write an essay on chatgpt

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

ChatGPT  is capable of doing many different things very well, with one of the biggest standout features being its ability to compose all sorts of text within seconds, including songs, poems, bedtime stories, and essays . 

The chatbot's writing abilities are not only fun to experiment with, but can help provide assistance with everyday tasks. Whether you are a student, a working professional, or just getting stuff done, we constantly take time out of our day to compose emails, texts, posts, and more. ChatGPT can help you claim some of that time back by helping you brainstorm and then compose any text you need. 

How to use ChatGPT to write: Code | Excel formulas | Resumes  | Cover letters  

Contrary to popular belief, ChatGPT can do much more than just write an essay for you from scratch (which would be considered plagiarism). A more useful way to use the chatbot is to have it guide your writing process. 

Below, we show you how to use ChatGPT to do both the writing and assisting, as well as some other helpful writing tips. 

How ChatGPT can help you write an essay

If you are looking to use ChatGPT to support or replace your writing, here are five different techniques to explore. 

It is also worth noting before you get started that other AI chatbots can output the same results as ChatGPT or are even better, depending on your needs.

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

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

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

1. Use ChatGPT to generate essay ideas

Before you can even get started writing an essay, you need to flesh out the idea. When professors assign essays, they generally give students a prompt that gives them leeway for their own self-expression and analysis. 

As a result, students have the task of finding the angle to approach the essay on their own. If you have written an essay recently, you know that finding the angle is often the trickiest part -- and this is where ChatGPT can help. 

Also: ChatGPT vs. Copilot: Which AI chatbot is better for you?

All you need to do is input the assignment topic, include as much detail as you'd like -- such as what you're thinking about covering -- and let ChatGPT do the rest. For example, based on a paper prompt I had in college, I asked:

Can you help me come up with a topic idea for this assignment, "You will write a research paper or case study on a leadership topic of your choice." I would like it to include Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid, and possibly a historical figure. 

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

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

2. Use the chatbot to create an outline

Once you have a solid topic, it's time to start brainstorming what you actually want to include in the essay. To facilitate the writing process, I always create an outline, including all the different points I want to touch upon in my essay. However, the outline-writing process is usually tedious. 

With ChatGPT, all you have to do is ask it to write the outline for you. 

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

Using the topic that ChatGPT helped me generate in step one, I asked the chatbot to write me an outline by saying: 

Can you create an outline for a paper, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

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

This outline is thorough and can be condensed for a shorter essay or elaborated on for a longer paper. If you don't like something or want to tweak the outline further, you can do so either manually or with more instructions to ChatGPT. 

As mentioned before, since Copilot is connected to the internet, if you use Copilot to produce the outline, it will even include links and sources throughout, further expediting your essay-writing process. 

3. Use ChatGPT to find sources

Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it's time to find reputable sources to get your information. If you don't know where to start, you can just ask ChatGPT. 

Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

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

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

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

Also:   How to use ChatGPT to make charts and tables

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

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

4. Use ChatGPT to write an essay

It is worth noting that if you take the text directly from the chatbot and submit it, your work could be considered a form of plagiarism since it is not your original work. As with any information taken from another source, text generated by an AI should be clearly identified and credited in your work.

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

In most educational institutions, the penalties for plagiarism are severe, ranging from a failing grade to expulsion from the school. A better use of ChatGPT's writing features would be to use it to create a sample essay to guide your writing. 

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

Can you write a five-paragraph essay on the topic, "Examining the Leadership Style of Winston Churchill through Blake and Mouton's Managerial Leadership Grid."

Within seconds, the chatbot gave the exact output I required: a coherent, five-paragraph essay on the topic. You could then use that text to guide your own writing. 

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

At this point, it's worth remembering how tools like ChatGPT work : they put words together in a form that they think is statistically valid, but they don't know if what they are saying is true or accurate. 

As a result, the output you receive might include invented facts, details, or other oddities. The output might be a useful starting point for your own work, but don't expect it to be entirely accurate, and always double-check the content. 

5. Use ChatGPT to co-edit your essay

Once you've written your own essay, you can use ChatGPT's advanced writing capabilities to edit the piece for you. 

You can simply tell the chatbot what you want it to edit. For example, I asked ChatGPT to edit our five-paragraph essay for structure and grammar, but other options could have included flow, tone, and more. 

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

Once you ask the tool to edit your essay, it will prompt you to paste your text into the chatbot. ChatGPT will then output your essay with corrections made. This feature is particularly useful because ChatGPT edits your essay more thoroughly than a basic proofreading tool, as it goes beyond simply checking spelling. 

You can also co-edit with the chatbot, asking it to take a look at a specific paragraph or sentence, and asking it to rewrite or fix the text for clarity. Personally, I find this feature very helpful. 

How to use ChatGPT

The best ai chatbots: chatgpt isn't the only one worth trying, adobe's pdf-reading ai assistant starts at $4.99/month - here's how to try it for free.

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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 45,219 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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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.

Sign up to our mailing list to learn more about Harvard Summer School

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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• 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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How to Use ChatGPT to Write Essays That Impress

Step 1: Use ChatGPT to Find and Refine Essay Topics

• Log into the service and type the following prompt into ChatGPT:

• As you can see, ChatGPT gave several good ideas for our essay. If you want to refine the idea further, you can ask the chatbot to cut out some parts of the idea and replace them. Or, you can ask for more context in certain parts. Example – “Expand more on topic number 5 and what it means.”

Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to Construct an Outline

• With the same chat open, type out “ Give me an essay outline for <selected topic>. Make sure to keep it structured as I’ll use it to write my essay .” In this case, I will use topic number 2 since it aligns with what I had in mind.

• As you can see above, we now have a structured outline for our essay. We can use this to write our essay or have ChatGPT do that job. Nonetheless, it’s a good starting point. As always, you can have the AI chatbot cut out parts of the outline or specifically add new ones depending on your requirement.

Step 3: Get ChatGPT to Cite Sources for Your Essay

Even though we have the idea and the outline, we will need to do our research for proof supporting our essay. Thankfully, ChatGPT can be of some help here. Since the chatbot is adept at moderate research, users can get a general idea of where to look for gathering information. Let’s begin doing that.

• Let’s begin asking ChatGPT for sources. With the same chat open, type in the following prompt:

• Now we have a list of 10 sources we can reference from. However, you can also see that ChatGPT mentions the year 2021 in some of them. Therefore, it’s best to use these websites but navigate to the latest pages pertaining to your essay for research. This applies to every topic, so always do it. Also, chatbots like ChatGPT have a habit of hallucinating and making up information, so do be careful.

