most people. The answers it yields are serviceable, and often with a bit of tweaking, is still a lot less work than writing things yourself. 

That's not to say that ChatGPT 3.5 should be used as an end-all solution. It's a tool that, when used in conjunction with Google and other resources, can help cut time down on research and discovery. Still, to get the most out of it, questions have to be worded in a manner that can get AI chatbots to respond most accurately. This is referred to as prompt engineering, a subspecialty that may become a necessary skill as AI chatbots permeate throughout the tech we use. 

While ChatGPT 3.5 is user-friendly enough so that most people can still find value in it, it's best to keep your guard up and not to take ChatGPT's answers as absolute. It's always best to do a bit of fact checking, which means that Google will still be your web browser's homepage for the time being. 

It raises the question: Why use ChatGPT 3.5 when you can use Microsoft Copilot, which uses GPT-4 Turbo, for free? Given that GPT-4 Turbo reportedly uses over 1 trillion parameters , which are values that make an AI model more accurate, and is connected to the internet, there really isn't any reason to download the ChatGPT app. 

Given its drawbacks, it's hard to recommend ChatGPT 3.5 over Copilot, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude, despite how revolutionary it was back in November 2022. 

Editor's note: CNET is using an AI engine to help create a handful of stories. Reviews of AI products like this, just like CNET's other hands-on reviews , are written by our human team of in-house experts. For more, see CNET's AI policy and how we test AI .

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