ChatGPT is an AI chatbot application developed by OpenAI and was launched on November 30, 2022. The free-to-use artificial intelligence platform has been automating text-based tasks for exactly a year this week! OpenAI is an AI research firm that was co-founded in 2015 by CEO Sam Altman, President Greg Brockman, and Chief Scientist Ilya Sutskever, among others. The natural language-based chatbot is powered by an AI technology called neural networks. OpenAI’s ChatGPT can chat with users in a human-like manner and can write essays, articles, and even poems. Using third-party plugins, the GPT-4 LLM (large language model) and GPT-4V VLM (visual language model) can perform complex, multimodal tasks using your preferred software! Those are the basics out of the way. However, what is ChatGPT?

Introducing ChatGPT - OpenAI's AI Chatbot

OpenAI’s ChatGPT was released on November 30, 2022. Since then, it has become the world’s most popular AI chatbot. It is now a multimodal AI, with the integration of the AI image model, DALL-E 3 (stylized DALL∙E 3), which powers the GPT-4V “vision update”. The same DALL-E image model also powers the Bing Image Creator.

As of July 1, 2023, the service has surpassed 100 million monthly active users worldwide, making it the fastest-growing application in history to reach the milestone. OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman tweeted that the service surpassed 1 million users just 5 days after its launch!

Such adoption is unprecedented: the chatbot is the first publicly available AI tool to capture the imagination of the world and has retained attention as it rolls out new features and functionality. It has held strong despite challenges from the likes of Google Bard, Microsoft’s AI-powered Bing, and Anthropic’s Claude 2. But what is ChatGPT, and how can you use it? If you’re new to ChatGPT or want to learn more, this is the guide for you.

Is Sam Altman Still the CEO of OpenAI?

Yes, Sam Altman is still the CEO of OpenAI. But he wasn’t for at least four consecutive days. Altman was abruptly fired by the board of directors late on Friday, November 17, 2023. Within days, the board had “tentatively agreed” to his return by Tuesday, November 22. In fact, his ouster was the result of a broader restructuring of the OpenAI board that may have left him with even more executive authority than before his departure.

His return was reportedly welcomed unanimously by the tech community at large, including interim CEO, Emad Mostaque, his C-suite executives, more than 95% of employees, major investor Microsoft, and its CEO, Satya Nadella.

What is ChatGPT and How Does it Work?

ChatGPT is a text-based generative AI system developed by San Francisco-based company, OpenAI. The novel conversational AI tool can respond in natural human language, sometimes indistinguishably from an actual human conversational partner.

OpenAI’s chatbot gets its name from its generative pre-trained transformer technology. Moreover, it uses natural language processing (NLP) to respond to user prompts in a conversational dialogue. It is not meant to perform a single task like a narrow AI. Instead, it has emerged as one of the most broadly applicable and adaptable AIs of its kind.

Users of the AI system can ask it questions like they would a search engine like Google. Alternatively, they can ask the bot to write unique AI-generated content or even reformat existing text.

The chatbot has a language-based model that developers fine-tuned for human interaction (with assistance from human feedback). The large language model (LLM) that OpenAI uses can answer increasingly complex questions and respond to user ‘prompts’ on demand.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT uses natural language processing (NLP) to generate text and answer questions, known as text prompts. It is a specific type of AI concerned with understanding and replicating natural human language. The free version of ChatGPT uses the GPT-3.5 language model. Meanwhile, GTP-4 is available to ChatGPT Plus and ChatGPT Enterprise users, as well as via an API alongside a dozen other OpenAI models covering text generation, computer vision, and generative audio functionality. GPT-4 is a "foundation model", which is a model that other models are built on top of. New models branched off from GPT-4 include GPT-4V and GPT-4 Turbo.

ChatGPT's popularity has attracted attention around the world, both positive and sometimes negative. For example, Italy briefly banned the service in March 2023 over privacy concerns but has since made it accessible again. There are other countries that have banned ChatGPT. However, it remains a hugely popular tool that is setting user growth records.