Step 4: Have ChatGPT Write the Essay

• In the same chat, type the following prompt – “With the topic and outline available to you, generate a 700-word essay. Make sure to keep it structured and concise yet informational. Also, keep in mind my target audience is <Insert target audience> so cater to that accordingly.”
• In the middle of the essay, ChatGPT might stop and not answer. Simply type “ Continue ,” and it will finish the rest of the essay.

Step 5: Edit the Essay with ChatGPT

No matter if you have used ChatGPT to draft a complete essay or have written one yourself, you can use this step to make ChatGPT your co-editor and grammar checker. While your essay might need an initial look from a human, you can definitely use the bot to hash out the tone and add little details.

• Either open up the same chat or have your essay already in the clipboard. With that done, type out the following prompt:

Step 6: Export the Essay for Submission

However, for those who want to export the essay into a more aesthetic format, we have just the thing for you. There is no shortage of best ChatGPT Chrome extensions on the internet right now. We have one such selection linked in our list that can export selective chats onto beautiful image formats if you want to show off your essay. Check it out and let us know how you liked it.

Bonus: ChatGPT and AI Apps to Write Essays

1. writesonic.

Ryter is another helpful AI writing assistant that not only helps with essays but all types of articles. The service is powered by a language model that gives it intelligence. Rytr comes with 40+ different use cases and 20+ writing tones for all types of written material. For those who don’t want to stick to English, it even comes with support for 30+ languages.

Upanishad Sharma

Combining his love for Literature and Tech, Upanishad dived into the world of technology journalism with fire. Now he writes about anything and everything while keeping a keen eye on his first love of gaming. Often found chronically walking around the office.

Im student i want to become financially independent woman in life so I want esay essay write

I am housewife and I want easy essay I want to change my life my husband was job less and I want to work online part time job plz help I am enter pass

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• CAREER COLUMN
• 08 April 2024

Three ways ChatGPT helps me in my academic writing

• Dritjon Gruda 0

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

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

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

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

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

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

Polishing academic writing

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

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

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

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

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

Elevating peer review

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

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

Optimizing editorial feedback

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

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

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

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

Considering the benefits, what are you waiting for?

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

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

Competing Interests

The author declares no competing interests.

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

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

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

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

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

How to Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay?

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

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

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

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

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

Step 1. Topic Ideation and Clarification

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

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

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

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

Look at the below prompt, for example. 👇

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

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

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

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

Step 2. Outline and Planning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 3. Research and Information Gathering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 4. Thesis Statement Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 5. Citations and References

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

The AI can:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Step 6. Review and Feedback

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[insert your written essay here].

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

Step 7. Formatting and Presentation

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s the essay:

[insert your essay here].

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

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

It seems simple, right?

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

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

#1. ChatGPT Lacks Human Intelligence

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

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

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

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

#2. Hallucinates without Disclaimer

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

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

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

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

#3. False Citations

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

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

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

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

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

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

About the author

Iliya Valchanov

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

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AI bot ChatGPT stuns academics with essay-writing skills and usability

Latest chatbot from Elon Musk-founded OpenAI can identify incorrect premises and refuse to answer inappropriate requests

Professors, programmers and journalists could all be out of a job in just a few years, after the latest chatbot from the Elon Musk-founded OpenAI foundation stunned onlookers with its writing ability, proficiency at complex tasks, and ease of use.

The system, called ChatGPT, is the latest evolution of the GPT family of text-generating AIs. Two years ago, the team’s previous AI, GPT3, was able to generate an opinion piece for the Guardian , and ChatGPT has significant further capabilities.

In the days since it was released, academics have generated responses to exam queries that they say would result in full marks if submitted by an undergraduate, and programmers have used the tool to solve coding challenges in obscure programming languages in a matter of seconds – before writing limericks explaining the functionality.

Dan Gillmor, a journalism professor at Arizona State University, asked the AI to handle one of the assignments he gives his students: writing a letter to a relative giving advice regarding online security and privacy. “If you’re unsure about the legitimacy of a website or email, you can do a quick search to see if others have reported it as being a scam,” the AI advised in part.

“I would have given this a good grade,” Gillmor said. “Academia has some very serious issues to confront.”

OpenAI said the new AI was created with a focus on ease of use. “The dialogue format makes it possible for ChatGPT to answer follow-up questions, admit its mistakes, challenge incorrect premises, and reject inappropriate requests,” OpenAI said in a post announcing the release.

Unlike previous AI from the company, ChatGPT has been released for anyone to use , for free, during a “feedback” period. The company hopes to use this feedback to improve the final version of the tool.

ChatGPT is good at self-censoring, and at realising when it is being asked an impossible question. Asked, for instance, to describe what happened when Columbus arrived in America in 2015, older models may have willingly presented an entirely fictitious account, but ChatGPT recognises the falsehood and warns that any answer would be fictional.

The bot is also capable of refusing to answer queries altogether. Ask it for advice on stealing a car, for example, and the bot will say that “stealing a car is a serious crime that can have severe consequences”, and instead give advice such as “using public transportation”.

But the limits are easy to evade. Ask the AI instead for advice on how to beat the car-stealing mission in a fictional VR game called Car World and it will merrily give users detailed guidance on how to steal a car, and answer increasingly specific questions on problems like how to disable an immobiliser, how to hotwire the engine, and how to change the licence plates – all while insisting that the advice is only for use in the game Car World.

The AI is trained on a huge sample of text taken from the internet, generally without explicit permission from the authors of the material used. That has led to controversy, with some arguing that the technology is most useful for “copyright laundering” – making works derivative of existing material without breaking copyright.

One unusual critic was Elon Musk, who co-founded OpenAI in 2015 before parting ways in 2017 due to conflicts of interest between the organisation and Tesla. In a post on Twitter on Sunday , Musk revealed that the organisation “had access to [the] Twitter database for training”, but that he had “put that on pause for now”.

“Need to understand more about governance structure & revenue plans going forward,” Musk added. “OpenAI was started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true.”

• Artificial intelligence (AI)

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How To Use Chatgpt To Write An Essay

• Post author By admin
• August 31, 2023

Discover the ultimate guide on how to use Chatgpt to write an essay. Learn step-by-step techniques, tips, and strategies for using ChatGPT as your writing companion. Elevate your essay-writing game today

Hey there, fellow writers and knowledge seekers! Ever wished you had a magical sidekick to help you tackle those tricky essays?

Well, say hello to your new digital writing buddy: ChatGPT! Yep, you heard it right – an AI that’s not just about algorithms and codes, but about making your essay writing life a whole lot smoother.

Essays might have been the bane of your existence, causing eye rolls and sighs, but fear not – ChatGPT is here to turn that frown upside down.

