can i write my essay with chatgpt

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Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?

Everything high school and college students need to know about using — and not using — ChatGPT for writing essays.

Jessica A. Kent

ChatGPT is one of the most buzzworthy technologies today.

In addition to other generative artificial intelligence (AI) models, it is expected to change the world. In academia, students and professors are preparing for the ways that ChatGPT will shape education, and especially how it will impact a fundamental element of any course: the academic essay.

Students can use ChatGPT to generate full essays based on a few simple prompts. But can AI actually produce high quality work, or is the technology just not there yet to deliver on its promise? Students may also be asking themselves if they should use AI to write their essays for them and what they might be losing out on if they did.

AI is here to stay, and it can either be a help or a hindrance depending on how you use it. Read on to become better informed about what ChatGPT can and can’t do, how to use it responsibly to support your academic assignments, and the benefits of writing your own essays.

What is Generative AI?

Artificial intelligence isn’t a twenty-first century invention. Beginning in the 1950s, data scientists started programming computers to solve problems and understand spoken language. AI’s capabilities grew as computer speeds increased and today we use AI for data analysis, finding patterns, and providing insights on the data it collects.

But why the sudden popularity in recent applications like ChatGPT? This new generation of AI goes further than just data analysis. Instead, generative AI creates new content. It does this by analyzing large amounts of data — GPT-3 was trained on 45 terabytes of data, or a quarter of the Library of Congress — and then generating new content based on the patterns it sees in the original data.

It’s like the predictive text feature on your phone; as you start typing a new message, predictive text makes suggestions of what should come next based on data from past conversations. Similarly, ChatGPT creates new text based on past data. With the right prompts, ChatGPT can write marketing content, code, business forecasts, and even entire academic essays on any subject within seconds.

But is generative AI as revolutionary as people think it is, or is it lacking in real intelligence?

The Drawbacks of Generative AI

It seems simple. You’ve been assigned an essay to write for class. You go to ChatGPT and ask it to write a five-paragraph academic essay on the topic you’ve been assigned. You wait a few seconds and it generates the essay for you!

But ChatGPT is still in its early stages of development, and that essay is likely not as accurate or well-written as you’d expect it to be. Be aware of the drawbacks of having ChatGPT complete your assignments.

It’s not intelligence, it’s statistics

One of the misconceptions about AI is that it has a degree of human intelligence. However, its intelligence is actually statistical analysis, as it can only generate “original” content based on the patterns it sees in already existing data and work.

It “hallucinates”

Generative AI models often provide false information — so much so that there’s a term for it: “AI hallucination.” OpenAI even has a warning on its home screen , saying that “ChatGPT may produce inaccurate information about people, places, or facts.” This may be due to gaps in its data, or because it lacks the ability to verify what it’s generating. 

It doesn’t do research  

If you ask ChatGPT to find and cite sources for you, it will do so, but they could be inaccurate or even made up.

This is because AI doesn’t know how to look for relevant research that can be applied to your thesis. Instead, it generates content based on past content, so if a number of papers cite certain sources, it will generate new content that sounds like it’s a credible source — except it likely may not be.

There are data privacy concerns

When you input your data into a public generative AI model like ChatGPT, where does that data go and who has access to it? 

Prompting ChatGPT with original research should be a cause for concern — especially if you’re inputting study participants’ personal information into the third-party, public application. 

JPMorgan has restricted use of ChatGPT due to privacy concerns, Italy temporarily blocked ChatGPT in March 2023 after a data breach, and Security Intelligence advises that “if [a user’s] notes include sensitive data … it enters the chatbot library. The user no longer has control over the information.”

It is important to be aware of these issues and take steps to ensure that you’re using the technology responsibly and ethically. 

It skirts the plagiarism issue

AI creates content by drawing on a large library of information that’s already been created, but is it plagiarizing? Could there be instances where ChatGPT “borrows” from previous work and places it into your work without citing it? Schools and universities today are wrestling with this question of what’s plagiarism and what’s not when it comes to AI-generated work.

To demonstrate this, one Elon University professor gave his class an assignment: Ask ChatGPT to write an essay for you, and then grade it yourself. 

“Many students expressed shock and dismay upon learning the AI could fabricate bogus information,” he writes, adding that he expected some essays to contain errors, but all of them did. 

His students were disappointed that “major tech companies had pushed out AI technology without ensuring that the general population understands its drawbacks” and were concerned about how many embraced such a flawed tool.

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How to Use AI as a Tool to Support Your Work

As more students are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.

Generate ideas for essays

Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays. For example, input specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth century novels.” Then, use what it provides as a starting point for your original research.

Generate outlines

You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.

Generate titles for your essays

Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”

The Benefits of Writing Your Essays Yourself

Asking a robot to write your essays for you may seem like an easy way to get ahead in your studies or save some time on assignments. But, outsourcing your work to ChatGPT can negatively impact not just your grades, but your ability to communicate and think critically as well. It’s always the best approach to write your essays yourself.

Create your own ideas

Writing an essay yourself means that you’re developing your own thoughts, opinions, and questions about the subject matter, then testing, proving, and defending those thoughts. 

When you complete school and start your career, projects aren’t simply about getting a good grade or checking a box, but can instead affect the company you’re working for — or even impact society. Being able to think for yourself is necessary to create change and not just cross work off your to-do list.

Building a foundation of original thinking and ideas now will help you carve your unique career path in the future.

Develop your critical thinking and analysis skills

In order to test or examine your opinions or questions about a subject matter, you need to analyze a problem or text, and then use your critical thinking skills to determine the argument you want to make to support your thesis. Critical thinking and analysis skills aren’t just necessary in school — they’re skills you’ll apply throughout your career and your life.

Improve your research skills

Writing your own essays will train you in how to conduct research, including where to find sources, how to determine if they’re credible, and their relevance in supporting or refuting your argument. Knowing how to do research is another key skill required throughout a wide variety of professional fields.

Learn to be a great communicator

Writing an essay involves communicating an idea clearly to your audience, structuring an argument that a reader can follow, and making a conclusion that challenges them to think differently about a subject. Effective and clear communication is necessary in every industry.

Be impacted by what you’re learning about : 

Engaging with the topic, conducting your own research, and developing original arguments allows you to really learn about a subject you may not have encountered before. Maybe a simple essay assignment around a work of literature, historical time period, or scientific study will spark a passion that can lead you to a new major or career.

Resources to Improve Your Essay Writing Skills

While there are many rewards to writing your essays yourself, the act of writing an essay can still be challenging, and the process may come easier for some students than others. But essay writing is a skill that you can hone, and students at Harvard Summer School have access to a number of on-campus and online resources to assist them.

Students can start with the Harvard Summer School Writing Center , where writing tutors can offer you help and guidance on any writing assignment in one-on-one meetings. Tutors can help you strengthen your argument, clarify your ideas, improve the essay’s structure, and lead you through revisions. 

The Harvard libraries are a great place to conduct your research, and its librarians can help you define your essay topic, plan and execute a research strategy, and locate sources. 

Finally, review the “ The Harvard Guide to Using Sources ,” which can guide you on what to cite in your essay and how to do it. Be sure to review the “Tips For Avoiding Plagiarism” on the “ Resources to Support Academic Integrity ” webpage as well to help ensure your success.

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The Future of AI in the Classroom

ChatGPT and other generative AI models are here to stay, so it’s worthwhile to learn how you can leverage the technology responsibly and wisely so that it can be a tool to support your academic pursuits. However, nothing can replace the experience and achievement gained from communicating your own ideas and research in your own academic essays.

About the Author

Jessica A. Kent is a freelance writer based in Boston, Mass. and a Harvard Extension School alum. Her digital marketing content has been featured on Fast Company, Forbes, Nasdaq, and other industry websites; her essays and short stories have been featured in North American Review, Emerson Review, Writer’s Bone, and others.

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How 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. 

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Can ChatGPT Write My College Essay?

Editor & Writer

• College faculty fear students might use ChatGPT to compose essay assignments.
• Similarly, high school students may be tempted to use the chatbot to write college application essays.
• ChatGPT generates usable content that often lacks personality and authenticity.
• The use of ChatGPT poses ethical and moral dilemmas around plagiarism and cheating.

It's just about 11 p.m. on a Tuesday night, and your 2,000-word essay on Chaucer is due by 9 a.m., when English 525 next meets in Bennett Hall. Panicked, you review your sketchy notes and your few lines of text, incoherent blather about pilgrims and social upheaval and corruption and conflict and … dear God, why did I take this course? I've got nothing.

Yet you quickly remember salvation lies a few keystrokes away in the form of a chatbot brimming with artificial intelligence on every subject known to man, including Chaucer. You toggle over to OpenAI, log in to ChatGPT, and type in your query.

Bam! Instant essay. And it's actually pretty good, hitting on all the key points and making convincing arguments. The writing isn't exactly deathless prose, but it'll suffice. You can tweak it a bit to make it sound more like you. At least the hard part is over. Rest easy, fair squire.

Nationwide, millions of college students wrestle with this temptation, causing wary faculty members to rethink their assignments for lack of trust.

What's more, even before they arrive on campus, students are using ChatGPT to write personal statements for their college applications.

Some say ChatGPT has ruined the essay. Others aren't nearly as concerned.

Can ChatGPT Write College-Level Essays?

It most certainly can, though with certain limitations. And it's not exactly ethical.

Here's what the chatbot itself had to say about the matter:

ChatGPT is a powerful language model that can generate text on a wide range of topics, including college-level content. However, it is important to note that while ChatGPT can generate text that may resemble a college-level essay, it does not have the ability to understand the subject matter or the purpose of the essay, and therefore it may not be able to write a high-quality, well-researched, and well-argued essay.

Additionally, using text generated by ChatGPT as if it were your own work in a college setting would be considered plagiarism, and it is generally not accepted by educational institutions. It is important to use the generated text as a tool for inspiration, and not as a final submission.

Such meta self-reflection is rather ironic: an AI-generated essay on the limitations of the AI-generated essay.

Yet faculty have every reason to be concerned, and they are. In his Inside Higher Ed piece titled " Freaking Out About ChatGPT ," John Warner says he fed it "a bunch of sample questions from past AP exams in literature, history and political science, and it crushed them."

This clearly has implications for college-level assignments.

Thus far, colleges haven't freaked out enough to ban the use of ChatGPT — that is, no colleges in the U.S. One French university, known colloquially as Sciences Po, prohibits its students from using the tool.

At the K-12 level, the New York City Department of Education announced in January its blockage of ChatGPT on school devices, citing its " negative impacts on student learning, and concerns regarding the safety and accuracy of content." A month earlier, the Los Angeles Unified School District did the same thing .

Not that colleges aren't paying close attention and responding to this emerging threat.

Montclair State University, for example, offers its faculty advice on how to design assignments, give exams, and recognize bot-driven content.

Some of these recommendations echo what others in higher ed are saying: Assign in-class work. Have students collaborate in groups. Link writing prompts to current events (ChatGPT's bank of knowledge doesn't extend beyond 2021). Make students write papers by hand .

Others go so far as to tout the benefits of ChatGPT, saying it helps students overcome writer's block, discover ideas to guide their writing, and see examples of competent grammar and punctuation usage. Students whose first language isn't English might find it especially valuable.

People in this camp don't buy into the notion that the emergence of artificial intelligence signals the arrival of the educational apocalypse.

"I'm not a huge fan of the gloom and doom," said Pennsylvania State University English professor Stuart Selber , "Every year or two, there's something that's ostensibly going to take down higher education as we know it. So far, that hasn't happened."

Above all, academics say, be more creative with assignments. Avoid generic questions ChatGPT can easily answer. Require students to draw on their own experience and reflect on moments in ways a chatbot couldn't possibly offer.

"Time for a new final exam, one that demands students find out something about themselves and tell it to you in a voice that is their own," University of Iowa English professor Blaine Greteman wrote in Newsweek . "To do that, they will have to feel something, and find a form to express it that makes you feel it too. No machine will ever be able to replicate that."

A current Princeton student agrees.

"If students are being assigned essays that can be written by ChatGPT," Christopher Lidard wrote in The Daily Princetonian, "perhaps it's not a good assignment in the first place."

