At the end of November, ChatGPT officially reaches the ripe old age of 2 and I think it’s fair to say it’s been quite the ride. We’ve collectively marvelled at it, laughed at its hallucinations, slammed it as the work of The Devil and lost our minds about it potentially stealing our jobs.
OK, the above may have aligned more with my own experience to date, but I’m sure many of us will have been on a similar journey, revved up by histrionic headlines such as:
‘Scary’ AI ChatGPT could eliminate Google within 2 years!
How ChatGPT could lead to 'mass unemployment'!!!
and...
Who will you be after ChatGPT takes your job?!!!!!
As a content writer, I did have some worries ChatGPT would take my job, but I’m still here, so that’s a bonus.
The one thing that struck me above everything else is the speed in which it became commonplace, evolving with alarming pace from tech industry darling to a household name across the world. Kids use it, my mum uses it. Heck, I bet even my cat has had a sneaky go on it. As crazes go, it’s up there with bumbags and fidget poppers.
Such was its meteoric rise, the platform acquired one million users just five days after launching in November 2022, a feat surpassed only by Threads. To put this into perspective, it took Netflix three and a half YEARS to hit the million mark.
Currently, ChatGPT still gets approximately 600 million visits per month, so there’s little to suggest this is a passing fad, although OpenAI is continuously forced to up its game as other chatbots enter the fray (and boy, are there a lot of them – for what it’s worth, Claude is my own personal favourite, followed by Pi).
Let's take a look back at the milestones that shaped its spectacular journey.
ChatGPT Timeline - the journey so far
- 30th November 2022 - OpenAI introduces ChatGPT using GPT-3.5 as a part of a free research preview.
- 5th December 2022 - The chatbot surpasses one million users (one of whom is me).
- 1st February 2023 - OpenAI rolls out ChatGPT Plus, a premium subscription option for ChatGPT users offering less downtime and access to new features.
- 7th February 2023 - Microsoft announces ChatGPT-powered features are coming to Bing.
- 1st March 2023 - OpenAI introduces the ChatGPT API for developers to integrate in their applications. Early adopters include Snapchat, Instacart, and Shopify.
- 14th March 2023 - OpenAI releases GPT-4 in ChatGPT and Bing, promising better reliability, creativity and problem-solving skills.
- 28th August 28 2023 - OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise, calling it ‘the most powerful version of ChatGPT yet.’ Benefits included enterprise-level security and unlimited usage of GPT-4.
- 6th November 2023 - OpenAI announces the arrival of custom GPTs, which enable users to build their own custom GPT versions using specific skills, knowledge, etc.
- 13th May 2024 - The GPT-4o model is introduced, offering enhanced intelligence and additional features for free users.
- 25th July 2024 - OpenAI launches SearchGPT, an AI-powered search prototype designed to answer user queries with direct answers.
- 29th August 2024 - ChatGPT reaches 200 million weekly active users.
- 12th September 2024 - OpenAI unveils the GPT o1 model, which it claims ‘can reason like a human’.
- 31st October 2024 - OpenAI launches ChatGPT search, with the aim of competing with Google and Microsoft.
Blimey, I’m exhausted after that.
A flawed gamechanger
Everyone has an opinion on ChatGPT. Personally, I’ve been in a complicated love-hate relationship with it since day one. It's the Severus Snape to my Harry Potter, the Ross to my Rachel, the...well, you get the gist.
Here are my own key musings to date:
1. ChatGPT wants you to elevate everything
I don’t know at what point the humble verbs ‘improve’ or ‘build’ fell out of favour, but if I had to put money on it, I’d say it was around the time ChatGPT exploded into the mainstream. You’ll have no doubt seen ‘elevate’ pop up time and time again in AI outputs (along with the likes of ‘leverage’, 'delve’ and the increasingly ubiquitous ‘ever-evolving landscape’, to name but a few) and while there’s nothing wrong with these words and phrases per se, chances are if you spot all the above in one paragraph, I’ll wager ChatGPT is the author.
2. ChatGPT shouldn’t be trusted with travel plans (at least not yet)
AI has made its way into plenty of major players’ booking platforms over the past two years but claims that ChatGPT will replace travel agents or traditional search methods have yet to come to fruition. Last year, I wrote an article flagging the often-amusing errors AI would make when generating travel plans or recommendations (such as informing me that Christchurch, Dorset didn’t exist, for instance). Since then, the tech has come on leaps and bounds. ChatGPT now supports plugins from travel services like Expedia and Kayak, enabling users to receive personalised recommendations which are more reliable and less prone to the hallucinations of yore while the integration of real-time web search has allowed the chatbot to access up-to-date information on flights, accommodations and activities.
But, despite these improvements, users are still wary. A survey conducted in April this year highlighted that 91% of UK travellers said they experienced some kind of constraint, limitation or shortcoming when using AI to make travel plans. Roughly one third of those surveyed encountered incorrect information or found answers too generic.
And I always hark back to this old adage: Travel is all about human experience. ChatGPT and co. have never experienced the sensation of warm sand between their toes or witnessed the sights, smells and sounds of a carnival in Brazil. No algorithm, no matter how sophisticated, can truly convey the pulse of a location to the extent a human can.
3. It’s a godsend for ‘the little things’.
Credit where credit’s due – ChatGPT is absolutely brilliant at the small stuff. By that, I mean nitty gritty grammar and linguistic tasks, such as giving you an alternative way of phrasing a sentence, whittling out over-used words or smoothing out clumsy syntax. OK, sometimes the options it gives you are rubbish, but other times they do the trick, helping to make your great content even greater. It’s also fab for condensing waffly, over-long chunks of text into more concise, readable paragraphs (which is probably what this article needs!).
4. It makes research easier
I’ll probably get a lot of slack for this, but if I’m just too busy / too lazy to read a 5000-word article or report, ChatGPT is my go-to for a quick overview. Just paste the whole lot into the chatbot, ask for five or ten key takeaways and boom—instant digestible summary. Just to be clear, this isn’t a wise move if you’re writing an entire article based purely on the output - it's a big fat no-no to masquerade as an authority off the back of a single AI-distilled summary. But if you need a rapid snapshot of complex material, it’s a lifesaver.
5. Outsourcing your thinking and expertise to a machine just isn’t worth it
There’s a lot of noise online. Whatever your reason for creating content, it can feel like an uphill slog trying to make your voice heard in such a crowded, competitive space. Those of us working in digital marketing will harp on about the importance of E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness and Trustworthiness) to get in Google’s good books but what it really boils down to is that you are doing yourself and your audience a massive disservice by churning out AI content rather than your own authentic copy. OK, writing is time-consuming and we’re not all budding Shakespeares (I know I’m not!) but the glorious thing is you don’t have to be. You just have to care about your subject matter. The more you care, the more your readers will. AI-generated content can inform, but it will never push boundaries, provoke, excite or inspire.
Final thoughts
Will I be raising a toast to ChatGPT on the 30th November? No, that would be weird. But I will on this occasion break the Content Writer Code and allow ChatGPT to have the final word:
