An interview with ChatGPT to understand the potential of AI in writing quality content.
"I got you a present!": this is how the story behind this article begins. Roberto, Head of SEO and enthusiastic early adopter of any new digital platform, approached my desk and typed in 'chat gtp' in one of the tabs opened on my Mac.
"What is it?" I asked him. "A gift that will stay with you for life" (he is dramatic) "I just turned your job around!".
He thus made me discover that ChatGPT is an online artificial intelligence software made available by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research and development company that wants to 'ensure that artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity'.
"Ask it anything, come on, he can answer anything!". Sometimes I feel like I'm in front of Giorgio Mastrota trying to sell me a mattress ready to assure me wonderful sleeps and unicorns whispering sweet lullabies.
So, for the next two hours, I interviewed this artificial intelligence and tried to understand if it really could make my job easier or if it would turn out to be an Alexa that can write.
The topic of discussion between ChatGPT and myself is precisely this: whether Artificial Intelligence can help (or even replace) a copywriter in writing this article.
"How tender!" I think, while I start in a brutally direct way to figure out what (or who) I am dealing with. "I'll give it another chance", also because I still don't quite understand what kind of questions to ask, so I ask how she can help me in writing an article on copywriting.
It tells me that I can use it to get ideas or sources to start an article. While Google misses the word 'idea' from my query and returns results that correspond to what other people have written on the topic, ChatGpt seems to give me seemingly 'critical' reviews that answer my question.
Is it concretely listing to me the topics I could write about and which it will have picked up from other articles? Definitely, but it provides me with results that begin to stimulate my reasoning.
I go deeper.
It turns out that these bulleted lists are indeed a passion and also that perhaps I am beginning to see its first limit: point 4 seems to be SEO copywriting that is struggling to be original. It tells me that I have to adapt to changes because AI is a technology and therefore evolves often: it repeated my question and turned it into an answer.
‘I don't know Rick, it looks fake to me.’ The answer to my question does not entirely satisfy me, but perhaps I had too high expectations: what else could a software designed to process a huge amount of data and produce a pseudo-human response in a matter of seconds have answered me?
Writing with artificial intelligence: pros and cons of ChatGPT
I therefore decide that as a preliminary interview this will be sufficient and rearrange my judgements on this little experiment with one good, one bad and one ugly observation.
- First, ChatGPT is a tool with really useful potential. It responds to programming requests, it can also generate new recipes for the kitchen, as well as answer existential questions: a resource that is quick to use, democratic and close to the way we talk, therefore, easy to integrate into our work.
- I have great concerns about fake news. How much ChatGPT is 'aware' of the veracity of everything it finds on the web? Still too little, so the risk of generating more fake news is currently very high.
- Will we all know how to recognise a human product from an artificial one, or will we be easily fooled by its futuristic savoir faire?
In the meantime, using ChatGPT as a source of ideas, inspiration and testing its limits and potential does not seem wrong. I recommend learning more about this fascinating interlocutor, a key player in the latest communication trends worldwide.