So if your assignment asked you to choose a character from "The Canterbury Tales" and relate their story to some aspect of your own journey, would you find ChatGPT a viable substitute for individual expression?

Using ChatGPT to Craft College Application Essays

Perhaps you're already familiar with essay prompts requiring meaningful self-reflection. Many college application essays follow that very prescription.

If you're already in college, especially a junior or senior taking 500-level courses on Chaucer, you likely didn't have the opportunity to ask a chatbot for help with your admissions essays. It's a relatively recent phenomenon, one that's certainly getting the attention of admissions offices everywhere.

"There is some consternation in the admissions space about these technologies," said Anthony Lising Antonio , associate professor of education at Stanford, "and with obvious good reason."

Folks at Forbes had fun with ChatGPT, asking it to write college admissions essays based on specific background information on two students. Each took about 10 minutes to complete. And the results were fairly decent. For students not especially eager to attend a particular school but needing to submit something plausible, this approach might suffice.

But it's hardly the stuff of admissions-office lore.

That's because the typical output from ChatGPT and similar bots lacks soul and individuality, qualities admissions officers seek. Counselors at Ivy Experience, a college essay and admissions coaching firm, say students should offer " personal, authentic details " about themselves.

After toying with ChatGPT, the Ivy staff found the results brimming with emotion yet all too generic.

"These are broad, sweeping, grand statements written with emotional language and sentiments, but there is no substance," they concluded . … "There are no personal insights, details, or anecdotes."

Details, they claim, are the "key ingredient to vulnerability and authenticity."

New York Times columnist David Brooks concurs.

"It's often bland and vague," he writes about AI-generated content. "It's missing a humanistic core. It's missing an individual person's passion, pain, longings and a life of deeply felt personal experiences. It does not spring from a person's imagination, bursts of insight, anxiety and joy that underlie any profound work of human creativity."

Instead of emphasizing the traditional essay, some suggest, college admissions officers should encourage students to express themselves in other ways. Expand the use of interviews and urge students to submit videos, advise Mike Dunn and Chris Horne . At the same time, embrace the inevitability of ChatGPT and similar tools, laying ground rules about their use and limitations.

"This is an opportunity for college admissions stakeholders to collectively brainstorm novel approaches to this novel issue," they conclude .

So … Should ChatGPT Write Your College Essays?

That's up to each student to decide based on their moral compass. Passing off AI-generated content as your own may or may not constitute plagiarism , but it certainly is ethically dubious. If you get caught, the ramifications could be serious. It's a high-stakes gamble.

Yet the more salient question is this: Do you want artificial intelligence replacing your own? Do you want to express your thoughts and views, your unique take on the world, or do you want a computer to do that for you?

A chatbot might have a lot to say about Chaucer, but it's only what others have written. It's a good start, one that might prompt you to consider new ideas, but ultimately it's up to you to process that information, form your own thoughts, and communicate in your own words.

By now it's pushing 11:30, and you're still staring at random collections of sentence fragments and a cursor taunting you and your writer's block with every blink. Procrastination is not your friend.

But there's still time. For better than never is late.

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Can ChatGPT Write Essays?

ChatGPT is an AI chatbot developed by OpenAI. You can have conversations with it, ask it to answer queries, and prompt it to create written content.

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Can ChatGPT write essays? The short answer is yes, but with some limitations.

We’re going to look at how to write essays with ChatGPT and other AI tools . We’re also going to examine the pros and cons of using ChatGPT and discuss why we think you still need the human touch for the best results.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

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1) Pros and Cons of Using ChatGPT to Write Essays

• It’s quick! And we mean really quick. This software can produce results in seconds.
• You can tweak and adjust your results, including asking the software to include references.
• If you aren’t happy with its first attempt, you can ask ChatGPT to rewrite your essay and you’ll get a new version, again in mere seconds. And you can do this as many times as you like.
• Using the software may help you get over writer’s block and provide inspiration.
• ChatGPT is limited. According to OpenAI, it can still produce complete nonsense that may appear to be quite well written. You need to check any work that comes from the software to ensure accuracy.
• It can sometimes be biased, which may or may not help your argument in the essay.
• You might need to work on the phrasing of your prompts before you get suitable results. The software may sometimes claim that it doesn’t know the answer, even if it would know the answer with a slightly altered prompt.
• Next, we come to the ethical considerations. Can ChatGPT write good essays? Yes. Should you use the software to write your essays? If you hand in a chatbot-written essay at your college or university, it’s highly unethical to pretend that you wrote it if you only used software to generate it with a prompt. If you get caught, there will be consequences.

While ChatGPT can write essays and many other forms of content, it’s not a substitute for doing the work yourself and writing with an understanding of the topic. It’s meant to be a tool to assist you.

We’ve talked before about the AI paradox : AI can help us with our own creativity whilst at the same time making it something of a commodity that it never was before.

These are all things you need to be aware of when using a tool such as this. Use it ethically and add your own input to create something unique.

2) Cheating, Plagiarism, and ChatGPT

Most people will probably use ChatGPT in the right way.

They’ll use it as an idea generator and a way to help them speed up their own writing .

For those thinking of coasting through college or anything else by getting ChatGPT to do all the work, we’d advise you to think again.

Quite apart from the problems we mentioned above, there are some very good plagiarism checkers out there.

If ChatGPT uses any text in your generated essay that it copied from elsewhere, these checkers will find it.

Here are just two of the best:

At Rock Content, we use Copyscape to ensure that every word written by our pool of writers is completely original and plagiarism-free.

It offers a free content checker and a more in-depth checker in the Premium version.

Turnitin is designed to help lecturers and other academics check students’ work for plagiarism. They describe the software as “best in class.”

In addition to plagiarism checkers, you now have to contend with a new tool called GPTZero , which was created to detect if the content is written using ChatGPT.

It’s not completely foolproof, but the developer is working on it.

As is OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.

They are currently looking at developing a “watermark” to show if the content has been created with their software.

Between all of these tools, it really is best to be ethical and honest when using AI content generators of any kind.

3) How to Use ChatGPT to Write Good Essays: 5 Tips

While we’ve included dire warnings about using ChatGPT to cheat on your essay writing, that’s not to say that you shouldn’t use it at all.

In fact, it can be a genuinely helpful tool that saves time by expediting your essay writing.

You can also count on AI featured tools to find expert freelancers with human creativity. Try WriterAccess now!

Here’s how to ask it to help rather than do the work for you:

1. Generate article ideas

ChatGPT can generate more topic ideas in seconds than most people could come up with in a week.

This is an excellent way to find interesting angles on old topics or to choose something to write about if you’re stuck.

2. Evaluate a topic and find sources faster

Run your topic ideas through ChatGPT and ask it to find references and sources for you.

You’ll soon have quite the list to research and a better idea of whether your chosen topic has enough depth to it.

3. Create an outline using ChatGPT

Feed your topic into the software and ask it to create an outline for you.

It’s so much easier to write anything if you already have a good outline and know what you’re going to say.

4. Generate an attention-getting title

If you’re writing essays for online publication, you need a title that’s going to get people to stop and click the link.

ChatGPT will generate a range of titles in seconds.

You can choose the best one, or use the title suggestions for inspiration to create your own.

5. Find good keywords

Again, if your essay is for online publication, you want it to be found and read. For that, you need great keywords and ChatGPT can rapidly deliver a long list of relevant words.

4) Make an AI-generated Essay Your Own: 10 Tips for Personalization

Here’s how you really take an AI-generated work and turn it into something all your own:

1. Use your own writing style and tone

Everyone has their own particular writing tone and style.

Find your writing voice and use it to rewrite an AI essay for a more warm and human tone.

2. Incorporate personal insights

Artificial intelligence can’t add your own insights to an essay for you.

Incorporate these insights to change the essay and add depth.

3. Add relevant facts

Adding pertinent facts is generally a good idea in essays.

Use them to back up your argument as well as to differentiate your essay from the original AI version.

4. Share your opinion

Bots can’t incorporate your opinion either.

Do so and you’ll add spark and interest to your essay while building up your argument.

5. Add humor

If it’s appropriate, adding a little humor can lift an essay by making it interesting and unique.

6. Add your personality

Likewise, so can add your personality. There’s only one of you!

7. Use imagery and visual elements

A human can be far more descriptive and lyrical than any AI.

Use these elements to distinguish your own work from the initial AI draft.

8. Give examples

Examples from your own personal experience or reading will also differentiate your essay and turn it into something that’s more your own.

9. Do your own research

If you perform your own research, you’ll make connections that you otherwise wouldn’t.

This is also a good way to find those facts and examples we mentioned earlier, along with statistics and quotes.

10. Proofread and check for flow

Artificial intelligence writing isn’t always smooth and full of character.

First, read the essay for an understanding of the topic and personality.

Then proofread it and ensure that it flows smoothly.

5) When Only Humans Will Do: The Benefits of Human-made Essays

ChatGPT is good, and it can certainly be a huge timesaver, but it’s no substitute for an experienced, professional content writer.

Over at Writer Access, Rock Content’s own content creation platform, you can choose from over 15,000 talented writers and have content written on just about any topic under the sun.

Human-written essays have personality and a great writing voice already built in, with a coherent, well-constructed argument and flowing style that bots just can’t match.

If you need something full of depth, subtlety, and emotion, then you still need a human writer.

And if you’re talking about content that’ll give you and your readers a good belly laugh, well, those chatbots just don’t get the joke, nor can they write one as well as a human.

So, if you’d rather have 100% human-made copy from professionals, WriterAccess can connect you to hundreds of qualified freelance writers, and you can try it out for free .

6) Other Essay-writing Alternatives to ChatGPT

While ChatGPT is certainly the one everyone’s talking about, there are other AI content generators out there:

Jasper comes with a built-in grammar and plagiarism checker. It allows you to generate a great many types of content.

2. Google Bard

Bard is an interesting combination of search and content generation.

Among other things, you can use it to search, answer questions, brainstorm ideas, or create first drafts of essays and other content.

Hubble includes a section aimed at students, and you can click straight to a page specifically intended for essay writing.

It lets you specify a word count, enter a prompt, and input details that you want to appear in the essay.

There are also over 30 app templates for tweets, social media, blog posts, and more.

4. ContentBot

ContentBot is great at long-form content, such as essays. It also has features aimed at marketers who produce blog posts, advertising copy, and more.

Copy.ai looks to be oriented toward creating copywriting for marketers, including social media posts, email marketing messages, and more.

But it does do long-form content, too.

While ChatGPT and other AI content generators offer intriguing possibilities, they should be viewed as tools rather than substitutes for human writers. For a more personalized, expertly-crafted approach to essay writing, consider WriterAccess.

6. WriterAccess: Elevate Your Content with Human Expertise

Among various AI alternatives, WriterAccess stands out by offering a diverse pool of experienced human writers. Unlike AI, our writers bring a wealth of knowledge, ensuring in-depth research, tailored content, and a unique perspective.

WriterAccess enables you to share your requirements, collaborate with professionals, and receive content that goes beyond automated outputs.

Why Choose WriterAccess?

• Personalized Content: Our writers understand the importance of tailored essays and provide content crafted to meet your specific needs.
• In-Depth Research: Benefit from thorough research conducted by human experts who delve into your topics to provide comprehensive and accurate information.
• Experience Sharing: Our writers can infuse real-world experiences into your essays, adding authenticity and relatability to your content.

Make WriterAccess Your Go-To Content Solution!

If you value quality and expertise, WriterAccess is here to elevate your content game. Take advantage of our two-week trial to experience the difference. Discover how our human writers can bring your ideas to life and create impactful essays tailored to your requirements.

Ready to enhance your content creation journey? Start your free 14-day trial with WriterAccess now!

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• Writing Tips

How to Write Your Essay Using ChatGPT

5-minute read

• 2nd May 2023

It’s tempting, isn’t it? You’ve read about and probably also witnessed how quickly ChatGPT can knock up text, seemingly in any genre or style and of any length, in less time than it takes you to make a cup of tea. However, getting ChatGPT to write your essay for you would be plagiarism . Universities and colleges are alive to the issue, and you may face serious academic penalties if you’re found to have used AI in that way.

So that’s that, right? Not necessarily.

This post is not about how to get ChatGPT to write your essay . It’s about how you can use the tool to help yourself write an essay .

