ChatGPT is taking the world by storm, and of course the Ballyhoo team had to be one of the first to jump on this new technology. After a few months of using it, we thought it was time to let you know our thoughts on how we are utilising ChatGPT, and the limitations that we’ve encountered so far.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot that allows users to have conversations, get answers to questions and get assistance with an array of problems. You can ask it simple or detailed questions and it will answer.
ChatGPT has been trained on huge quantities of data for deep learning using a large language training model based on websites, articles, forums and social media across the Internet. It has extensive knowledge on a massive number of topics, including world events and discoveries, but only prior to September 2021 (at time of writing).
How We’ve Been Using ChatGPT
We’ve been exploring using ChatGPT for many areas of the business.
We’ve been using the software to give us ideas for website content, as well as ideas for social media posts. We’ve used it to give us ideas for our in-house social media posts. It has served as a great tool for writing out a social media and blog strategy, which we think is useful to business owners and marketers alike. You can read more about AI in content creation here.
Our website developers have been using ChatGPT to quickly create snippets of code that can be used on our sites – utilising how the tool can create code within seconds.
We’ve also been using it to troubleshoot online issues, to quickly get answers rather than spending hours trawling the Internet.
ChatGPT & Ballyhoo Team
As mentioned, the Ballyhoo team have been using ChatGPT for the last few weeks, here’s what they have to say about their experiences with ChatGPT…
Anthony – Website Development & Project Management
“We’ve been really excited by the possibility to improve efficiencies usingChatGPT; as a small but productive team we’re always looking to do more with the resources we have. ChatGPT is not a magic bullet, and our jobs are not under threat (yet!), but there are some clear opportunities to embed the tool into our working day to speed up research, simple tasks, creative thinking and problem solving. But it needs to be used with caution, it’s sometimes far from accurate yet always gives answers with such conviction you can be easily sent down the wrong path entirely. ”
Alison – Website Design
“ChatGPT has been a great addition to my project research and discovery phase, helping to speed up the process and help me gain a deeper understanding of our clients’ industries and niches. In terms of visual design, I don’t see AI replacing illustrators or web designers any time soon – for design that has impact you need that human creative element. Saying that, I am keen to try making Midjourney and DALL-E prompts using ChatGPT and seeing what comes out! ”
Rebecca – Marketing & Content Creation
“I’ve found ChatGPT so helpful for coming up with blog ideas or similar topics to current posts. I’ve also been using the platform to gain a brief insight into topics for client content creation – areas that I may not previously understand. Using this then allows me to go elsewhere to research and create content. Although I’ve trialed having ChatGPT create actual content for me, I’ve found that this was impersonal and had a few errors, so I’ve used it for inspiration instead, and written my own content from that.”
Sam – Marketing & Website Design
“For me, ChatGPT has pretty much replaced Google. It doesn’t always get it right, so I wouldn’t 100% trust what it says without verifying it with another source, but 9 times out of 10 its spot on. I have found it particularly useful for writing bits of Javascript – by asking it to write a function that will achieve the results I’m after, and then tweaking its response to suit my needs – this can save a lot of time compared to personally having to write out all the lines of code required. It also works quite well at proofing code that I have written – if something I have created isn’t working, I can paste it into ChatGPT and it tells me where I’ve gone wrong – usually just pointing out that I’ve missed a semicolon somewhere!”
ChatGPT Limitations
As with everything in life, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows with ChatGPT. The first issue we experienced was that we were finding the platform extremely slow – something you don’t want when the main purpose of using AI is to speed up activities and tasks! Since then, we’ve signed up to the paid version – which seems to have done the trick and is much, much quicker.
As mentioned above, we’ve asked ChatGPT to answer troubleshooting questions – such as how to achieve something with Google Appsheet functions. However, multiple times it has come back with out of date information, that it must have been fed in the past. This means that data from ChatGPT is not always accurate.
It’s also worth a note to say that we do worry about how the rise of ChatGPT and AI could increase plagiarism and be misused. We believe that this should be used as a tool, rather than replacing the human work of content creation.
ChatGPT-4
ChatGPT-4 launched last month and is multimodal – meaning it can interpret text and images, rather than the previous version which could only interpret text. What’s more, you can input and output text in different languages. Currently, this version is only available to Plus paid users.
The Outlook of ChatGPT
Whilst we understand the worry about robots taking over the world, the aim of ChatGPT is not to replace jobs, but to do repetitive tasks in a different, more efficient way than before. We think it’s great for simple tasks and for asking questions, and we truly believe that this is just the start of how utilising AI can make for a more efficient world.