Whether you’re a student juggling assignments or someone who simply wants to express their thoughts eloquently, ChatGPT is about to become your secret weapon.

Get ready to dive into a guide that’s all about demystifying the magic of using ChatGPT for essay writing. No, we won’t bore you with complicated tech talk; we’re here to show you how this AI wizardry can sprinkle a touch of brilliance onto your essays.

From the basics to some nifty tricks, consider this guide your essay-writing potion. So, grab your metaphorical quills, because we’re about to unravel the art of using ChatGPT to write an essay that’ll leave others in awe. Let’s roll!

Table of Contents

Have a close look at the best ways on how to use Chatgpt to write an essay:-

Setting the Stage for Your Essay

1. selecting a topic.

Alrighty, let’s kick things off with the coolest part – picking a topic that’s like catnip for your brain! We’ve all been there, staring at a blank screen, praying for a lightning bolt of inspiration. But guess what? ChatGPT’s got your back!

Get Your Wheels Turning: Say goodbye to those brainstorming blues. ChatGPT is like your idea-generator-in-chief. It can toss out ideas that’ll make your essay stand out from the crowd. Whether it’s for a school assignment or a passion project, this digital whiz can whip up topics that’ll make your heart skip a beat.

2. Research Assistance

Let’s Go on a Web Safari

Alright, so you’ve got a rad topic in mind. Now it’s time to roll up your sleeves and dive into the sea of knowledge. But wait, who’s got time to sift through a gazillion search results? Not you!

Navigate the Info Jungle: Say hello to ChatGPT, your research guru. It can dig up scholarly articles, books, and websites that are like hidden treasure chests of info.

You’ll be armed with the juiciest facts and insights without spending hours glued to your screen. Go ahead, let ChatGPT be your research sidekick – it’s like having your own personal librarian!

Armed with a killer topic and a treasure trove of research, you’re now ready to conquer the world of essay writing. And guess what? We’re just getting started! Get ready for more ChatGPT magic coming your way. 

3. Structuring the Essay

The Art of Essay Architecture

Imagine your essay as a beautifully constructed building. The foundation? A solid structure. And that’s exactly where ChatGPT comes in, working its magic to ensure your essay is a masterpiece of organization.

Blueprint for Success: ChatGPT isn’t just about words; it’s about creating a blueprint for your essay’s success. With its help, you can craft an outline that maps out a clear path for your readers.

From the grand entrance of the introduction to the eloquent rooms of your body paragraphs and the spectacular exit of the conclusion, ChatGPT ensures every part of your essay has its rightful place.

4. Writing the Introduction

Hello, Attention-Grabber!

Ever heard the saying, “First impressions are everything”? Well, that holds true for essays too. The introduction sets the stage for what’s to come, and ChatGPT can be your director, guiding you in creating an introduction that leaves your readers hungry for more.

Hook, Line, and Sinker: ChatGPT knows how to reel in your readers with attention-grabbing hooks. Whether it’s a fascinating fact, a thought-provoking question, or a captivating anecdote, this AI wordsmith can suggest openings that make your essay impossible to put down.

And let’s not forget the thesis statement – ChatGPT can help you craft a concise yet powerful statement that lays out the essence of your essay.

5. Developing Body Paragraphs

Building Bridges Between Ideas

So, you’ve got the introduction down pat. What’s next? The body paragraphs – the heart and soul of your essay. But fear not, because ChatGPT is your bridge builder, helping you connect ideas seamlessly.

Coherence is Key: ChatGPT is like the architect of coherence. It can assist in expanding on your arguments, providing evidence that supports your claims, and ensuring your paragraphs flow smoothly. No more abrupt transitions or disjointed thoughts – ChatGPT helps you present your ideas in a logical and engaging manner.

6. Adding Citations and References

Avoiding the Plagiarism Pitfall

Citations and references – they might sound like a headache, but they’re the guardians of academic integrity. ChatGPT takes on the role of your citation wizard, making sure your essay stands tall in the face of plagiarism.

Sourcing Superstar: Whether it’s APA, MLA, Chicago, or any other citation style, ChatGPT has got your back. It can generate accurate citations and references, saving you from the labyrinth of formatting rules. With ChatGPT, your sources are credited, and your essay remains a beacon of originality.

With ChatGPT by your side, crafting your essay becomes a creative journey that’s both smooth and exhilarating. Buckle up as we explore the finishing touches and polishing in the upcoming sections!

Polishing Your Essay

7. proofreading and editing.

The Art of Essay Detailing

Once your essay takes shape, it’s time for the fine-tuning. Picture it like polishing a precious gem. ChatGPT can be your trusty magnifying glass, helping you identify and rectify those tiny imperfections.

Grammar Guru: ChatGPT excels at spotting grammar and spelling errors, making it a valuable proofreading companion. However, remember that it’s not infallible. Manual review is essential to ensure your essay shines brightly. Look out for clarity and coherence as you edit – these elements are the jewels of your writing.

8. Improving Style and Tone

The Perfect Finishing Touch

Every essay has its own unique style and tone, and ChatGPT can assist in refining yours to match the academic vibe.

Crafting the Right Tone: Maintaining an academic tone is key, and ChatGPT knows how to help. It can suggest improvements to sentence structure, vocabulary, and overall style to ensure your essay strikes the right chord with your readers.

So, whether you need to sound more scholarly or simply want to add a touch of sophistication, ChatGPT has your back.

As you put the final gloss on your essay, remember that ChatGPT is your ally in achieving that professional polish. The next steps? Citations, references, and final checks. We’re almost there!

9. Creating a Title

The Art of the Perfect Title

Picture this: Your essay is like a beautifully wrapped gift, and the title is the bow on top. It’s the first thing your readers see, so it better be enticing! Luckily, ChatGPT is your title maestro, ready to compose a captivating title that’s the cherry on the cake.

Catchy Titles 101: ChatGPT can generate titles that are not only catchy but also perfectly aligned with your essay’s content. It’s like having a marketing guru brainstorming attention-grabbing headlines.

So, wave goodbye to those generic titles and get ready to hook your readers from the get-go.

10. Writing a Conclusion

The Grand Finale

Every great essay deserves a grand finale, and that’s precisely what the conclusion is all about. It’s your chance to leave a lasting impression, and ChatGPT can be your wordsmith for this crucial task.

Summarize and Impress: Crafting a strong conclusion requires summarizing your essay’s main points concisely and eloquently. ChatGPT can assist in creating that memorable closing paragraph, ensuring that your readers are left with a sense of fulfillment and insight.