What Is ChatGPT?

Let’s start with the basics. ChatGPT is one of several chatbots that can answer questions in a conversational style, as if the answer were coming from a human. It provides answers based on information it receives in development and in response to prompts you provide.

In that respect, like a human, ChatGPT is limited by the information it has. Where it lacks the information, it has a tendency to fill the gaps regardless . This action is dangerous if you’re relying on the accuracy of the information, and it’s another good reason you should not get ChatGPT to write your essay for you.

How Can You Use ChatGPT to Help With Your Essay?

Forget about the much talked-about writing skills of ChatGPT – writing is your thing here. Instead, think of ChatGPT as your assistant. Here are some ideas for how you can make it work for you.

Essay Prompts

If your task is to come up with your own essay topic but you find yourself staring at a blank page, you can use ChatGPT for inspiration. Your prompt could look something like this:

ChatGPT can offer several ideas. The choice of which one to write about (and you may, of course, still come up with one of your own) will be up to you, based on what interests you and the topic’s potential for in-depth analysis.

Essay Outlines

Having decided on your essay topic – or perhaps you’ve already been given one by your instructor – you may be struggling to figure out how to structure the essay. You can use ChatGPT to suggest an outline. Your prompt can be along these lines:

Just as you should not use ChatGPT to write an essay for you, you should not use it to research one – that’s your job.

If, however, you’re struggling to understand a particular extract, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize it or explain it in simpler terms.

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That said, you can’t rely on ChatGPT to be factually accurate in the information it provides, even when you think the information would be in its database, as we discovered in another post. Indeed, when we asked ChatGPT whether we should fact-check its information, the response was:

An appropriate use of ChatGPT for research would be to ask for academic resources for further reading on a particular topic. The advantage of doing this is that, in going on to locate and read the suggested resources, you will have checked that they exist and that the content is relevant and accurately set out in your essay.

Instead of researching the topic as a whole, you could use ChatGPT to generate suggestions for the occasional snippet of information, like this:

Before deciding which of its suggestions – if any – to include, you should ask ChatGPT for the source of the fact or statistic so you can check it and provide the necessary citation.

Referencing

Even reading the word above has probably made you groan. As if writing the essay isn’t hard enough, you then have to not only list all the sources you used, but also make sure that you’ve formatted them in a particular style. Here’s where you can use ChatGPT. We have a separate post dealing specifically with this topic, but in brief, you can ask something like this:

Where information is missing, as in the example above, ChatGPT will likely fill in the gaps. In such cases, you’ll have to ensure that the information it fills in is correct.

Proofreading

After finishing the writing and referencing, you’d be well advised to proofread your work, but you’re not always the best person to do so – you’d be tired and would likely read only what you expect to see. At least as a first step, you can copy and paste your essay into ChatGPT and ask it something like this:

You’ve got the message that you can’t just ask ChatGPT to write your essay, right? But in some areas, ChatGPT can help you write your essay, providing, as with any tool, you use it carefully and are alert to the risks.

We should point out that universities and colleges have different attitudes toward using AI – including whether you need to cite its use in your reference list – so always check what’s acceptable.

After using ChatGPT to help with your work, you can always ask our experts to look over it to check your references and/or improve your grammar, spelling, and tone. We’re available 24/7, and you can even try our services for free .

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

Last Updated: March 31, 2024 Fact Checked

Getting ChatGPT to Write the Essay

Using ai to help you write, expert interview.

This article was written by Bryce Warwick, JD and by wikiHow staff writer, Nicole Levine, MFA . Bryce Warwick is currently the President of Warwick Strategies, an organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area offering premium, personalized private tutoring for the GMAT, LSAT and GRE. Bryce has a JD from the George Washington University Law School. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 45,525 times.

Are you curious about using ChatGPT to write an essay? While most instructors have tools that make it easy to detect AI-written essays, there are ways you can use OpenAI's ChatGPT to write papers without worrying about plagiarism or getting caught. In addition to writing essays for you, ChatGPT can also help you come up with topics, write outlines, find sources, check your grammar, and even format your citations. This wikiHow article will teach you the best ways to use ChatGPT to write essays, including helpful example prompts that will generate impressive papers.

Things You Should Know

• To have ChatGPT write an essay, tell it your topic, word count, type of essay, and facts or viewpoints to include.
• ChatGPT is also useful for generating essay topics, writing outlines, and checking grammar.
• Because ChatGPT can make mistakes and trigger AI-detection alarms, it's better to use AI to assist with writing than have it do the writing.

• Before using the OpenAI's ChatGPT to write your essay, make sure you understand your instructor's policies on AI tools. Using ChatGPT may be against the rules, and it's easy for instructors to detect AI-written essays.
• While you can use ChatGPT to write a polished-looking essay, there are drawbacks. Most importantly, ChatGPT cannot verify facts or provide references. This means that essays created by ChatGPT may contain made-up facts and biased content. [1] X Research source It's best to use ChatGPT for inspiration and examples instead of having it write the essay for you.

• The topic you want to write about.
• Essay length, such as word or page count. Whether you're writing an essay for a class, college application, or even a cover letter , you'll want to tell ChatGPT how much to write.
• Other assignment details, such as type of essay (e.g., personal, book report, etc.) and points to mention.
• If you're writing an argumentative or persuasive essay , know the stance you want to take so ChatGPT can argue your point.
• If you have notes on the topic that you want to include, you can also provide those to ChatGPT.
• When you plan an essay, think of a thesis, a topic sentence, a body paragraph, and the examples you expect to present in each paragraph.
• It can be like an outline and not an extensive sentence-by-sentence structure. It should be a good overview of how the points relate.

• "Write a 2000-word college essay that covers different approaches to gun violence prevention in the United States. Include facts about gun laws and give ideas on how to improve them."
• This prompt not only tells ChatGPT the topic, length, and grade level, but also that the essay is personal. ChatGPT will write the essay in the first-person point of view.
• "Write a 4-page college application essay about an obstacle I have overcome. I am applying to the Geography program and want to be a cartographer. The obstacle is that I have dyslexia. Explain that I have always loved maps, and that having dyslexia makes me better at making them."

• In our essay about gun control, ChatGPT did not mention school shootings. If we want to discuss this topic in the essay, we can use the prompt, "Discuss school shootings in the essay."
• Let's say we review our college entrance essay and realize that we forgot to mention that we grew up without parents. Add to the essay by saying, "Mention that my parents died when I was young."
• In the Israel-Palestine essay, ChatGPT explored two options for peace: A 2-state solution and a bi-state solution. If you'd rather the essay focus on a single option, ask ChatGPT to remove one. For example, "Change my essay so that it focuses on a bi-state solution."

• "Give me ideas for an essay about the Israel-Palestine conflict."
• "Ideas for a persuasive essay about a current event."
• "Give me a list of argumentative essay topics about COVID-19 for a Political Science 101 class."

• "Create an outline for an argumentative essay called "The Impact of COVID-19 on the Economy."
• "Write an outline for an essay about positive uses of AI chatbots in schools."
• "Create an outline for a short 2-page essay on disinformation in the 2016 election."

• "Find peer-reviewed sources for advances in using MRNA vaccines for cancer."
• "Give me a list of sources from academic journals about Black feminism in the movie Black Panther."
• "Give me sources for an essay on current efforts to ban children's books in US libraries."

• "Write a 4-page college paper about how global warming is changing the automotive industry in the United States."
• "Write a 750-word personal college entrance essay about how my experience with homelessness as a child has made me more resilient."
• You can even refer to the outline you created with ChatGPT, as the AI bot can reference up to 3000 words from the current conversation. [3] X Research source For example: "Write a 1000 word argumentative essay called 'The Impact of COVID-19 on the United States Economy' using the outline you provided. Argue that the government should take more action to support businesses affected by the pandemic."

• One way to do this is to paste a list of the sources you've used, including URLs, book titles, authors, pages, publishers, and other details, into ChatGPT along with the instruction "Create an MLA Works Cited page for these sources."
• You can also ask ChatGPT to provide a list of sources, and then build a Works Cited or References page that includes those sources. You can then replace sources you didn't use with the sources you did use.

Expert Q&A

• Because it's easy for teachers, hiring managers, and college admissions offices to spot AI-written essays, it's best to use your ChatGPT-written essay as a guide to write your own essay. Using the structure and ideas from ChatGPT, write an essay in the same format, but using your own words. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Always double-check the facts in your essay, and make sure facts are backed up with legitimate sources. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• If you see an error that says ChatGPT is at capacity , wait a few moments and try again. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

• Using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay may be against your instructor's rules. Make sure you understand the consequences of using ChatGPT to write or assist with your essay. Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• ChatGPT-written essays may include factual inaccuracies, outdated information, and inadequate detail. [4] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

Thanks for reading our article! If you’d like to learn more about completing school assignments, check out our in-depth interview with Bryce Warwick, JD .

• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6783457-what-is-chatgpt
• ↑ https://platform.openai.com/examples/default-essay-outline
• ↑ https://help.openai.com/en/articles/6787051-does-chatgpt-remember-what-happened-earlier-in-the-conversation
• ↑ https://www.ipl.org/div/chatgpt/

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Student Opinion

Should Students Let ChatGPT Help Them Write Their College Essays?

If so, how? Tell us what you are thinking, and what practical and ethical questions these new A.I. tools raise for you.

Natasha Singer

Hey, ChatGPT, can you help me write my college admissions essays?

Absolutely! Please provide me with the essay prompts and any relevant information about yourself, your experiences, and your goals.

By Katherine Schulten

Teachers: We also have a lesson plan that accompanies this Student Opinion forum.

Are you working on a college application essay? Have you sought help from an adult? How about from an A.I. chatbot like ChatGPT or Bard? Were either useful? If so, how?

The New York Times recently published two articles about the questions these new tools are raising for the college process. One explores how A.I. chatbots are upending essay-writing. The other details what happened when a reporter fed application questions from Harvard, Yale, Princeton and Dartmouth to different bots.

Here’s how the first article, “ Ban or Embrace? Colleges Wrestle With A.I.-Generated Admissions Essays ,” explains what’s going on:

The personal essay has long been a staple of the application process at elite colleges, not to mention a bane for generations of high school students. Admissions officers have often employed applicants’ essays as a lens into their unique character, pluck, potential and ability to handle adversity. As a result, some former students say they felt tremendous pressure to develop, or at least concoct, a singular personal writing voice. But new A.I. tools threaten to recast the college application essay as a kind of generic cake mix, which high school students may simply lard or spice up to reflect their own tastes, interests and experiences — casting doubt on the legitimacy of applicants’ writing samples as authentic, individualized admissions yardsticks.

The piece continues:

Some teachers said they were troubled by the idea of students using A.I. tools to produce college essay themes and texts for deeper reasons: Outsourcing writing to bots could hinder students from developing important critical thinking and storytelling skills. “Part of the process of the college essay is finding your writing voice through all of that drafting and revising,” said Susan Barber, an Advanced Placement English literature teacher at Midtown High School, a public school in Atlanta. “And I think that’s something that ChatGPT would be robbing them of.” In August, Ms. Barber assigned her 12th-grade students to write college essays. This week, she held class discussions about ChatGPT, cautioning students that using A.I. chatbots to generate ideas or writing could make their college essays sound too generic. She advised them to focus more on their personal views and voices. Other educators said they hoped the A.I. tools might have a democratizing effect. Wealthier high school students, these experts noted, often have access to resources — alumni parents, family friends, paid writing coaches — to help them brainstorm, draft and edit their college admissions essays. ChatGPT could play a similar role for students who lack such resources, they said, especially those at large high schools where overworked college counselors have little time for individualized essay coaching.

The second article, “ We Used A.I. to Write Essays for Harvard, Yale and Princeton. Here’s How It Went ,” includes this example:

Dartmouth requires applicants to explain why they want to attend the college. I primed the A.I. chatbots by asking them to write in the voice of a high school senior who was hoping to double major at Dartmouth in computer science and biology. HuggingChat churned out text with trite words and phrases — “passion,” “meaningful impact,” “rigorous academic programs” — that seemed to me like the kind of stilted formal language a high school student might imagine a college admissions reviewer would want to read.

