The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly about Chat GPT

Unless you’ve been offline for the past 6 months (in which case, welcome back!), you’ve probably heard about the latest evolution in artificial intelligence.

Platforms such as Chat GPT, Google’s Bard, and other similar copycats have seemingly taken the content creation world by storm.

In short, the platforms offer a new level of artificial intelligence which can seemingly generate copy from what it finds online.

Sounds crazy, no?

At a glance, these chat bots have some impressive capabilities. Yet when you peel back the layers, you begin to see some of the holes. Peel back further and those holes turn into caverns.

The purpose is not to demonize AI – at first glance it certainly is intelligent. It is, though, still artificial, and therein lies the danger.

So, what are some of the perks to using these new AI tools? More importantly, where can users run risks using this technology, especially when it comes to growing their businesses?

The Good

It would be foolhardy to demonize these chatbots entirely, and nonsensical to dismiss them as a passing fad.

After all, ‘chat bots’ are nothing new – for years now many larger websites have utilized some form of chatbot technology to provide curious users with canned answers that may help their inquiries.

Chat GPT and its ilk are simply the next evolution of that technology. They’re effectively advanced search engines – ones that scour the internet and compile the information requested.

Where the AI is truly advanced is that you can request that the info is manipulated into different formats. If you’re looking for a short blog post, a bulleted list, a book chapter, etc., the robots do their best to deliver.

While some believed that the technology was only for written content, there are other uses as well. You can command the technology to assemble everything for a slide deck to a marketing plan, and it will do its best to deliver.

Ignoring the power of that technology is like waiting for the return of silent movies.

The Bad

While Chat GPT may appear powerful at first, a closer look will quickly point out its flaws – many of which the platform itself will admit to.

The site acknowledges that it only synthesizes information to a certain point in 2021. Anything further beyond that date is out of reach, and will not be included in its response.

It also acknowledges its weakness in certain subject areas. It is not meant to replace professional advice, such as from a lawyer or a physician, and while that may seem obvious there are still users that will attempt to replace professional advice wherever possible.

While Chat GPT may be quick to find information, that information is not always accurate. It can take training and skill to learn how to provide properly directed prompts to find the info that you are seeking, and even then the results may be mixed.

Thus, relying on Chat GPT exclusively for practically any task is inherently dangerous. If you receive the wrong information through some fault in the search, and then rely on that information without conducting any secondary validation, the results can be disastrous. This is becoming evident in the education space, where concerns about plagiarism are quickly becoming secondary to the realities of students simply finding the wrong information.

Yet even when Chat GPT ‘gets it right,’ it’s still lacking one key component.

You.

The Ugly

The harsher reality is that much of the content produced by Chat GPT is, as the expression goes, ‘good from far….but far from good.’

The content might look alright until you give it a closer read. That closer read reveals exactly what is missing – the unique element that is you.

While Chat GPT synthesizes information, it cannot think. It cannot reason. It cannot offer its own opinions, informed or otherwise. Various news stories have suggested that the technology seems to be taking on sentient properties, but it is not generating anything original.

As a result, the content that it produces is seriously lacking in style and innovation. It struggles to build any sort of relatable narrative because, as a robot, it is not capable of relating to the average reader.

There is a lack of depth, and a lack of style, from Chat GPT’s output. The majority of the content ends up looking like everything else on the market because it’s effectively a rehash of whatever else is on the market, without any original ideas or offerings.

Why does any of that matter?

Because, in a crowded marketplace, the only thing that makes your business unique IS YOU. Your clients and customers may be coming to you because you offer great service, or a superior product, but most end up staying with you because of you.

Injecting personality into your brand is as important for a Fortune 500 CEO as it is for a solopreneur. Business is human to human, and we want to do business with people that we know, like, and trust.

There’s no personality in Chat GPT (although it may try and fool you to the contrary at a first glance), and there’s unlikely to ever be anything uniquely intelligent about it. That’s beyond the capabilities of AI, and will be for some time still.

You are unique, and so is your business. What you bring to your clients and customers is you – uniquely and authentically you. Your story, your talents, your ambitions and hard work – it all comes down to you.

Chat GPT may help get started with some forms of content, but it can not, and will not, replace you.

Sincerely,

A living, breathing human writer.