I have recently joined in on the ChatGPT craze. For those that do not know, ChatGPT is a Conversation AI, in which you can ask it things and it will generate responses. Now I have used similar AIs in the past and generally found them lacking as the content it would write would feel outdated or that it always followed a fixed format. These past experiences led to my hesitation with trying out the new ChatGPT. But, How ChatGPT has change my view on using AI.
Before I jump into writing the rest of this, I should state that this has not been written by an AI. However, I may use an AI to help edit it; not sure yet.
My first test for the ChatGPT was to ask it to write a slack message to my team about completing a form before the end of the day deadline. To my shock, I quickly got a well written and persuasive text that I could have been used without editing. However, I was not 100% happy with the style. So I asked the ChatGPT to adjust the text for the type of people that are on my team, and it did with amazing results. But still, I found that the tone was still to formal, so I asked ChatGPT to make the text funny and it did to amazing results. With only one final request to shorten the post and it was ready to go. The end result got an amazing response rate as the text quickly caught people’s attention, was tailed for them, funny, and included a strong call to action.
Before ChatGPT, I would have spent an equal amount of time writing that post and editing once or twice and probably not have gotten any where near the response rate based on past results. Using ChatGPT I was quickly able to jump straight into have a post ready to go and focusing on tailoring the post for my audience and platform leading to truly amazing results.
Change gears, I normally talk more work related topics in my journal – But, I love Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playnig game where people sit around a table and create a fantasy story together, and have been a Dungeon master, the guy that controls the overall story, for about a decade and a half. However, the most time consuming part of being the dungeon master is planning a world and fleshing out the details for your players to interact with.
With ChatGPT I was quickly able to ask it to generate a description for a town that was mid sized, near a river, and had a prominent town square. To which I quickly got a result, and I could ask it to adjust the town to add a more seedy undertone. Then ask it to generate a description for an inn and tavern in the town, then some different types of characters. All the time focusing on asking the AI to adjust details to better match my vision but not having to work from scratch. This allowed me to speed up the process of world building and made it even more detailed and interesting for my players.
This does led to an interesting caveat. ChatGPT did not allow to suddenly have a new skill set, but what it did was enable my existing skill sets to be more effective with my time. I will be adding AI to my toolbox to aid with my writing. But, you are still going to get my ramble-ly, unrefined, writing for my journal. It is my journal after all.