I asked Bard to minimize the clichés and add more specific details about Dartmouth’s computing department. But it still produced some of the same standard college application language — “renowned,” “impact” — as HuggingChat. Bard also wrote that I was hoping to study with Leslie Kaelbling, whom the chatbot described as an A.I. researcher at Dartmouth. That could have caused problems if I were a high school senior and had submitted the essay Bard had fabricated as part of my Dartmouth application. Professor Kaelbling , you see, teaches at M.I.T. My takeaway: high school seniors hoping to stand out may need to do wholesale rewrites of the texts they prompt A.I. chatbots to generate. Or they could just write their own — chatbot-free — admissions essays from scratch.

Students, read both articles, and then tell us:

Do you think you would use a chatbot to help you write your personal essay for college? If so, how? For example, would you ask it to suggest topics? Help structure your writing? Generate a rough draft? Edit?

If you have already used A.I. to write or edit a personal essay, what did you think of the result? Was the experience useful to you? To what extent did you, like the Times reporter, find the output generic and clichéd? Did the bot make any errors? How, if at all, did you use the results?

Some, like the teacher quoted in the first article, worry that letting A.I. help with your essays robs you of the chance to develop your personal voice. Do you agree? Why or why not?

Do you think there is value in drafting and revising writing without help? What has that process been like for you in the past? What have you learned from it?

Some people believe that these tools will help students who don’t have easy access to college counselors or writing coaches. Do you agree? Do these chatbots make the application process more fair for students with fewer resources?

Do any of the colleges you are applying to have a policy on the use of these tools? If so, what do you think of those guidelines?

What do you think is, or should be, the purpose of a college essay? Can it really show colleges who you are? If so, is it ethical to let a bot — or even another human — help?

Now, return to the questions we started with: Should students let ChatGPT help them write their college essays? If so, how? Did your answers change as you read the related articles or looked at other students’ responses? Are you left with any questions — whether practical or ethical — about the role of this new technology?

Students 13 and older in the United States and Britain, and 16 and older elsewhere, are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public and may appear in print.

Find more Student Opinion questions here. Teachers, check out this guide to learn how you can incorporate these prompts into your classroom.

Katherine Schulten has been a Learning Network editor since 2006. Before that, she spent 19 years in New York City public schools as an English teacher, school-newspaper adviser and literacy coach. More about Katherine Schulten

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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.

• artificial intelligence
• college admissions

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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.

Should I Use ChatGPT for My Essays?

Artificial intelligence has finally come to the world of academia. Students have been tempted to use LLM-based instruments such as ChatGPT for writing essays and other research papers by simply writing a prompt and clicking “Generate.” 

The burning question, however, revolves around the quality of work that AI can produce. Is the technology advanced enough to deliver on its promises, or does it fall short of expectations? Students are grappling with the decision of whether to entrust AI with their essay writing and contemplating the potential trade-offs involved.

In this article, we offer you the opportunity to explore if chat gpt good at writing essays, the pros and cons of AI writing tools to gain a deeper understanding of why it’s more of a hindrance for students rather than a salvation. For those of you who would like to jump straight to the conclusion, using a college essay writing service provided by human authors rather than machines is still a better alternative than trusting such a foundational component of any course as an essay to a machine.

What Is Generative AI and How Does It Work

Generative Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a subset of machine learning that focuses on creating systems capable of producing new and original content rather than simply analyzing and interpreting existing data. What is generative AI compared to other forms of artificial intelligence? Unlike traditional AI models that rely on predefined rules and patterns, generative AI can generate novel outputs by learning from vast amounts of diverse data. This form of AI is often employed in tasks such as text and image generation, where the goal is to create indistinguishable content from human-created content.

The functioning of generative AI is rooted in neural networks, which are designed to mimic the human brain's structure and function. These networks consist of interconnected nodes organized into layers, each processing and extracting features from the input data. Generative models typically employ a type of neural network called a "generative model," which learns to understand the underlying patterns and structures in the training data. During the training process, the model refines its understanding of the data and becomes capable of generating new, coherent outputs by making predictions based on the learned patterns.

Seriously Considering ChatGPT to Write Your Essay?

When in a hurry, GenAI is not the best option. When in a rush, relying on expert writers is always an optimal solution.  

Generative AI Setbacks

Now, let’s move on to the pros and cons of Chat GPT as the most popular GenAI instrument. It operates through sophisticated neural network architectures to produce text content, with recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and transformer models being commonly employed. The primary objective of generative AI in this context is to generate coherent and contextually relevant text passages autonomously. 

The model is trained on large datasets containing diverse examples of human-written text, learning the intricacies of language, grammar, and contextual relationships. While generative AI can produce impressive text content, it's important to note that it doesn't possess true comprehension or consciousness but rather mimics linguistic patterns learned from its training data. 

Quality Concerns

One significant drawback of relying on ChatGPT for scholarly writing is the variable output quality. While it can generate coherent text, it might lack the depth, critical thinking, and nuanced understanding that human-generated content often possesses. The AI might struggle to grasp complex topics or provide insightful analysis, potentially leading to subpar essay quality. Even if you ask the GenAI system, ‘Can I use Chat GPT for essays?’ it will reply, ‘Yes, but no. There are several major considerations.’

Lack of Originality

Another disadvantage is the risk of essays lacking originality. ChatGPT learns from existing datasets, and without proper guidance, it may reproduce common ideas and phrases. This lack of originality can affect the uniqueness and authenticity of the essay, potentially leading to issues related to plagiarism and academic integrity.

Limited Subject Expertise

ChatGPT's knowledge is broad but not necessarily deep or specialized. It might lack expertise in specific academic subjects, leading to inaccuracies or oversimplifications in content. Students relying solely on ChatGPT may find it challenging to produce essays demonstrating a profound understanding of specialized topics.

Contextual Misinterpretation

ChatGPT may struggle with nuanced contextual understanding, leading to misinterpretations of prompts or generating contextually inappropriate content. This lack of contextual finesse can result in essays that deviate from the intended meaning or fail to address the nuances specific to a given topic. Students may spend additional time correcting or clarifying the output to align it with the intended context.

Dependency and Skill Erosion

Over-reliance on ChatGPT might hinder the development of essential writing and critical-thinking skills. Suppose students consistently use AI to compose essays. In that case, they may miss out on the learning opportunities that come from grappling with the complexities of research, analysis, and creative expression, ultimately impacting their academic growth.

AI Hallucination

While using ChatGPT for college essays, an unwary student might face the phenomenon known as "AI hallucination." This occurs when the model generates information that may sound plausible but is ultimately fictional or inaccurate. ChatGPT does not possess real-world knowledge and can unintentionally fabricate details or provide misleading information. Relying on such hallucinated content can compromise the reliability and factual accuracy of the essay, posing a risk to academic credibility. Students need to be vigilant in fact-checking and verifying information to ensure the accuracy of their AI-generated content.

Tried ChatGPT, but the Result Is Dissapointing?

Try a professional essay service – a time-tested instrument for students seeking good results with minimal effort.  

How GenAI May Actually Help You with Essays

Generative AI can enhance essay production by offering valuable assistance in brainstorming ideas, overcoming writer's block, and providing creative inspiration, allowing students to refine and expand their own thoughts. The tool's ability to generate coherent sentences and structures can serve as a foundation upon which students build their essays, fostering a collaborative writing process. While it can assist in generating content, students must use the technology judiciously, actively engage in the writing process, and ensure the final output reflects their own voice and understanding of the subject matter. Here are three no-nonsense tips on how to use ChatGPT to write an essay:

Idea Generation and Brainstorming

ChatGPT can be used as a creative companion, helping students generate ideas for essays and overcome writer's block. By providing prompts or asking questions, the AI can inspire diverse perspectives and angles for the essay topic, kickstarting the thought process and expanding the range of potential content. ChatGPT not only assists in overcoming initial hurdles but also facilitates a dynamic exchange of ideas. By engaging in a virtual dialogue with the AI, students can explore different perspectives, receive real-time feedback, and foster a collaborative brainstorming process that goes beyond the traditional confines of solitary ideation, ultimately enriching the depth and diversity of their essay content.

Structural Assistance and Coherent Expression

The tool generates well-structured and coherent sentences, supporting organizing thoughts and expressing ideas fluently. ChatGPT's ability to understand context allows it to contribute to the development of clear introductions, body paragraphs, and conclusions, providing a solid foundation that students can build upon for a more polished essay structure. Similar to the best essay writing apps , ChatGPT aids in developing entire paragraphs and sections, ensuring a seamless flow of ideas throughout the essay. Its contextual understanding can guide students in creating a well-organized narrative that strengthens the overall coherence and impact of their written work.

Language Enhancement and Vocabulary Enrichment

ChatGPT can help enhance the language and vocabulary used in an essay. By exposing users to a wide range of phrasing and terminology, the AI can assist in refining the language style and ensuring a more sophisticated and nuanced expression of ideas, thereby contributing to the overall eloquence and professionalism of the written piece. ChatGPT for writing essays can become a linguistic mentor for international students, suggesting alternative phrasings and introducing varied vocabulary, thereby refining the eloquence and richness of the essay. The GetAI can enhance immediate writing tasks and contribute to the long-term development of language skills, fostering a more nuanced and sophisticated command of written expression.

Why Doing Essays by Yourself Is Always a Better Choice

While ChatGPT offers valuable support in writing, doing essays independently holds several advantages that contribute to a more enriching and authentic academic experience. Working on essays individually provides a deep engagement with the subject matter, allowing for a genuine exploration of personal insights and understanding. It enhances critical thinking skills, encourages original thought, and builds a strong foundation for academic growth. Although generative AI can be an assistant, it’s you who should be in charge of the writing process and deliver the final result. 

Critical Thinking and Analytical Skills

Independent essay writing promotes the cultivation of critical thinking and analytical skills. By grappling with the complexities of a topic without external assistance, students develop the ability to analyze, synthesize information, and construct well-reasoned arguments, contributing to a more profound understanding of the subject matter. Learn how to write an essay outline to make the first step to mastering the art of academic writing.

Personalized Exploration of Ideas

Writing an essay independently allows students to embark on a personalized journey of idea exploration. They can delve into their unique perspectives, draw connections between concepts, and explore creative approaches to presenting their thoughts, fostering a deeper intellectual engagement with the material.

Enhanced Research Competence

Independently crafting essays necessitates comprehensive research, honing students' research skills and information retrieval abilities. This process not only ensures a more thorough understanding of the topic but also equips students with the skills necessary for conducting effective and independent research in future academic and professional endeavors.

Cultivation of Writing Style

Independent writing contributes to the development of an individual writing style. Through the iterative process of drafting, revising, and refining, students refine their voice, expression, and linguistic choices. This personal touch not only makes the essay more compelling but also contributes to the development of a unique and identifiable writing style.

Ownership and Satisfaction

Crafting essays independently fosters a sense of ownership over one's work. The satisfaction derived from overcoming challenges, expressing ideas authentically, and producing a piece of writing that reflects individual effort contributes to a deeper appreciation for the learning process and academic accomplishments.

Professional Writers: The Best of Two Worlds

When writing on your own is not an option and motivation levels occasionally drop, students often struggle with the decision, ‘Should I use ChatGPT for my essays?’ While it may seem like a quick “push-button” solution, the imperfections and the need for extensive polishing can be time-consuming and frustrating. In such cases, entrusting the task to professional writers proves to be a mindful choice. With expertise, tailored content, and a commitment to quality, expert writers offer a streamlined alternative for those who seek well-crafted essays without compromising on excellence or spending hours refining AI-generated drafts.

Expertise and Specialized Knowledge

Experts of an essay service often possess specialized knowledge and expertise in various subjects. Unlike ChatGPT, which may lack depth in specific areas, human writers bring a nuanced understanding of complex topics, ensuring a higher level of accuracy, depth, and sophistication in the content. This expertise allows for incorporating relevant research, current trends, and a comprehensive understanding of the subject matter.

Tailored and Customized Content

Seasoned essay writers excel in tailoring content to specific requirements and individual preferences. While ChatGPT provides general suggestions, human writers can adapt their writing style, tone, and content to match the unique needs of a particular assignment or client. This personalized touch ensures that the essay meets specific guidelines, aligns with the student's voice, and addresses the nuances of the given topic more effectively.

Quality Assurance and Revisions

Professional writing platforms often come with quality assurance and revision policies. Human writers can produce polished, well-structured essays with attention to detail, grammar, and coherence. Moreover, these services typically offer revision options, allowing students to request modifications or clarifications until they are satisfied with the final product. This level of personalized attention and quality control when writing an essay surpasses the capabilities of ChatGPT by a great amount.

What Are Students Saying

Despite the buzz surrounding generative AI, many students aren't impressed with ChatGPT's essay-writing abilities. Research reveals that students find the essays it produces too basic and broad for academic standards. Despite using ChatGPT for multiple semesters, they struggle to generate papers with the required depth and focus.

Detection is another issue. Tools like Turnitin easily spot AI-written content, causing concerns among students. One student reported that nearly all of their ChatGPT-generated essay was flagged as AI-written, even after attempting to disguise it by altering sentence structures.

Trust is a significant issue. Despite some students' attempts to utilize ChatGPT for simple problems in accounting, it consistently fails to provide accurate answers. Even when students tried to manipulate it, ChatGPT couldn't maintain consistency, leading to doubts about its reliability.

Furthermore, recent versions of ChatGPT seem less reliable and more biased. Responses vary widely between versions, and the AI often provides neutral or evasive answers instead of factual information. Additionally, it appears to censor or avoid certain topics, impacting the quality of assistance it offers.

Below are authentic comments from students on Reddit, sharing their concerns and observations:

Overall, students are increasingly disillusioned with ChatGPT's performance, citing its inability to produce high-quality essays and provide accurate information. Its limitations in detecting AI-generated content and inconsistencies in responses contribute to growing skepticism among users.

ChatGPT isn't designed for academic writing. It lacks the critical thinking and analysis abilities of human writers. Even though it can generate text, it often lacks accuracy and credibility needed for academic essays. Besides, essays produced by AI still need to be checked, revised, and updated by humans, which defeats the purpose of using AI for essay writing. It's better to rely on human writers and trusted sources for academic papers.

In the hustle and bustle of student life, when time becomes a precious commodity and motivation wanes, the allure of quick solutions like ChatGPT might seem tempting. However, the reality often unveils itself in the imperfections and the laborious task of refining AI-generated content. 

When faced with the twin challenges of time constraints and a lack of motivation, turning to human writers emerges as the optimal choice. Professional essay writers not only offer expertise and tailored content but also serve as partners in the creative process, crafting essays that resonate with individual voices and adhere to specific requirements. 

Related Articles

Can I Write an Admissions Essay with ChatGPT?

What is chatgpt and why are people using it for essays.

ChatGPT is a large language model that was designed to understand and generate human-like text based on the input it receives. Since its launch in November 2022, people have been using ChatGPT for a variety of purposes—one of those being essay writing. Students in particular struggle with the temptation to use ChatGPT, not just to complete their assignments but also to write personal statements for their college applications, for the following (and other) reasons.

ChatGPT can generate coherent and contextually relevant text , making it a valuable tool for brainstorming ideas, outlining essays, and even creating content.

ChatGPT can also provide factual information and explanations , helping users research a topic and understand complex concepts.

Finally, ChatGPT can assist with grammar, syntax, and writing style suggestions , and thereby help users improve the clarity and readability of their essays (but note that there are more specialized AI tools for this purpose, such as our Wordvice AI writing assistant 's suite of automated revision tools that corrects and paraphrases your text and makes it more compelling—see below).

Why shouldn’t I use ChatGPT to write admissions essays?

While ChatGPT can help you brainstorm ideas, generate content, and improve your writing, there are several important reasons why you should think twice before using it to write your college entrance essay.

College entrance essays are expected to reflect your unique life path, perspective, and voice. ChatGPT does not know you and does not understand your human experience, and asking it to write about those things can result in an essay that lacks originality and fails to showcase your personal qualities.

Using ChatGPT to generate large portions of your essay without incorporating your own thoughts is considered plagiarism by most academic institutions (although rules and guidelines are not always clear and keep changing). If an admission committee suspects an AI bot wrote your personal statement, you could face serious consequences.

Some institutions view the use of AI-powered writing assistance, even if the output does not constitute plagiarism, as ethically questionable or as an attempt to gain an unfair advantage. Make sure you are up to date on the ethical guidelines of the colleges you are applying to.

While ChatGPT can provide information and suggestions, it does not always produce accurate or up-to-date information (remember that ChatGPT is trained on data that doesn't extend beyond 2021). Providing incorrect information in your essay can undermine your credibility.

Moreover, writing college entrance essays is not just about getting into the college of your dreams, it's also an opportunity for you to reflect on yourself and develop important skills. If you outsource this task to a machine, you miss out on an important learning opportunity .

Do colleges check for AI essay writing?

Yes—as AI technology improves and makes it easier to outsource tasks such as essay writing, companies and academic institutions are working on and increasingly using software that can detect the use of such tools. One example of such detection software is the AI Innovation Lab, developed by Turnitin (a plagiarism detector that is very popular with schools and universities). According to Turnitin, the tool flags submissions produced by AI tools with 98% confidence.

Another tool that colleges use to sort out questionable application essays is Zero GPT, developed by a computer science student at Princeton. The ability of human readers, especially admission committee members who read hundreds or even thousands of essays each year, to identify a “ChatGPT essay” should also not be underestimated; this has to do with the AI bot using more simplistic and repetitive sentence structures than the average high school student aiming for university entrance.

Can ChatGPT write college-level essays?

Now that we have listed a variety of reasons why you should not let ChatGPT write your essay, the question remains whether it actually can. The answer is yes, it can spit out an essay on a specific topic using all the arguments you fed it, which is why colleges are concerned about its (undetected) use. But it has important limitations that you need to consider (as well as the ethical problems outlined above).

How to Use AI Writing and Editing Tools Responsibly

As discussed above, you can use ChatGPT responsibly when writing your application essay, as a tool for inspiration, idea generation, and initial drafting. However, you need to ensure that your essay is authentic and reflects your unique experiences and voice. Don’t plagiarize (that means don’t hand in an entire ChatGPT essay, because the bot will inevitably take other people’s ideas and stories to produce that), be honest about any AI assistance (and check the rules and guidelines of every school you apply to), and seek feedback from teachers or mentors before you submit your application.

What AI tools can definitely help you with is correcting and improving your writing. However, there are more specialized tools than the allrounder ChatGPT, and those do not pose any ethical dilemma because they require more human input. The Wordvice free AI Writing Assistant , for example, offers a free AI paraphrasing tool , a free AI proofreader , and a free AI text summarizer to help you correct your grammar, improve the flow and clarity of your text, and adapt your style to the intended audience. In the following, we will show you some examples of how these tools can assist you.

1. Let AI revise the draft of your admission essay

The Wordvice AI tools can help you revise your essay in a number of different ways: The AI proofreader can analyze your essay, and it will highlight grammar issues, flag word-choice problems, and provide style recommendations. You can then review these suggestions and accept or reject them as you deem fit. It will also flag typos and other errors that you might have missed (see below for an example of using AI to proofread your text). There are, however, more ways in which AI can help you improve your essay.

2. Use AI paraphrasing tools on the sentence level

You can make your text sound more academic, combine separate bullet-point statements into a coherent paragraph, or ask the AI to be “creative” with your input if you need suggestions for inspiring hooks and intriguing entries into a topic.

For example, if you open the Wordvice AI Paraphrasing Tool, click on “Academic” under “Modes,” paste the straightforward question “_How does challenging one's own beliefs lead to personal growth?_” into the left-hand side textbox, and click “Paraphrase,” the AI offers you a more academic-sounding sentence:

If this is too dry for your purposes, you can also let the AI play around with your sentence, by clicking on “Creative” and then “Paraphrase,” and watch in awe as your simple question is transformed into something sounding much more interesting, if a bit long in word count:

3. Use a text summarizing tool to outline your main points

The Wordvice AI Summarizer comes in handy if you have already drafted entire sections of your essay but need to check the logical connections between paragraphs and the overall logical flow: If you copy-and-paste parts of your text into the left-hand box and click “Summarize,” the AI will give you a bullet-point list of the main points your text covers. Do this for single paragraphs or series of paragraphs to make sure your arguments follow a logical order.

4. Proofread and edit your work with a reliable AI proofreading tool

Once you have caught the reader’s attention with an intriguing introduction, checked that your arguments are in order, and adapted your style to your intended audience, it’s time for the fine-tuning, that is, the editing and proofreading of your essay. The AI Proofreader will help with that if you paste parts of your text into the left-hand box, and clicking on a flagged error in the text field opens the corresponding feedback box showing you why and how to correct it:

It is of course always a good idea to have a professional editor go over your final essay before submitting it as part of an application. If you request the Wordvice Editing and Proofreading Services or our Admissions Editing Services , (after using our free tools to fix any remaining errors), one of our more than 500 English-speaking editors will be happy to serve as your second pair of eyes and perfect your writing.

The ChatGPT Essay vs the Traditional Essay: Balancing Originality with Reliability

While ChatGPT can help generate ideas, the traditional essay is an expression of a writer's unique voice. Overusing ChatGPT can result in generic content, as it uses what it finds in its training data, which is what other people have produced. To strike the right balance, use ChatGPT for inspiration but add your personal experiences and insights and shape the text using your own voice. By using AI tools responsibly and effectively while relying on your own creativity and (human) perspective, you make the best of them as supplementary aids to showcase your authenticity and own genuine efforts to the admissions committee.

Unlocking the Power of ChatGPT: Your AI-Powered Personal Assistant

Spencer Chen

What Is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is like having a smart robot at your fingertips. Trained on a massive 45-terabyte dataset of internet text, it’s one of the largest language models ever created. But what sets it apart? Here are the top 3 aspects that easily come to my mind, when I think of it:

• Human-Like Writing : ChatGPT mimics human language, making interactions feel natural and engaging.
• Contextual Understanding : It pays attention to different parts of your input, generating coherent and context-aware responses.
• Versatility : From chatbots to personal assistants, ChatGPT adapts to various tasks.

How was ChatGPT created?

OpenAI initially introduced ChatGPT as a "research preview," quietly rolling it out to the public without much promotion. To their astonishment, the platform swiftly gained viral traction, catching even the OpenAI team off guard. Sandhini Agarwal, a researcher at OpenAI, characterizes it as a glimpse into a refined iteration of existing technology, strategically aimed at soliciting feedback from users. The platform underwent training using reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF), where human evaluators assessed responses based on criteria such as truthfulness and helpfulness. OpenAI conducted extensive testing and red teaming to identify and mitigate potential risks and safety concerns prior to its public debut.

ChatGPT represents a fine-tuned version of Generative Pre-trained Transformers (GPT) 3.5, a series of large language models introduced by OpenAI months prior to the chatbot's release. The inception of the GPT series marked a pivotal moment in artificial intelligence and natural language processing, showcasing the potential of transformer architecture and unsupervised learning.

GPT-4, OpenAI's latest advancement in language models, offers improved safety measures and enhanced performance. This cutting-edge, multimodal system, capable of processing both text and image inputs, demonstrates human-level proficiency across various professional and academic benchmarks. Notably, GPT-4 showcases heightened reliability, creativity, and collaboration, along with an increased capacity to comprehend nuanced instructions , setting it apart from its predecessor, GPT-3. (Moreover, the size disparity between the two models is evident, with GPT-4 rumored to boast an impressive 1 trillion parameters compared to GPT-3's already remarkable 175 billion parameters.

How can I use ChatGPT effectively?

Whether you’re a student, faculty or staff member, there’s always a powerful assistant by your side. The biggest tip that is shared by the four scenarios below, is the custom instructions. ChatGPT can answer, in the form of whatever you want it to be. You can tell ChatGPT what it is you want it to know, and how you would like it to respond, and it will do so accordingly!

ChatGPT as your Study Buddy and Research Assistant

• ChatGPT can create personalized study plans based on your syllabus and preferences.
• Need information for a project? it digs through vast resources and provides relevant insights.
• One important tip would be to pay attention to the source material. Although ChatGPT is a powerful tool to help you get started with studying, it should not be the primary source of where you get your information. Always consult with the professor or course material for a more accurate view.

Travel Planner Extraordinaire

• Planning a getaway? ChatGPT organizes travel details, suggests attractions, and even refines restaurant choices.
• As an example, if you want to grasp local insights, simply ask for the top brunch spots in your area, and ChatGPT will deliver concise recommendations.

Content Creation and Review

• ChatGPT excels in writing assistance: Whether it’s essays, articles, or creative pieces, you’ll not only find the right words, but will have your work reviewed for clarity, grammar, and coherence.

Interview Prep and Career Guidance

• Practice with ChatGPT—it simulates interview scenarios and provides feedback.
• Ask ChatGPT about job trends, industry advice, or resume tips!

So, next time you interact with ChatGPT, remember—it’s not just a chatbot; it’s your AI-powered companion, ready to make your life easier, smarter, and more exciting.

How does ChatGPT actually work? | ZDNET

The inside story of how ChatGPT was built from the people who made it | MIT Technology Review

GPT 3.5 vs. GPT 4: What's the Difference? (howtogeek.com)

GPT-4 vs GPT-3 side-by-side tests show mostly subtle improvement | Mashable

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About 1 in 5 U.S. teens who’ve heard of ChatGPT have used it for schoolwork

Roughly one-in-five teenagers who have heard of ChatGPT say they have used it to help them do their schoolwork, according to a new Pew Research Center survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17. With a majority of teens having heard of ChatGPT, that amounts to 13% of all U.S. teens who have used the generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot in their schoolwork.

Teens in higher grade levels are particularly likely to have used the chatbot to help them with schoolwork. About one-quarter of 11th and 12th graders who have heard of ChatGPT say they have done this. This share drops to 17% among 9th and 10th graders and 12% among 7th and 8th graders.

There is no significant difference between teen boys and girls who have used ChatGPT in this way.

The introduction of ChatGPT last year has led to much discussion about its role in schools , especially whether schools should integrate the new technology into the classroom or ban it .

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis to understand American teens’ use and understanding of ChatGPT in the school setting.

The Center conducted an online survey of 1,453 U.S. teens from Sept. 26 to Oct. 23, 2023, via Ipsos. Ipsos recruited the teens via their parents, who were part of its KnowledgePanel . The KnowledgePanel is a probability-based web panel recruited primarily through national, random sampling of residential addresses. The survey was weighted to be representative of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17 who live with their parents by age, gender, race and ethnicity, household income, and other categories.

This research was reviewed and approved by an external institutional review board (IRB), Advarra, an independent committee of experts specializing in helping to protect the rights of research participants.

Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

Teens’ awareness of ChatGPT

Overall, two-thirds of U.S. teens say they have heard of ChatGPT, including 23% who have heard a lot about it. But awareness varies by race and ethnicity, as well as by household income:

• 72% of White teens say they’ve heard at least a little about ChatGPT, compared with 63% of Hispanic teens and 56% of Black teens.
• 75% of teens living in households that make $75,000 or more annually have heard of ChatGPT. Much smaller shares in households with incomes between $30,000 and $74,999 (58%) and less than $30,000 (41%) say the same.

Teens who are more aware of ChatGPT are more likely to use it for schoolwork. Roughly a third of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT (36%) have used it for schoolwork, far higher than the 10% among those who have heard a little about it.

When do teens think it’s OK for students to use ChatGPT?

For teens, whether it is – or is not – acceptable for students to use ChatGPT depends on what it is being used for.

There is a fair amount of support for using the chatbot to explore a topic. Roughly seven-in-ten teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use when they are researching something new, while 13% say it is not acceptable.

However, there is much less support for using ChatGPT to do the work itself. Just one-in-five teens who have heard of ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to write essays, while 57% say it is not acceptable. And 39% say it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT to solve math problems, while a similar share of teens (36%) say it’s not acceptable.

Some teens are uncertain about whether it’s acceptable to use ChatGPT for these tasks. Between 18% and 24% say they aren’t sure whether these are acceptable use cases for ChatGPT.

Those who have heard a lot about ChatGPT are more likely than those who have only heard a little about it to say it’s acceptable to use the chatbot to research topics, solve math problems and write essays. For instance, 54% of teens who have heard a lot about ChatGPT say it’s acceptable to use it to solve math problems, compared with 32% among those who have heard a little about it.

Note: Here are the  questions used for this analysis , along with responses, and its  methodology .

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Many Americans think generative AI programs should credit the sources they rely on

Americans’ use of chatgpt is ticking up, but few trust its election information, q&a: how we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts, striking findings from 2023, what the data says about americans’ views of artificial intelligence, most popular.

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ChatGPT: A GPT-4 Turbo Upgrade and Everything Else to Know

It started as a research project. But ChatGPT has swept us away with its mind-blowing skills. Now, GPT-4 Turbo has improved in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding.

• Shankland covered the tech industry for more than 25 years and was a science writer for five years before that. He has deep expertise in microprocessors, digital photography, computer hardware and software, internet standards, web technology, and more.

In 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: access to its latest GPT-4 Turbo model for paid users.

ChatGPT and generative AI aren't a novelty anymore, but keeping track of what they can do can be a challenge as new abilities arrive. Most notably, OpenAI now provides easier access to anyone who wants to use it. It also 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.

Read more :  ChatGPT 3.5 Review: First Doesn't Mean Best

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."

ChatGPT, a name only engineers could love, was launched as a research project in November 2022, but quickly caught on as a consumer product.

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 Turbo . OpenAI said it has improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding in this model.

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.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announces custom AI apps called GPTs at a developer event in November 2023.

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?

No. Well, sometimes, 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.

We humans interact with AI chatbots by writing prompts -- questions or statements that seek an answer from the information stored in the chatbot's underlying large language model. 

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.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella touted his company's partnership with OpenAI at a November 2023 event for OpenAI developers. Microsoft uses OpenAI's GPT large language model for its Bing search engine, Office productivity tools and GitHub Copilot programming assistant.

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 used an AI engine to help create several dozen stories, which are labeled accordingly. For more, see our  AI policy .

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How to Make ChatGPT Prompts Work for You

ChatGPT can be a useful tool for queries, so find out some of the best prompts you can use professionally or personally to get a response from ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a form of artificial intelligence trained to answer users’ questions in a chat-like manner. Find out more about ChatGPT and how to prompt it to optimise the answers you need.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a chatbot that allows you to interact with an artificial intelligence interface in a chat-like way to create a dialogue of responses to your questions. It can talk to you in a way that sounds like natural language to develop answers to simple prompts like a question or those that are more complex, such as asking it to write an essay or a fictional story, helping you brainstorm ideas, or translating from one language to another.

OpenAI is the AI research and deployment company that created ChatGPT. Its interface allows you to ask questions easily to get a response from the website’s artificial intelligence software.

If you prefer another app instead of ChatGPT, you can explore other artificial intelligence apps, such as Bard by Google or Microsoft’s Bing Chat, to try different options.

How can you tailor ChatGPT prompts to work for you?

Optimising your interactions with ChatGPT by knowing which questions to ask or how to ask them will help you get the most out of the chatbot’s responses. Prompts should be clear to get the best information from ChatGPT, and you’ll want to include as much information as possible to focus the AI interface on returning relevant information for your query.

You’ll also want to consider important pieces for the ChatGPT interface's answer. Perhaps you’ll want to include the type of audience the response addresses, the context around the question you’re asking, or how long you want the response to be.

ChatGPT prompts to get you started

The best way to get the desired results is to ask good questions or give clear statements from ChatGPT to elicit the response you would like from the artificial intelligence program for things such as ChatGPT prompts for business, school, or personal help. Here are some beginnings for prompts that can help you focus your question to ensure you succeed at getting the answers you’re looking for.

Tell me the best or worst…

ChatGPT helps generate responses to questions, but it still needs guardrails sometimes to focus its responses.

Try prompts like “Tell me what the best restaurants are in [city]” or “What are the worst sales tactics that I should avoid?”

These prompts can narrow ChatGPT's focus and give you a useful response. You can refine your prompt by asking for the type of restaurant or food you prefer and specifying the industry, customer base, or products in your sales role.

Write me a…

One way to use ChatGPT is to brainstorm ideas you can build on. The ChatGPT response can give you a starting point for the next steps in an idea.

You can prompt ChatGPT with “Write me a sales pitch for [my product]” or “Write me an email to welcome new customers.”

It’s important to review what ChatGPT generates as you may not be able to use the direct responses from ChatGPT, but it can give you a good starting point for your work.

ChatGPT can pretend to be someone else and assume that person's role when it responds to your query.

These types of prompts can help you compare different points of view of various kinds of people so you can get a better handle on a particular subject or how a person will react.

Try a prompt like “Pretend you’re a journalist and ask me about [my company]” to prepare for a media interview. You could also ask, “Act like a manager responding to [this customer complaint],” to get ideas on responding to client issues.

You might know where you’re starting, but you need a little boost from ChatGPT to move you along.

Ask ChatGPT to help you with a project that requires further steps. Try prompts like “Help me create a plan for my new business” or “Help me find sources for my essay.”

The “Help me” prompt can build on a base you already have or the goal you’ve already set to keep you on track and develop tasks that can push you forward.

You can also ask ChatGPT to review your work and give you feedback that you may find helpful in refining a sales pitch or strengthening your resume .

Give ChatGPT prompts like “Review my resume for a computer programmer position.” You can also be more specific with your prompt, such as “Can you edit my essay for grammar and tone?”

These prompts can review your work and suggest improvements as a stand-in for a human looking over your work when you only have access to a computer to review.

ChatGPT prompt limits

ChatGPT can be a helpful tool in your professional or personal life, but there are some limits you need to be aware of before using it.

For example, one of ChatGPT's most significant issues is “hallucinations,” which cause it to generate answers that are fabrications or factually incorrect. You have to independently fact-check any answers ChatGPT generates to confirm their authenticity, particularly when you pass the information along as factual.

ChatGPT also has limits regarding what it can create for you. The app is good at responding to a prompt with typical written responses such as natural language responses. Questions about coding languages also work in ChatGPT. The app, however, doesn’t do as well with math, so that may be a topic you want to avoid when using the ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is also based on a data set that goes up to 2021, so it doesn’t have the most up-to-date information on topics you may ask about.

It also can’t connect to the internet, so you won’t be able to ask it to search for results the way you can ask a typical search engine for information.

ChatGPT is programmed to respond to questions that elicit answers with educational and informative value. Because of this, it is also programmed to not respond to inappropriate or harmful queries, give advice on politics or investments, or answer questions containing confidential or proprietary information.

Getting started with Coursera

You can learn more about ChatGPT and how you can make it work for you on Coursera.

Check out ChatGPT for Beginners: Save Time With Microsoft Excel on the Coursera Project Network to learn how to make ChatGPT work with Excel to help you generate data for different projects.

Look into Prompt Engineering for ChatGPT through Vanderbilt University of Coursera to learn more about prompts. The course includes information on writing effective prompts that can maximise your productivity and help you better create ChatGPT prompts that work for you.

Keep reading

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This content has been made available for informational purposes only. Learners are advised to conduct additional research to ensure that courses and other credentials pursued meet their personal, professional, and financial goals.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Amanda Hoover

Students Are Likely Writing Millions of Papers With AI

Students have submitted more than 22 million papers that may have used generative AI in the past year, new data released by plagiarism detection company Turnitin shows.

A year ago, Turnitin rolled out an AI writing detection tool that was trained on its trove of papers written by students as well as other AI-generated texts. Since then, more than 200 million papers have been reviewed by the detector, predominantly written by high school and college students. Turnitin found that 11 percent may contain AI-written language in 20 percent of its content, with 3 percent of the total papers reviewed getting flagged for having 80 percent or more AI writing. (Turnitin is owned by Advance, which also owns Condé Nast, publisher of WIRED.) Turnitin says its detector has a false positive rate of less than 1 percent when analyzing full documents.

ChatGPT’s launch was met with knee-jerk fears that the English class essay would die . The chatbot can synthesize information and distill it near-instantly—but that doesn’t mean it always gets it right. Generative AI has been known to hallucinate , creating its own facts and citing academic references that don’t actually exist. Generative AI chatbots have also been caught spitting out biased text on gender and race . Despite those flaws, students have used chatbots for research, organizing ideas, and as a ghostwriter . Traces of chatbots have even been found in peer-reviewed, published academic writing .

Teachers understandably want to hold students accountable for using generative AI without permission or disclosure. But that requires a reliable way to prove AI was used in a given assignment. Instructors have tried at times to find their own solutions to detecting AI in writing, using messy, untested methods to enforce rules , and distressing students. Further complicating the issue, some teachers are even using generative AI in their grading processes.

Detecting the use of gen AI is tricky. It’s not as easy as flagging plagiarism, because generated text is still original text. Plus, there’s nuance to how students use gen AI; some may ask chatbots to write their papers for them in large chunks or in full, while others may use the tools as an aid or a brainstorm partner.

Students also aren't tempted by only ChatGPT and similar large language models. So-called word spinners are another type of AI software that rewrites text, and may make it less obvious to a teacher that work was plagiarized or generated by AI. Turnitin’s AI detector has also been updated to detect word spinners, says Annie Chechitelli, the company’s chief product officer. It can also flag work that was rewritten by services like spell checker Grammarly, which now has its own generative AI tool . As familiar software increasingly adds generative AI components, what students can and can’t use becomes more muddled.

Detection tools themselves have a risk of bias. English language learners may be more likely to set them off; a 2023 study found a 61.3 percent false positive rate when evaluating Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) exams with seven different AI detectors. The study did not examine Turnitin’s version. The company says it has trained its detector on writing from English language learners as well as native English speakers. A study published in October found that Turnitin was among the most accurate of 16 AI language detectors in a test that had the tool examine undergraduate papers and AI-generated papers.

Emily Mullin

Joel Khalili

C. Brandon Ogbunu

Schools that use Turnitin had access to the AI detection software for a free pilot period, which ended at the start of this year. Chechitelli says a majority of the service’s clients have opted to purchase the AI detection. But the risks of false positives and bias against English learners have led some universities to ditch the tools for now. Montclair State University in New Jersey announced in November that it would pause use of Turnitin’s AI detector. Vanderbilt University and Northwestern University did the same last summer.

“This is hard. I understand why people want a tool,” says Emily Isaacs, executive director of the Office of Faculty Excellence at Montclair State. But Isaacs says the university is concerned about potentially biased results from AI detectors, as well as the fact that the tools can’t provide confirmation the way they can with plagiarism. Plus, Montclair State doesn’t want to put a blanket ban on AI, which will have some place in academia. With time and more trust in the tools, the policies could change. “It’s not a forever decision, it’s a now decision,” Isaacs says.

Chechitelli says the Turnitin tool shouldn’t be the only consideration in passing or failing a student. Instead, it’s a chance for teachers to start conversations with students that touch on all of the nuance in using generative AI. “People don’t really know where that line should be,” she says.

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20+ ChatGPT Alternatives You Can Try For Free (2024)

Discover the top ChatGPT alternatives for writing, translation, coding, and research to meet your specific needs in our curated list.

While ChatGPT is a popular and powerful conversational AI chatbot, there are other options with better service offerings, improved AI models,  unique features/capabilities, and suited to a specific need.

Which ChatGPT Alternative Should You Use?

Choosing the perfect ChatGPT alternative for your needs out of the sea of options can be overwhelming.

To help you out, we placed the AI chatbots can into four main categories, depending on their distinct features and what you want to achieve.

Here's a breakdown of the four  ChatGPT alternative categories and the options you can try in each category:

• If you need an LLM-specific AI chatbot built on a custom AI model different from OpenAI's GPT,  try Claude , Gemini , Mistral , or Llama .
• Go with Monica or Quora's Poe for a general-purpose, all-in-one AI assistant powered by multiple AI models and featuring an AI Bots Hub (marketplace) where you can use different personalized bots for your needs with one account.
• There are Special AI Apps built by big tech companies that can replace ChatGPT for certain functions such as Microsft's Copilot , Github's Copilot , and Amazon Codewhisperer , and Grok (by Elon Musk's xAI) .
• Whether it's for academic research, teaching, or copywriting, there are plenty of AI chatbot options suited to your specific needs in the Special Tasks category. They include Perplexity AI, WordAI,  Elicit (for academic research), Jasper (for marketing content), Learnt.ai (for educational tasks), and AnonChatGPT (for using ChatGPT anonymously).

The Best ChatGPT Alternatives You Can Try

Here’s our list of the best ChatGPT alternatives you can get started with:

Monica is our all-in-one AI assistant built to help you generate text, chat, search, translate, and simplify your tasks. Think of it as ChatGPT on steroids.

There are many reasons why we believe Monica is the best ChatGPT alternative on the market.

With our AI assistant in your toolset, you get an all-in-one integrated platform that can seamlessly transition between different large language models (LLMs).

So depending on the task you want to complete, you can choose between well-known AI models including GPT-4 , Claude 3 Opus , DALL-E 3, LLAMA, Gemini , and Mistral .

Monica offers cross-platform convenience and usability, through our mobile apps, desktop apps, and browser extensions (for Google Chrome and Edge). This allows you to easily access the powerful suite of chatbot features while browsing the web, at any time, and on any device (Mac, Windows, iOS, and Android).

OpenAI’s GPT model tends to hallucinate sometimes and this is one big concern using ChatGPT. Monica aims to solve this by referencing sources from where an answer was pulled via hyperlinked footnotes so you can validate whatever information it generates.

Finally, Monica enables a smarter, personalized AI chat experience by having its own Prompt and Bots Marketplace. With this development, you can get extensive customization options, tailored interaction experiences, custom-made prompts, and personalized services.

Need an all-in-one AI assistant that can seamlessly write code, craft essays, summarize content, search the internet intelligently, and even generate AI images ?

Monica is a must-have, recommended ChatGPT alternative.

• Creator : Monica
• Pricing : Free, paid plans start from $9.99/month

Gemini (formerly Bard)

Gemini is Google's answer to ChatGPT.

Formerly known as Bard, the AI chatbot connects with Google's extensive search index to offer up-to-date information when prompted.

Gemini has an intuitive interface that’s easy to use. Like ChatGPT, you’ll enter a text prompt to generate relevant answers, search information from the web, or even generate code.

It’s a recommended alternative to ChatGPT, especially if you want to look up real-time information on the web.

• Creator : Google
• Pricing : Free

Copilot by Microsoft

Copilot is Microsoft’s AI chatbot that runs on a combination of the GPT-4 AI model and the Bing search engine index.

Formerly referred to as Bing AI, the chatbot provides real-time answers to prompts by accessing its AI database and the internet.

To tweak how the bot responds, you can choose from three conversation styles: Balanced , Precise , or Creative .

For each response generated, you’ll find source links below that you can click through to get additional information. And at the click of a button, you can easily switch from Copilot to the normal Bing search engine.

• Creator: Microsoft

Try Copilot

Perplexity AI

Perplexity is another ChatGPT alternative that generates short responses and content in a conversational style.

With a simple ChatGPT-like user interface, the chatbot generates information to prompt by leveraging the OpenAI model. It also pulls in information from popular sites like Wikipedia, Amazon, and LinkedIn.

• Creator: Perplexity
• Pricing: Free. Paid plans start from $20 per month

Try Perplexity

Claude is a next-generation AI assistant built by Anthropic to help you generate answers, search for information, and do your best work.

This ChatGPT alternative was created mainly for work and has been trained to be safe, accurate, and secure.

Claude 3 is the latest iteration of Anthropic’s AI model family and this new model sets new industry benchmarks across various cognitive tasks. Claude 3 has three separate AI models: Haiku, Sonnet, and Opus, with each offering distinct performance capabilities.

• Creator: Anthropic
• Pricing: Free. Claude Pro costs $20 per month

Jasper Chat

Jasper.ai is a conversational AI tool that provides a suite of AI writing tools perfect for marketers and content creators to escape writer's block.

Like ChatGPT, the AI writing tool assists marketing teams with writing inspiration by generating articles, ad copy, social media content, video scripts, and even AI images. It could also be used for sales, customer service, and marketing-related tasks.

To generate content, Jasper.ai leverages popular AI models: GPT-4 and Claude.

• Creator: Jasper
• Pricing: Free trial. Paid plans start from $49 per month

Try Jasper Chat

Chatsonic is a ChatGPT alternative designed to provide conversational responses along with real-time data, image, and voice searches. It was built to solve the limitations of ChatGPT at a 20% cost savings.

The conversational AI chatbot is powered by GPT-4 and is integrated with Google Knowledge Graph to generate factual and relevant content on any given real-time topic.

Plus, Chatsonic has a text-to-image AI art generator, Chrome extension, and persona mode (with 13+ different potentialities) to enrich the chat experience.

• Creator: Writesonic
• Pricing: Free trial available. Paid plans start from $16.67 per month

Try Chatsonic

Copilot by GitHub

Copilot is the world’s most widely adopted AI developer tool and a recent addition to GitHub.

The AI tool was built on OpenAI Codex's GPT-3 model, to boost developer productivity and accelerate software development.

Copilot offers multi-language coding support and lets you generate syntax in up to 12 programming languages (including JavaScript, Go, PHP, Ruby, and more).

One good thing is it has compatibility with various popular development environments such as JetBrains, VS Code, Neovim, and more.

• Creator: Github
• Pricing: Free and Pro plan for $19 per month

Try CoPilot by Github

Character.AI

Character AI allows you to enjoy rich conversational experiences through AI personas/characters.

With the AI Chatbot, you can choose to act as and converse with various real-life and fictional personalities. Some of these characters on the platform include Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Harry Potter, and more.

For instance, you can ask Elon Musk's AI character why he bought Twitter and the tool will return an appropriate response. You can also build your character and make it public.

This ChatGPT alternative was built on neural language models and is fun to use if you love conversational AI chatbots.

• Creator: Character Technologies
• Pricing: Free but sign-up required

Try Character AI

AnonChatGPT

This is simply Incognito ChatGPT . If you ever want to use OpenAI’s chatbot without creating an account or logging in, AnonChatGPT was made for you.

Built on OpenAI's GPT-3, the chatbot routes all your prompts to OpenAI's servers and returns the necessary responses. This way, your personal information isn’t disclosed while you enjoy all the basic benefits of ChatGPT.

AnonChatGPT only allows one conversation at a time and past responses aren't stored. It’s a perfect ChatGPT alternative if you want to ask questions that you may not want to be linked to your account or identity.

• Creator: AnonChatGPT
• Pricing: Free

Try AnonChatGPT

YouChat is your personalized and conversational AI assistant.

It's a ChatGPT clone created by the You.com search engine to converse like humans and provide responses when prompted. The tool can write emails, translate, summarize text, learn language, write code, and everything else a generic chatbot can do.

YouChat was built on top of the GPT-4 model.

• Creator: You.com
• Pricing: Free. YouPro costs $20 per month

Try YouChat

OpenAI Playground

The OpenAI Playground is a web app and ChatGPT alternative that allows you to interact and experiment with GPT4 and other OpenAI models.

The web app works just like ChatGPT, gives you access to the OpenAI API, and also lets you try out advanced technical functions.

You can choose your preferred AI model, set temperature, add a prompt role for the system, set the number of tokens, and much more.

• Creator: OpenAI
• Pricing: Free to use

Try OpenAI Playground

Poe is Quora’s conversational AI platform that allows you to explore and interact with various AI chatbots and models.

The platform's name stands for Platform for Open Exploration and it connects to several generative AI models including ChatGPT, GPT-4, Claude Plus, Sage, Dragonfly, and more.

With Poe, you have a universal messaging app to converse with several AI models brought under one house. The platform is available as an app on the iOS AppStore.

• Creator: Quora
• Pricing: Free. Poe Pro for $19.99 per month

Amazon CodeWhisperer

Amazon CodeWhisperer is Amazon’s entry into the AI chatbot space.

It’s a machine learning-powered code generator that pinpoints errors and recommends code in real time.

While writing coding, the ChatGPT alternative automatically generates suggestions based on your existing code inputs and comments.

This suggestion could be a small one-line comment to a full block of code. Amazon CodeWhisperer is an efficient way for developers to code faster and debug code problems.