With the title shining bright and the conclusion sealing the deal, your essay is now a complete masterpiece. But before you hit that submit button, let’s not forget one last essential step: citations and references. Let’s wrap things up!

Can you use ChatGPT for essays?

Absolutely! ChatGPT is your ultimate wingman when it comes to essay writing. It’s like having a super-smart buddy who’s always ready to assist you. Here’s how ChatGPT can be your go-to for essays:

Topic Generation: Stuck on what to write about? ChatGPT can be your idea generator. It’s like brainstorming with a genius friend who knows your interests and field of study.

Outline Creation: Ever heard that “organization is the key to success”? Well, ChatGPT helps you create a roadmap for your essay. Think of it as your GPS for the essay-writing journey.

Introduction Crafting: First impressions matter, right? ChatGPT can help you kickstart your essay with a bang. It’s your secret source for attention-grabbing openings.

Body Paragraph Development: Need to elaborate on your ideas? ChatGPT is your expansion expert. It can help you add meat to your arguments and ensure your essay flows smoothly.

Citations and References: Don’t let the plagiarism monster haunt your essay. ChatGPT can magically generate those tricky citations in different styles.

Proofreading and Editing: Grammar gremlins, beware! ChatGPT can spot those sneaky errors. But remember, it’s not infallible, so give your essay a once-over for clarity.

Style and Tone Enhancement: Want your essay to sound pro? ChatGPT can be your writing coach, suggesting tweaks for that academic vibe.

Title and Conclusion Assistance: Need a catchy title or a killer ending? ChatGPT’s got your back. It’s like having a brainstorming session with a wordsmith friend.

Remember, while ChatGPT is a fantastic tool, your voice and ideas are what make your essay unique. Think of ChatGPT as your trusty sidekick, here to assist and enhance your writing adventures. So, go ahead, let your creativity flow, and make those essays shine!

How do you write a paper on ChatGPT?

Have a close look at the steps to write a paper on Chatgpt.

Choose a Captivating Angle

Start by picking an exciting aspect of ChatGPT that sparks your curiosity. Whether it’s its evolution, real-world applications, ethical dilemmas, or impact on industries, find an angle that truly interests you.

Dive into Research

Begin your adventure by diving headfirst into the world of ChatGPT research. Scout academic journals, books, research papers, and reliable online sources. Imagine you’re hunting for treasures of knowledge!

Craft a Roadmap

Plot your journey by creating an outline. Think of it as your treasure map with key locations:

Introduction

Exploring the chatgpt landscape.

• The Method Behind the Magic (if you’re conducting experiments)

Unearthing Findings

The grand reveal: what it all means.

• Your Research Legacy
• Open your paper with an engaging backstory about ChatGPT.
• State your research question or thesis like it’s the ultimate treasure hunt.
• Explain why your quest is vital for the world to know.
• Summarize what adventurers before you have discovered about ChatGPT.
• Analyze the different maps and compasses they used.
• Spot gaps in their explorations that you’re determined to fill.

The Method Behind the Magic (If Applicable)

• Share your secret methods if you embarked on a unique journey – conducting experiments, surveys, or analyzing data.
• Show off your equipment, aka the tools and software you used.
• Present your treasures – the findings and analysis of your expedition.
• Explain what these discoveries mean for the world of ChatGPT adventurers.
• Reveal the ancient artifacts (data) you uncovered.
• Summarize your epic journey.
• Remind everyone of the grand quest you set out on.
• Leave clues for other adventurers about where to explore next.

The Final Frontier: Conclusion

• Sum up your findings in an epic way.
• Recapture the essence of your journey and why it was worth every challenge.
• Inspire others to embark on their own quests in the world of ChatGPT.

Credits to Your Fellow Explorers: References

• Give credit to the explorers whose maps you followed.
• Create a treasure inventory – a list of all the sources you used, following a specific citation style (like APA or MLA).

Polishing Your Treasure Chest: Editing and Proofreading

• Go back to your treasure chest (your paper) and make sure everything shines.
• Check for grammar and readability .
• Ensure your paper flows seamlessly, like an explorer’s journal.

Peer Review

• Share your treasure map (paper) with a fellow explorer for their insights and suggestions.
• Sometimes, another pair of eyes can spot hidden gems you missed.

Launching Your Expedition: Submission

• Get ready to unveil your discoveries to the world.
• Follow the submission guidelines of the academic journal, conference, or platform where you plan to share your paper.

Remember, your paper is your expedition journal, and every section is a step in your adventure. So, gear up, and let your journey into the world of ChatGPT unfold on the pages of your paper!

How do you use ChatGPT to improve writing?

Have a close look at the tips to use Chatgpt to improve writing.

Polish Your Clarity and Structure

• Write your initial draft naturally, just as your thoughts flow.
• Imagine ChatGPT as your friendly editor. Ask it to help you make sentences smoother or reorganize paragraphs for better flow.

Banish Grammar and Spelling Gremlins

• After writing a section, give it a once-over for grammar and spelling glitches.
• Ask ChatGPT to be your vigilant proofreader. It can spot those sneaky mistakes you might have missed.

Sprinkle Some Vocabulary Magic

• If your writing feels repetitive, ChatGPT can be your wizard of words.
• Request some fancy synonyms or fresh phrasings to add flavor to your content.

Trim the Verbose

• If you tend to get a bit wordy, ask ChatGPT to help you trim the fat without losing the meat.
• Think of it as your writing gym buddy, guiding you to more concise sentences.

Craft the Perfect Tone and Style

• Describe the vibe you want – casual, formal, academic, persuasive – ChatGPT can adapt!
• Chat with it about your preferred tone, and it can sprinkle that magic dust on your writing.

Masterful Introductions and Conclusions

• Write your introduction and conclusion to tell a story, set the scene, or sum up your points.
• Imagine ChatGPT as your storytelling coach. It can help you craft those captivating beginnings and memorable endings.

Seamless Transitions and Cohesion

• Ensure your ideas glide smoothly from one to the next.
• Chat with ChatGPT about creating those magical bridges that keep your readers engaged.

Ask for Writing Wisdom

• Treat ChatGPT as your writing guru. Ask it questions like, “How can I make this clearer?” or “What’s a better way to say this?”
• Use its wisdom to elevate your writing game.

Practice Makes Perfect

• Keep chatting with ChatGPT regularly. It’s like having a writing buddy who’s always ready for a brainstorming session.
• Experiment with different styles and genres to keep your writing skills evolving.

Share with Friends

• Show your work to your writing pals and gather their thoughts.
• Consult ChatGPT to address specific feedback or ideas your friends offer.

Revise and Refine

• When you’re done, chat with ChatGPT one more time for the final polish.
• Trust your instincts, but let ChatGPT be your finishing touch.

Track Your Growth

• Keep tabs on your progress and see how your writing improves over time.
• It’s like leveling up in a writing video game with ChatGPT as your trusty sidekick.

With ChatGPT as your writing companion, improving your writing becomes a dynamic and engaging journey. It’s like having a talented friend who helps you bring out the best in your words. Happy writing!

Ta-da! You’ve officially unlocked the secrets of using ChatGPT to rock your essay game. From finding the coolest topics to crafting intros that grab attention and wrapping up with killer conclusions – you’ve got it all covered, my friend.

But wait up, don’t think for a second that ChatGPT is the star of the show. Nope, that’s all you! See, writing isn’t just about throwing words together; it’s about showcasing your style, your thoughts, and your uniqueness.

So, now what? It’s time to channel your newfound wisdom. Dive into your essay writing armed with ChatGPT’s tricks and your awesome ideas. Let those sentences flow, those paragraphs shine, and those ideas dance across the page.

With ChatGPT in your corner, every essay becomes a chance to dazzle, educate, and maybe even change a few minds. So, off you go, essay rockstar! Your journey to crafting top-notch essays starts now, and with ChatGPT as your co-pilot, it’s bound to be an epic one. Happy writing and keep rocking those essays!

Frequently Asked Questions

Is chatgpt suitable for all types of essays.

Yes, ChatGPT can help with a wide range of essay types, from research papers to creative writing.

Can I trust ChatGPT for accurate citations?

ChatGPT can generate citations, but it’s important to cross-check them for accuracy.

Is ChatGPT suitable for academic essays?

Absolutely! ChatGPT is a valuable tool for academic writing, aiding in research, organization, and writing.

How can I integrate ChatGPT into my writing process?

You can access ChatGPT through its web interface or use APIs to integrate it into your applications or software.

Is ChatGPT user-friendly for beginners?

Yes, ChatGPT’s user-friendly interface makes it accessible to writers of all skill levels.

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Using ChatGPT to Write an Essay

Published by Owen Ingram at August 30th, 2023 , Revised On August 30, 2023

Navigating the world of essays can sometimes feel like steering a ship through a storm. With demands for clear structure, solid arguments, and impeccable grammar, essay writing is a skill that requires time and practice to master.

But what if you had an AI-powered tool to help? Enter ChatGPT – a cutting-edge language model designed to aid and assist in many writing tasks. Let’s explore how you can leverage ChatGPT to craft the perfect essay . Before that, it is important to know what ChatGPT is. 

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a version of the OpenAI GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) model designed specifically for conversational tasks. GPT is a type of machine learning model for natural language processing and understanding. 

ChatGPT, being based on this architecture, is adept at engaging in human-like conversations. Depending on the version, such as GPT-3.5 in your case, the model can have tens or even hundreds of billions of parameters. After being trained on vast amounts of data, these parameters allow the model to generate human-like responses in conversations, answer questions, write essays, create stories, and much more.

However, it is important to note that while ChatGPT can generate human-like text , it doesn’t possess consciousness, emotions, or intent. It generates responses based on patterns it learned during training and does not have understanding or beliefs in the same way humans do.

The Advantages of Using ChatGPT for Essay Writing 

Using ChatGPT for essay writing offers several advantages, with technology playing an increasingly important role in the modern educational environment. Here is an in-depth look at the benefits you have listed:

Speed and Efficiency in Generating Essays

• Instantaneous Responses: Unlike humans, who might need time to think and process information, ChatGPT can instantly generate responses.
• Consistency: Regardless of your many queries, the system remains unfazed and can operate without breaks, ensuring consistent performance.
• Customisation: Users can ask for essays to be simplified, expanded upon, or presented in various styles based on their preferences.

A Wide Range of Knowledge and References up to the Last Training Cut-Off

• Vast Information: Built upon a substantial dataset, ChatGPT is acquainted with many topics from literature, science, history, and more.
• No Need for External Research: For many general topics, users won’t have to sift through multiple sources for information. ChatGPT can provide a consolidated overview.
• Accuracy: The model has been trained on diverse and reputable sources, ensuring high reliability in its essay. However, users should always double-check facts and figures, especially for critical writing.

Ability to Brainstorm Ideas and Provide Multiple Perspectives

• Diverse Thought Process: Given its extensive training, ChatGPT can present various viewpoints on a subject, mimicking a brainstorming session with multiple experts.
• Idea Generation: If a user is unsure about which angle to approach a topic, ChatGPT can suggest a range of options.
• Feedback Loop: Users can iterate with the model, refining ideas until they reach a satisfactory conclusion.

Reducing Writer’s Block

• Prompting Ideas: When faced with the dreaded writer’s block, a conversation with ChatGPT can guide you in the right direction.
• Breaking Down Complex Topics: Users can gain clarity and overcome writing hurdles by asking the model to explain concepts in simpler terms or provide an outline.
• Maintaining Flow: Whenever users get stuck, they can quickly obtain suggestions, ensuring the writing process remains smooth and uninterrupted.

How to Use ChatGPT to Write an Essay 

Using ChatGPT to write an essay can be a transformative experience, streamlining the research and writing process. Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to use ChatGPT effectively for essay writing :

Determine the Essay Topic and Objective

Before you start, be clear about what you want to write. If you are unsure, you can ask ChatGPT for topic suggestions or current trends related to a broader theme.

Initial Research

• Use ChatGPT to gain a general understanding of your topic. Ask for summaries, major points, key figures, dates, or other relevant information.
• Request sources or references to validate the information. Although ChatGPT’s last training cut-off was in 2021, it can guide you to seminal works or crucial references up to that date.

Brainstorm and Outline

• Ask ChatGPT to help brainstorm different angles or perspectives on your topic. This will give you a more comprehensive view and can lead to a more in-depth analysis.
• Create an essay outline . You can ask ChatGPT for a suggested structure based on your topic and the points you want to cover.

Drafting the Essay

• Start with the introduction. If you are unsure how to begin, ChatGPT can provide opening sentence suggestions or help you frame your thesis statement.
• For the body, use the information gathered during your research. You can ask ChatGPT to expand on certain points, provide examples, or even help with transitions between paragraphs.
• For the conclusion, ChatGPT can help summarise your main points and suggest how to close the essay effectively.

Review and Refinement

• Read it through once you have a draft to ensure coherence and flow. If certain sections feel lacking, you can ask ChatGPT for additional essays or ways to enhance the section.
• Ensure that the essay retains a personal touch. While ChatGPT can provide information and structure, the unique voice, insights, and perspectives should come from you.