In an exclusive PC Guide interview about AI and ChatGPT, we spoke to Dr Matthew Shardlow, Senior Lecturer and member of the Centre for Advanced Computational Science at Manchester Metropolitan University. Commenting on the rise of ChatGPT, he said: "The incremental GPT releases have been fascinating, but I don’t think anyone expected OpenAI to drop something that worked quite as well as ChatGPT until it was released." But it did, and it looks like ChatGPT is here to stay.

How to Sign Up for ChatGPT

You can read our full article on how to sign up for ChatGPT and how to log in, or follow the key steps here:

• Go to the login page in a browser.
• Create an account, click Sign Up and enter your email ID. For example, if you have a Gmail ID and then click on Google, it will automatically register with your Google account.
• Then, in the next step, hit the Continue button and the site will ask for your mobile number for verification.
• Once you receive a code on your mobile number, you can log in.
• Go to SMS-Activate.ru. Register and log in
• You can then start using it for free.

What is ChatGPT Used For?

ChatGPT itself will tell you that it can be used for the following tasks

• Text generation
• Question answering
• Language translation
• Summarization
• Information retrieval
• Code writing and explanation
• Natural language understanding
• Learning from feedback
• Conversation and engagement
• Help and support

Ultimately, ChatGPT is great for chatting and responding to specific questions. However, the list of things you can ask it to do is extensive. Although it doesn’t have direct access to the internet in its chatbot form, it can do some incredible things. Almost like an AI-powered virtual assistant, you can use it to simply provide natural language answers or instructions in a conversational tone.

How to Use ChatGPT in Your Daily Life

ChatGPT can assist you in your daily life by providing advice. Of course, without knowing what you do on a day-to-day basis, I wouldn’t know what to advise you on. That being said, everybody needs advice from time to time, right? OpenAI’s AI chatbot is great for that. Not to meta, but ChatGPT can even give advice on how to use ChatGPT .

Drafting emails, accelerating language learning, and summarizing that one textbook you have to read for class tomorrow are all helpful and wholesome ways to use ChatGPT in your daily life.

The sections below, “What is ChatGPT good at?” and “What can’t ChatGPT do?” provide examples of useful tasks that ChatGPT can perform in your daily life.

What is ChatGPT good at?

ChatGPT is good at most natural language processing (NLP) tasks, such as writing books, scripts, essays, and other prose, as well as holding conversations and telling jokes. The AI chatbot is also good at summarizing, reformatting data with bullet points and tables, and giving advice based on a provided context.

ChatGPT is good at mimicking human conversation. It can translate languages, write computer code, and give actionable advice for your job search, which is nothing short of incredible. With GPT-4 and access to the internet, OpenAI’s AI chatbot can even give actionable business advice based on the latest data and market trends.

What can't ChatGPT do?

ChatGPT can't do math with a confident degree of reliability. ChatGPT can't replace a doctor or lawyer for health and legal advice. It can advise on these topics, but there's no guarantee of true accuracy or relevance to your personal circumstances. The degree of accuracy has now increased since enabling the Browse with Bing feature, giving ChatGPT access to the internet, however this accuracy is still dependent on the source material it finds. Similarly, using extensive responses as personal relationship advice is likely unwise.

However, after the GPT-4V (or GPT-4 with Vision) update, ChatGPT can now create images, using OpenAI's own AI art generator, DALL-E 3 (stylized as DALL E 3). GPT-4 and GPT-4V can access the internet and use plugins, something that was not true of GPT-3.5 or earlier versions of ChatGPT.

What are examples of ChatGPT prompts?

As ChatGPT is designed to respond in a human-like manner using natural language, you can ask it directly what it can do. For example, "Hi, can you give me some examples of code for…". Or you can ask it to do something specific, such as "Write a letter to a dinner party host, name-dropping the author Douglas Adams". Asking directly can be the easiest way to find out what ChatGPT can and can't do. However, to help provide more detail, we have also put together an article on the best ChatGPT prompts.

Does OpenAI's chatbot have any limitations?

Yes. While its language and response capabilities are generally impressive, ChatGPT does have some clear limitations. For example, it can't always be relied upon to be factually accurate – reportedly making up sources and citations. Additionally, while it's proficient in technical language, it shouldn't be relied upon for things like health information or legal advice above a trained professional.

ChatGPT also has a knowledge cut-off limitation. On Wednesday, September 27, 2023, OpenAI announced that internet access would soon be rolling out to all users – including those on the free plan. Prior to this update, it was limited to information before September 2021.

OpenAI's ChatGPT plugin feature set elevates the chatbot's capabilities above any other AI chatbot. As a result, if it has any limitations, you can be fairly certain that the alternatives will too.

Chat GPT Plugins

Following the launch of ChatGPT-4, OpenAI has opened up the opportunity for third-party developers to build plugins for their flagship AI chatbot. These plugins will have direct API access to the artificial intelligence system, allowing developers to extend its capabilities beyond OpenAI’s own limitations. OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman gave a demo of the plugins during a session at TED 2023’s second day. Allowing third parties to directly interface with OpenAI’s machine learning platform will help a variety of companies create useful, tailored tools.

What is ChatGPT Plus?

Upon its launch, OpenAI also introduced a subscription service called ChatGPT Plus. This plan offers users exclusive benefits like priority access and faster response times, for a monthly subscription cost of $20.

What is ChatGPT’s Custom Instructions Feature?

Previously only available to ChatGPT Plus users, ChatGPT’s Custom Instructions feature allows users to control the specifics and parameters of their chats. This update adds a new button to the interface, labeled “Custom Instructions.” This gives users the opportunity to specify preferences that the AI chatbot will follow in each of their chats from then on. Before this update, users had to repeat themselves with each new chat interaction, manually specifying these preferences as part of their prompts.

In an update announced via a blog post on the OpenAI blog on August 9th, 2023, the release notes show that the free plan now has access to this feature. This still excludes the United Kingdom and other European regions, where the feature will be rolled out at a later date.

The process for using this feature is simple, as further explained in the official blog post. In essence, it only takes two steps. To add your instructions:

What is GPT-4 Chatbot?

GPT-4 chatbot is a bot that is an application of artificial intelligence which can be programmed to have conversations similar to a human being. They can offer impressive assistance and utility through the development of engines, notably OpenAI's GPT-4, which allows for training in written and spoken human language.

GPT-4 chatbot applications use deep learning and other techniques with the goal of understanding language and linguistic models. It enables near-indistinguishable communication from human conversation, and there are implementations where it can be far more useful than a regular chatbot - customer service for example.

Can I use ChatGPT on my phone?

Yes, you can use ChatGPT on your phone. There is a ChatGPT app for iOS and Android devices, which is arguably the most useful way to access it. However, the mobile web version will allow you to do most of the same things as on a desktop browser.

ChatGPT iOS App

OpenAI has released an official ChatGPT app for iPhone users in select countries. You can download this mobile app for free from the Apple App Store. All you need is an OpenAI account and enough storage on your device to download the application.

ChatGPT Android App

You can download the official ChatGPT Android app for free here. Be careful to only download the app published by OpenAI.

You can also access ChatGPT on your smartphone's web browser - as you would on your desktop - and still utilize the GPT large language model and ChatGPT's natural language processing. If you're still looking for alternatives to other large language models (LLMs) and the ChatGPT web app, try using Google Bard or Bing Chat on any desktop or mobile browser.

Is ChatGPT free to use?

Yes, you can sign up for an account and access the chatbot completely free of charge. The ChatGPT mobile app is also free on both iOS and Android. Otherwise, you can use the free version of ChatGPT on desktop and mobile devices via the website. However, there is a paid version, ChatGPT Plus, which gives users priority access to ChatGPT for a subscription fee, as well as early access to new features.