• Creator: Amazon
• Pricing: Free for individual use

Try Amazon CodeWhisperer

Copy.ai is an AI writing tool that helps you create headlines, web copy, long essays, and blog articles.

It was built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3 model and generates content in response to prompts through a smooth interface.

Whether you want to write social media descriptions or generate blog ideas, you’ll find Copy.ai useful. Its free version offers limited usage while the paid plan comes with unlimited features, unlimited brand voices, and access to GPT-4 access.

• Creator: Copy.ai
• Pricing: Free plan (below 2,000 words)

Try Copy.ai

Used by mostly academic researchers and students, Elicit is an AI research assistant that’s built on various LLMs such as GPT-3.

The platform will help you speed up your research process and get relevant citations.

The platform allows you to get accurate, precise, and quick access to information from dependable research sources.

You can simply type a query into the AI assistant and the tool will immediately return a summarized version of the highest-rated sources that match your query.

• Creator: Elicit
• Pricing: Free. Paid plan starts from $10 per month

Learnt.ai is an AI assistant that helps education professionals do their work efficiently and save time.

The platform relies on the GPT AI model to help education professionals generate lesson plans, homework tasks, exam questions, and other types of educational content.

It’s a ChatGPT alternative tailored for educational projects of different levels. To use Learnt.ai, choose a tool suited to what you want to do, prompt the AI assistant, and wait for a response.

• Creator: Learnt.ai
• Pricing: Free to use. Paid plan costs $9 - $99 monthly

Try Learnt.ai

Grok is a generative AI chatbot for understanding the universe. xAI, Elon Musk’s owned startup, developed and rolled out the chatbot as a response to the unprecedented rise of ChatGPT.

The AI chatbot relies on its own LLM called Grok-1 , which was partly trained with content available on X (formerly Twitter) along with other data sources.

In March 2024, Grok’s AI model was open-sourced and the chatbot functionality is now available to use as a standalone app and on X (only for all premium X subscribers).

• Creator: xAI
• Pricing: Available for premium X subscribers

Flawlessly.ai

Flawlessly.ai is an easy-to-use, free ChatGPT alternative for fixing spelling, grammar, tone, and punctuation errors fast.

Essentially, the AI tool makes your writing flawless. To try it out, head to the website, paste the content you want to correct in the box provided, choose a writing tone/style (formal, semi-formal, or conversational), and hit the Correct This button. Flawlessly.ai will return a grammatically correct version of your content in a few seconds.

It’s a must-have writing tool for anyone who struggles with the English Language and needs a free AI grammar checker by the side.

• Creator: Flawlessly.ai

Try Flawlessly.ai

Elsa Speaks

Elsa Speaks is an AI-powered language learning, voice recognition, and translation platform.

The web platform assists you with learning how to speak English and translating different languages. Its underlying AI model was trained using voice recordings from people speaking English with different accents.

Elsa Speaks can recognize vocal patterns (even if you’re not a native English speaker), examine user speech, and generate bite-sized custom tasks that you can understand with ease.

It’s the perfect ChatGPT alternative if your primary use case is language learning and translation.

• Creator: Elsa Speaks
• Pricing: Free Trial. Pro Plan starting at $11.99 per month

Try Elsa Speaks

iAsk AI is a free-to-use advanced AI search engine that instantly provides detailed and accurate answers to your queries in a natural language without any data storage.

Built on similar models and technologies to ChatGPT, the AI search engine makes a great alternative to OpenAI’s chatbot.

Simply type a prompt into the box, choose the website source category (Academic, Forum, News, Wiki, etc) that you want to use, set the length of result you want, and the search engine will generate factual results for you.

iAsk AI has been trained exclusively using reliable and authoritative books, news, literature, and website sources so it can provide objective, accurate, and bias-free responses.

• Creator: AI Search Inc

Try iAsk AI

Other ChatGPT Alternatives You Should Know

Depending on your use case, here are some other AI-powered conversational chatbots you should be familiar with:

• SocialBu’s AI Content Generator
• Socratic (by Google)
• HuggingFace
• AdCreative.ai
• LaMDA (Language Model for Dialog Applications)
• Ink for All
• Megatron-Turing Natural Language Generation
• LLaMA by Meta

FAQs on ChatGPT Alternatives

What is the best alternative to chatgpt.

The best alternative to ChatGPT completely depends on your specific needs. However, our recommended general-purpose AI chatbots are Google’s Gemini, Microsoft’s Bing AI, and Monica–our all-in-one AI assistant!

What are some drawbacks of ChatGPT?

Despite its rapid growth in userbase, powerful generative capabilities, and the launch of Custom GPTs, ChatGPT still has certain downsides you may have noticed. Some of these drawbacks include unavailability during peak periods (when using the free version), slow response time, no advanced customization options, limited UI capabilities, and hallucinations.

Final Words

Ready to explore the unique potential and capabilities of these conversational AI chatbots mentioned in this post offer?

Take any of them for a spin, based on your needs!

Subscribe to Monica Blog

10 ChatGPT prompts to AI-maximize your productivity

• ChatGPT is a versatile tool that can be used to help with explanations, ideas, edits, games, recommendations, trip plans, translations, and characters.
• Use specific prompts to get tailored results and improve interactions with AI.
• ChatGPT is capable of simplifying text, brainstorming ideas, and translating multiple languages.

The possibilities that ChatGPT presents us with are almost limitless. This growing AI tool can assist with anything from writing and studying to practicing skills or creating stories. The only limiting factor is your imagination and how well you can prompt it . ChatGPT is getting smarter all the time, but some prompts get more out of it than others.

Talking to an AI like ChatGPT or Gemini , especially for the first time, can feel awkward. You may not know how to properly present what you're asking to get the desired results, since it's more like having a conversation than putting in keywords into a search engine. Let's take a look at some of the best ChatGPT prompts you should try first to see what this AI can do and give you an idea of how to create your own prompts for your specific goals.

I tested ChatGPT Plus against Copilot Pro -- here's how each AI chatbot did

Basic explanations, explain like i'm five.

One of the best uses for ChatGPT is to provide you with a quick and simple answer to any question you have. Instead of having to sort and sift through multiple Google results, which may not even give you what you want, ChatGPT can respond in simple language that you can easily understand. It is also much easier to get the specific details you want rather than the broad explanations that Google tends to provide.

The best way to prompt an explanation of a concept would be something like "Explain (topic) like I am ten years old." If you want to get an even more digestible response, you can ask it to use bullet points or a list format instead of paragraphs.

How to master GPT-4 in ChatGPT: Prompts, tips, and tricks

Brainstorm ideas, get your juices flowing.

If you're ever in a creative rut, ChatGPT can help kickstart your creativity in whatever medium you desire. Whether you're a writer struggling to come up with details for your next plot, a marketer who needs something that will resonate with a specific audience, or a parent who wants to come up with ideas for a child's birthday party, ChatGPT can generate ideas in seconds.

The best prompts for getting ideas are to first ask for ideas in whatever format you're working in, but get specific in terms of your target audience. For example, "Generate ideas for a sci-fi story aimed at 18-30-year-olds focusing on action and romance." This includes the genre, age range, and elements you want included. The more specific you can be, the better your results. From there, you can tweak and adjust what's given as a jumping-off point.

How to use ChatGPT to make AI-generated images and art

Summarize text, break it down.

Sometimes we just don't have the time to read an entire text in the time allotted to us. Whether it's for work, school, or some other obligation, getting a quick synopsis can at least provide you with a working understanding of something until you have the time to fully read whatever it is. However, if it isn't a book, there's a good chance no one has actually gone ahead and summarized the text you have.

Assuming you have it in a format that's easily pastable into ChatGPT, you can just dump the text into the chat box and prompt it to break it down for you. My favorite way to get the essential info is to say, "Summarize the text and give me a bullet point list of the most important information." If you don't like bullet points, you can also just ask it to keep it within a certain number of sentences.

I tried ChatGPT Plus. Here's everything it can do

Write content with style, add some voice.

Everyone has someone, real or fictional, whom they think has an amazing way with words. It could be how they speak or write, but something about their tone and personality just feels impossible to replicate. Trying to imitate another person's style is tough, but ChatGPT can pull from every source to make a very convincing attempt.

If, for example, you wanted to write a blog post about solar panels that sounds more fun and exciting, you could prompt ChatGPT with "Write a blog post about solar panels in the style of Quentin Tarantino." You can choose any famous writer or even fictional characters with a strong voice you admire.

10 ChatGPT extensions to try and what exactly they can do

Edit your work, bring out your best.

When you spend most of your time casually chatting with friends online via text or chat messages, your formal writing skills could start to get a bit rusty. Whether it's an email to a boss or client or a formal report, there are times when you need to be absolutely certain that you're not making any egregious mistakes.

ChatGPT is a fantastic editor. Not only will it clean up any typos and grammatical errors, but it can also help strengthen your sentence structure and offer suggestions on how to change some phrasing to be more professional. Input your text and then ask ChatGPT to "Make my (text) sound more professional and use stronger words. Correct any spelling or grammatical errors as well

I pitted Gemini Advanced against ChatGPT Plus -- here's how each AI did

Play some games.

Why make ChatGPT work all the time? This AI is down to play some games with you if you've got time to kill and no one else to hang out with. As it turns out, you will probably be surprised at the number of games you can play through text alone. ChatGPT is quite clever, so you will have a worthy opponent.

The obvious game you can play with ChatGPT is 20 questions, which it already knows, so you can just say "Let's play 20 questions" to get started. Some other games it knows are tic-tac-toe, guess the ASCII art (Draw me ASCII art, and I will try to guess what it is), hangman, and choose your own adventure games. There are tons more, and you can even make up your own if you're feeling creative.

What you should know about ChatGPT Voice: How it works, what it can do and more

Get recommendations, what to check out next.

The more you get to know your own tastes, the harder it can be to find other media that resonates as strongly as your favorites. Once you've exhausted everything a director, writer, or artist has made, you're in the tough situation of trying to find something new that can give you that same vibe. With ChatGPT, you can get a shortlist of recommendations that should align with what you're after.

Ask ChatGPT to "Recommend me a (movie, TV show, game, etc.) like (example of what you like)." You can leave it at that, or list out the reasons why you liked your example so ChatGPT can be more specific in explaining why its recommendation should appeal to you.

How to delete your data, account and history from ChatGPT

Plan a trip, the perfect itinerary.

Planning a trip is a stressful task. After dealing with getting your flight or driving route planned, you then need to make sure you take advantage of the time you have at your destination. This can be close to impossible if you're going somewhere new. Add in travel companions who are relying on you to organize things, and the pressure builds up fast.

ChatGPT can be your trusty planner to give you a detailed itinerary for any trip you have on the books. Because trips can look so different for everyone, the easiest way to prompt the AI is to start with "You are a travel planner. Please plan a trip for me based on where I'm going, how many people will be with me, and our budget." From there, ChatGPT will prompt you to fill in your individual needs and details to personalize the best trip it can for you.

What is ChatGPT and why should you care?

Translate anything, speak the language.

While on the subject of travel, what if you're adventuring in a country where you don't speak the native language? That would have been a major barrier in the past, but with tools like ChatGPT, you can at least get by without an interpreter or hoping your charade skills are up to par.

All you need to do is ask ChatGPT to translate whatever you want to say into the language of your choice. For example, "Translate 'Hi, my name is Jesse. I'm lost and looking for the train station. Could you point me in the right direction?' into Japanese." This will give you both the translation in Japanese text to show to the person and the answer written out in Roman characters to try and pronounce yourself. You can also translate in reverse if you see text you can't read and ask ChatGPT to translate it into English for you.

How to use Google's Gemini AI from the web or your phone

Talk to your favorite character, the ultimate fan fiction.

Who hasn't wished they could interact with their favorite fictional character? Whether it be someone like Harry Potter, Frodo, Spider-Man, or Goku, we all have a character we long to meet but will never get the chance. ChatGPT can't actually bring them to life for us, but it can speak exactly as they would.

Whenever you want to chat with someone, living, dead, fictional, or otherwise, ChatGPT can play the part. Prompt it to "Pretend to be (character/person of choice) from (name of work/history)." Right away, ChatGPT will introduce itself as that person or character in their tone and respond to anything you say or ask as that character until you prompt it to stop.