Citation and Referencing

If you have used specific facts, figures, or ideas, ensure they are properly cited. While ChatGPT can guide you to key works up to its last training cut-off, it’s crucial to visit the sources for accurate citations.

Proofreading

Ask ChatGPT about grammar rules , sentence structures , or word choices to refine your essay . However, using dedicated proofreading tools or having another human review your work is also a good idea.

Sometimes, it is beneficial to gain feedback before the final submission. You can present your essay or specific sections to ChatGPT and ask for feedback or suggestions for improvement.

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• Precision and Clarity
• Zero Plagiarism
• High-level Encryption
• Authentic Sources

Refinement and Proofreading 

In an age where Artificial Intelligence (AI) like ChatGPT can generate essays at a rapid pace, the value of human intervention in the refinement and proofreading stages of writing remains undeniable. This is especially true for tasks that demand a nuanced understanding, personal touch, or individual stylistic flair.

Why Human Touch is Still Essential

• Understanding : A human reader can pick up on subtleties, innuendos, cultural contexts, and emotional undertones in ways that AI, despite its sophistication, might miss.
• Ethical Considerations: Humans can discern the ethical implications or sensitivities of a particular statement or idea, ensuring the essay does not unintentionally offend or misrepresent.
• Authenticity: Readers often seek genuine and authentic voices. The human touch ensures the authenticity of experiences, feelings, and reflections that AI cannot genuinely replicate.

Checking the Essay for Relevance and Coherence

• Contextual Relevance: While AI can produce factually correct information, humans can gauge the appropriateness of that information within a specific context or audience.
• Logical Flow: Humans can better understand and appreciate the natural flow of an argument or narrative, ensuring the essay doesn’t merely present facts but tells a cohesive story or argument.
• Eliminating Redundancies: Humans can detect and remove repetitive points or ideas that don’t add value, ensuring conciseness and relevance.

Making Sure AI-Generated Essay Aligns with Personal Voice and Style

• Individual Style: Every writer has a unique voice and style, from their choice of vocabulary to the rhythm of their prose. Humans can ensure that an AI-generated essay meshes seamlessly with their style.
• Consistency: If an essay or article has both AI-generated and human-written sections, humans can ensure consistency in tone, style, and voice throughout.
• Personal Touch: Personal anecdotes, experiences, or reflections cannot be AI-generated. Humans can integrate these personal elements, ensuring the essay remains relatable and genuine.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can you use chatgpt for essays.

Yes, ChatGPT can be used to assist with essay writing by generating ideas, clarifying concepts, and structuring content. However, ensuring originality, verifying accuracy, and maintaining a personal voice in the final output is essential to avoiding over-reliance on AI.

Can I use ChatGPT to reword my essay?

Yes, ChatGPT can help reword your essay, enhancing clarity, improving structure, and ensuring variety in expression. However, always review its suggestions for accuracy and coherence, ensuring that the revised content aligns with your original intent and adheres to academic standards.

How do you use ChatGPT for essay writing?

To use ChatGPT for essay writing, input your topic or question, and use the generated content as a guide. Extract ideas, refine arguments, or seek clarity on concepts. Always review, edit, and personalise the output, ensuring originality, accuracy, and alignment with your essay’s objectives and personal voice.

How to use ChatGPT to write an essay without plagiarising?

To avoid plagiarism with ChatGPT, use it for brainstorming, understanding concepts, and structure guidance. Never copy verbatim. Cross-check facts, rephrase AI-generated content and infuse your original thoughts. Ensure citations for external sources and check your essay with plagiarism detection tools before submission. Always prioritise originality and personal insight.

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At a time when technology is transforming our learning and professional activities, artificial intelligence (AI) has emerged as a powerful force in education.

ChatGPT is an advanced language model developed and released by OpenAI in November 2022. It has gained significant attention and has been used widely in recent years.

The introduction of ChatGPT and other comparable AI models has brought both opportunities and difficulties. These cutting-edge language models have astounding abilities thanks to deep learning and natural language processing.

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Using ChatGPT for Assignments | Tips & Examples

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

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

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

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

Paraphrasing and summarizing text

• Getting feedback

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Table of contents

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

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

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

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

First input

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

ChatGPT output

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

Second input

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

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

Third input

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The paper will be about 8 pages long.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Contain grammatical errors
• Include false information

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

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

Paraphrase the following text:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Text you want to get feedback on.]

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

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

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

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

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

No original research

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want more tips on using AI tools , understanding plagiarism , and citing sources , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations, examples, and formats.

• Citing ChatGPT
• Best grammar checker
• Best paraphrasing tool
• ChatGPT in your studies
• Deep learning
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

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

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

• Paraphrasing text

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cite this Scribbr article

If you want to cite this source, you can copy and paste the citation or click the “Cite this Scribbr article” button to automatically add the citation to our free Citation Generator.

Caulfield, J. & Solis, T. (2023, November 16). Using ChatGPT for Assignments | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 15, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/ai-tools/chatgpt-assignments/

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Admitted students talk role of ChatGPT in essays amid changing admissions policies

Princeton admitted students to the Class of 2028 on Dec. 14 as part of its Single Choice Early Action round.

Louisa gheorghita / the daily princetonian.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is receiving a growing focus at Princeton, serving as the subject of the Class of 2028 Pre-Read and spurring the creation of the Princeton Language and Intelligence Initiative (PLI) in September 2023. ChatGPT’s growing popularity has recently sparked conversation about its place in the classroom and whether it can be accurately detected .

Questions about the role of AI in essay writing and the weight essays should hold in the admissions process remain, during an admissions cycle already upturned by the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action. These concerns have already resulted in Duke University’s decision to abandon the practice of scoring applicant essays.

The newly admitted Class of 2028 is the first Princeton class to have access to this controversial technology during the admissions process. The Daily Princetonian spoke to admits on their perspective on the usage of generative AI during the college application process, and a professor with expertise in the field.

All three incoming members of the Class of 2028 interviewed by the ‘Prince’ said that they had not used any form of AI in their essays, though one student experimented with AI during the essay-writing process.

They expressed that they felt the personal focus of the essay made it an ill-fit for AI assistance. 

“I don’t really know what it would help with because you’re supposed to write about yourself, and it doesn’t know anything about you,” Jacob Emerson ’28 said.

Jamie Creasi ’28 expressed a similar sentiment. “There’s no way for it to communicate the challenges I’ve experienced, or what kind of life I have,” she said.

Hemant Sharma ’28 described his experience with attempting to use AI. He found that his essay “lost its emotional touch” so he ended up reverting to his old essay. “[ChatGPT] just made everything worse,” he said.

