In my previous post Fun With AI, I talked about how much I enjoy DALL-E, the ChatGPT image generator. But that’s only a small part of ChatGPT, although it is the most fun part.

So, what is ChatGPT? I’ll let ChatGPT explain in its own words: “ChatGPT is an advanced artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI, based on the GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) architecture. It processes and generates text by predicting the likelihood of a word sequence, enabling it to perform a wide range of tasks, from holding conversations to writing articles and answering queries. Its training involved analyzing vast amounts of text data, which helps it understand context and nuances in language.”

I hope that’s clearer to you than it is to me. But what I do know is it’s been very helpful to me. I’m just going to go over a few of the things for which I use ChatGPT.

I first started using ChatGPT as a research assistant. I asked it to find me articles about specific topics and suggest references and lines of inquiry. It’s not a substitute for detailed individual research but it is a head start in the right direction. Although you do have to check some of its research because it occasionally gets it wrong or cites outdated material.

One of the things where I have found ChatGPT to be very good is finding quotations on multiple topics. Sometimes it can be difficult to locate specific applicable quotes. (Does anyone else remember Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations?) Again, you must double check the results. Occasionally it will attribute the quote to someone who was referencing the original author.

I’ve also found ChatGPT to be useful in generating title ideas. I’ll ask it to give me 10 suggested titles on a specific subject. While I’ve not used any of the titles exactly, they have formed the basis for developing my own specific titles.

I also use ChatGPT in my genealogy work. Occasionally when researching old records, I’ll find documents that are written in foreign languages or church records written in Latin. Previously I’d used Google translate but found that to be somewhat onerous. ChatGPT translation is quick and easy. I just cut and paste the text into ChatGPT and ask for a translation. You don’t even need to tell it the original language.

I also use ChatGPT as an editing aid. I ask it to review my articles for grammar, readability, and content. ChatGPT has let me know that I frequently use too many adverbs and don’t always get in enough commas. This is a simple process. I take my completed article and paste it in the ChatGPT and ask it to give me an edit.

There are other features that I haven’t used in ChatGPT because I don’t really understand them. One of them is helping with search engine optimization. Apparently, this is a way of ensuring that people searching for topics on the internet can find your website instead of others. While I haven’t taken time to investigate this, I guess I could just ask ChatGPT to explain it to me.

ChatGPT also has a strong program for developing interactive content. This hasn’t been something I’ve been interested in, so I haven’t explored it.

It has the capability to analyze and summarize large amounts of data. I’m hoping to use this at some point to help me with census analysis in my genealogy work. I just haven’t taken the time to develop that ability yet.

I found ChatGPT to be especially useful when I work on this blog. I spend a lot less time on Google. I get more focused searches with ChatGPT, but I do need to be more careful in reviewing the results. The image generation function has expanded my ability to illustrate my blogs. I don’t have to go searching for images in the public domain or worry about licensing fees. I just generate my own images.

There have been a lot of concerns recently about the “dark side” of artificial intelligence. There are plenty of articles in the popular press and I’m not going to dwell on it here. (ChatGPT can generate you a list of as many articles as you would like.)

I just want to express one concern that I have. I worry that it may make me lazy. I may decide not to do my own research, not to read and analyze the available information, and not to spend the time organizing and writing my articles.

I may just tell ChatGPT to generate an article about the use of ChatGPT for writing a blog. Or maybe I already did!?!

Just because I have so much fun with the image generator, I want to share a few of the other images I generated to illustrate this post.