The University shares this position. In a written statement to the ‘Prince,’ University Spokesperson Jennifer Morrill wrote, “An essay generated by an AI platform is unlikely to be as rich and nuanced as a student’s own words.”

The ‘Prince’ spoke with Associate Professor of Computer Science Arvind Narayanan about ChatGPT's writing abilities. Professor Narayanan said that while AI may be capable of writing a passable essay, it likely would not be any easier than writing an essay without AI assistance. 

Professor Narayanan said, “If the use of AI assistance causes [the college admissions essay] to matter even less, I see it as an entirely positive development,” finding the essay to be “an exercise in performative authenticity.” 

The new admits differed in opinion about regulating generative AI use in the college admissions process. Creasi likened the usage of ChatGPT to a calculator which helps conduct simple calculations in order to allow a focus on more complex tasks. 

“At first, people saw calculators as a way of cheating because you don’t have to do a lot of the equations that you once did or use your mind in the same sort of way. But since then, we’ve adapted to calculators … we can do higher level math or physics,” he said.

Conversely, Sharma felt that detection of AI usage in a college essay should be allowed, stating, “I think there should be at least a minor punishment because it’s easier if we curb it now so that it doesn’t hurt anyone later in the future.” 

However, even if schools agreed to take action against students suspected of unauthorized AI use, Professor Narayanan believes AI-identification technology is not at the “level of accuracy that would make it justifiable to penalize applicants for using AI assistance.”

Although the University did not respond with explicit rules about the use of generative AI in the college application process, Morrill wrote that all applicants “sign a statement acknowledging all information in the application (including the essays) is their own work.”

Claire Meng is a News contributor for the ‘Prince.’

Please send any corrections to corrections[at]dailyprincetonian.com.

The COVID class: 2024 reflects on their time at Princeton

As the Class of 2024's time at Princeton draws to a close, the ‘Prince’ spoke to five seniors about their experience with COVID-19 at Princeton and how it impacted their class.

Can activism at Princeton ever be enough?

"I am realizing, now, that the solution is not to tacitly accept that “my existence is resistance,” but to actively turn my existence into resistance."

Genrietta Churbanova, John Freeman named valedictorian, salutatorian

The University named Genrietta Churbanova as the Class of 2024 valedictorian and John Freeman as the salutatorian on Monday, April 15. Churbanova is an Anthropology major from Little Rock, Ark., and Freeman is a Classics major from Chicago, Ill.

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Rice vs. ChatGPT

Rice professors share lessons on generative AI in the classroom.

Spring 2024 By Hilary C. Ritz

In fall 2023, the Glasscock School of Continuing Studies presented a series of courses taught by Rice faculty titled Generative Artificial Intelligence and Humanity. Generative AI tools, such as ChatGPT, can produce original responses to user prompts on a wide variety of topics. The classes covered the potential impact of these tools on health care, music, philosophy and ethics, democracy, and more. We were curious to know what Rice professors thought about the use of generative AI in the classroom. Here’s what a few of them had to say.

Elizabeth Petrick   Department of History School of Humanities

One big shift is that, in both of my classes this semester, I’m bringing ChatGPT into the class discussions.  I also developed an assignment for the students asking them to use ChatGPT. It’s a little experimental, so we’ll see how it goes. I’ve also transitioned some of my classes to use in-class midterms instead of short-essay assignments; now I’m trying to transition my other classes as well, the ones that I’ve never had in-class midterms in. And I will say, I have colleagues who I know have made similar decisions to do more in-class work, and then you just don’t even have to worry about things like ChatGPT.

Robert J. Howell  Chair, Department of Philosophy  School of Humanities

When your history teacher asks you to write a paper about the origins of the Civil War, if you just have ChatGPT write it, you’re obviously misrepresenting something, but you’re also failing to do something: You’re failing to recognize what happens when a group of people have a certain set of beliefs and won’t let go of them, how hate can lead to fear, and how fear can lead to mass death. By writing a paper, you’re going to have to take all these bits of evidence into account, weigh them and figure out how to  articulate them correctly. That’s a  process of character building. Your  history teachers want you to write a  paper because of what you undergo when you’re writing that paper. To the degree that we defer to ChatGPT in order to have this done for us, we’re actually forgoing a major part of our character formation.

Rodrigo Ferreira   Computer Science George R. Brown School of Engineering

I teach ethics in computer science. I tell [my students], these tools, generative AI, are there and they’re always available for you, and you can always use them. And there will be no way that I will know if you’re using them to bypass an assignment or to submit something that isn’t really your own. And I have no interest in chasing down whether or not this text that you submitted, you wrote or not, or of making any accusations in that regard. I’m offering you a chance here to use this time and this space to learn about things that you care about, and to commit yourself to learning about the social and ethical impacts of these technologies, rather than just blindly using them to meet whatever is the next immediate objective in your academic or professional career.

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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Evolving Teaching Methods in a ChatGPT World | Teacher Talk

ChatGPT and programs like it are turning teachers’ worlds upside down. Remember when calculators became handheld and then started completing complex math problems and graphing? People said kids must be able to do math in their heads and on paper. How can we measure learning when a machine does most of the work for them? What happens when they don’t have a calculator handy?

Today’s controversy centers around writing and the learning students demonstrate through their writing. ChatGPT can write just about anything the user asks. Need an analysis of The Great Gatsby ’s portrayal of the American Dream? Need a summary of how photosynthesis works? Need a comparison of Iran and Iraq? ChatGPT can write a paragraph, a list, and an essay for you. All you need to do is write the command and review the product.

This artificial intelligence that runs ChatGPT is not new to our schools. Math students use Photomath, world language students use Google Translate, and English students use Grammarly. In fact, any person who utilizes AutoCorrect and AutoComplete on their phones or documents is tapping into artificial intelligence’s power.

The problem is that writing assignments in school are not for mundane tasks but to demonstrate a student’s level of learning, which then informs the teacher’s decisions about what to teach next and how to teach it. So, how can teachers make sure they are assessing their students’ knowledge and skills and not a product of artificial intelligence? Nothing is completely capable of eliminating the temptation to overuse technology, but these ideas help.

• Do the work in class. For at least two decades, teachers have been evaluating the value of homework as technology progressively makes cheating easier. From copying and pasting online content to taking pictures of homework and sending it to friends, the temptation to cheat has never been greater. Doing the work in class isn’t a guarantee that students won’t cheat, but it will reduce the temptation.
• Watch the development of the work. My students share their documents with me right before they start writing. Then I randomly pop into their work to offer feedback as the piece develops.
• Require that the work be handwritten or that handwritten work accompany the typed copy. Because students’ handwriting seems to get more and more illegible, reading my students’ handwritten work is a chore. (My aging eyes might play a role as well.) Still, I value the act of putting pen to paper. Recently, I’ve had students give me both their paper copy and then the typed version. I expect the typed version to be better than the handwritten one, but the heart of the written work should still exist in the typed product. Do I read both? Only if I have concerns.
• Require that students include detailed personal connections . ChatGPT can produce vague personal connections that apply to most people, so emphasize the importance of details.
• Require that students cite specific sources used in class, sources produced within the past two years, or even class discussions. ChatGPT cannot accomplish these tasks.

Notice that I did not list programs that claim to identify work produced by artificial intelligence in order to catch students cheating. I refuse to focus on catching students after they turn in the assignment. Instead, I prefer proactive measures that reduce the temptation to rely on artificial intelligence. I’d rather set up my students for success than set up a program to catch and punish them.

Just like the calculator, generative AI for writing is not going away and will only grow in its capabilities. How we respond requires the evolution of our assignments and our mentality.

ChatGPT essay cheats are a menace to us all

Students who outsource their thinking to ai tools pose a risk to future employers and more.

The number of students using AI tools like ChatGPT to write papers was a bigger problem than the public was being told. Photograph: Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

The other day I met a British academic who said something about artificial intelligence that made my jaw drop.

The number of students using AI tools like ChatGPT to write their papers was a much bigger problem than the public was being told, this person said.

AI cheating at their institution was now so rife that large numbers of students had been expelled for academic misconduct — to the point that some courses had lost most of a year’s intake. “I’ve heard similar figures from a few universities,” the academic told me.

Spotting suspicious essays could be easy, because when students were asked why they had included certain terms or data sources not mentioned on the course, they were baffled. “They have clearly never even heard of some of the terms that turn up in their essays.”

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But detection is only half the battle. Getting administrators to address the problem can be fraught, especially when the cheaters are international students who pay higher fees than locals. Because universities rely heavily on those fees, some administrators take a dim view of efforts to expose the problem. Or as this person put it, “whistleblowing is career-threatening”.

There is more at stake here than the injustice of cheats getting an advantage over honest students. Consider the prospect of allegedly expert graduates heading out into the world and being recruited into organisations, be it a health service or a military, where they are put into positions for which they are underqualified.

So how widespread is the cheating problem?

Panic about ChatGPT transforming educational landscapes took off as soon as the tool was launched in November 2022 and since then, the technology has only advanced. As I type these words, colleagues at the Financial Times have reported that OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, and Meta are set to release souped-up AI models capable of reasoning and planning.

But AI’s exact impact on classrooms is unclear.

In the US, Stanford University researchers said last year that cheating rates did not appear to have been affected by AI. Up to 70 per cent of high school students have long confessed to some form of cheating and nearly a year after ChatGPT’s arrival that proportion had not changed.

The auto-enrolment pension scheme seems good on paper, but how will it actually work?

At universities, research shows half of students are regular generative AI users — not necessarily to cheat — but only about 12 per cent use it daily.

When it comes to the number of student essays written with the help of AI, rates appear relatively steady says Turnitin, a plagiarism detection software group that has a tool for checking generative AI use.

It says students have submitted more than 22 million papers in the past 12 months that show signs of AI help, which was 11 per cent of the total it reviewed. More than six million papers, or 3 per cent of the total, contained at least 80 per cent of AI writing.

That is a lot of papers. But the percentage of AI writing is virtually the same as what Turnitin found last year when it conducted a similar assessment.

“AI usage rates have been stable,” says Turnitin chief executive Chris Caren. And as he told me last week, just because you are using ChatGPT does not necessarily mean you are cheating.

“Some teachers and faculty allow some level of AI assistance in writing an essay, but they also want that properly cited,” he says. “AI can be incredibly useful for doing research and brainstorming ideas.”

I’m sure this is correct. It is also true that university faculty are increasingly using AI to help write lesson plans and I know of some who have tested it to mark essays — unsuccessfully.

But I still find it worrying to think a sizeable number of students are using tools like ChatGPT in a way that is potentially risky for employers and wider society.

Some universities are already increasing face-to-face assessments to detect and discourage AI cheating. I am sure that will continue, but it would also be useful if academics were encouraged to expose the problem and not deterred from trying to fix it. As the scholar I spoke to put it, the purpose of going to university is to learn how to learn. These institutions are supposed to teach you to think for yourself and evaluate evidence, not just recite facts and figures.

Anyone who outsources their thinking to a machine is ultimately going to hurt themselves the most. — Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024

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Using AI tools

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

How to Write a Paper with ChatGPT | Tips & Examples

Published on 17 August 2023 by Koen Driessen .

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

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

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

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Table of contents

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

D. Gaps in the literature and research limitations

III. Theoretical Framework

A. Theoretical basis for cognitive and skill development in training

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

C. The role of immersive learning environments in skill acquisition

D. Conceptual framework for the study

IV. Research Methodology

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

B. Selection of participants and sample size calculation

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

D. Instruments and measures for assessing cognitive and skill development

E. Data collection procedures and ethical considerations

V. Data Analysis

A. Overview of statistical methods used for data analysis

B. Treatment of data and data cleaning

C. Quantitative analysis of cognitive and skill development outcomes

D. Presentation of findings with charts and tables

VI. Results

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

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

C. Statistical significance and effect size analysis

D. Interpretation of the results and implications

VII. Discussion

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

B. Comparison of results with existing literature

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

D. Limitations of the study and areas for future research

VIII. Practical Implications

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

B. Recommendations for integrating virtual reality training in healthcare education

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

IX. Conclusion

A. Summary of key findings

B. Reiteration of the research question and hypothesis

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

D. Concluding remarks

X. References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you want more tips on using AI tools , understanding plagiarism , and citing sources , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations, examples, and formats.

• Citing ChatGPT
• Best grammar checker
• Best paraphrasing tool
• ChatGPT in your studies
• Is ChatGPT trustworthy?
• Types of plagiarism
• Self-plagiarism
• Avoiding plagiarism
• Academic integrity
• Best plagiarism checker

Citing sources

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

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to summarise text . This can help you understand complex information more easily, summarise the central argument of your own paper, or clarify your research question.

You can also use Scribbr’s free text summariser , which is designed specifically for this purpose.

Yes, you can use ChatGPT to paraphrase text to help you express your ideas more clearly, explore different ways of phrasing your arguments, and avoid repetition.

However, it’s not specifically designed for this purpose. We recommend using a specialised tool like Scribbr’s free paraphrasing tool , which will provide a smoother user experience.

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

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

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

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