Saying that ChatGPT had caused quite a stir for the past few months is an understatement. While many articles hyped up the potential of this chat bot, there are multiple opinion pieces that speak of doom and gloom for multiple reasons. We have decided to give it a try to test its limits, and most importantly, determine whether it will replace human writers and destroy my career, or is it a good tool that will change how we work.
Test #1: Informative Advertorial
We first tried with a simple “pros and cons” article. We asked ChatGPT to write an advertorial about the pros and cons of using AI for content creation.
The AI replied with a generic 400-ish worded listicle as seen above. It provided us the main talking points, however it just skimmed over the facts. It also managed to contradict itself with the “personalisation” angle, while giving generalised replies that is not personalised at all.
Checking the content on Quetext resulted in a 33% plagiarism rate, reflecting that at its current stage, chat bots are good for aggregating facts / opinions that are available online. It still required effort from the writer to perform fact-checking and provide relevant context.
Test #2: Opinion Piece
While the first test revolved around generic topics that users are likely to search online, we decided to give ChatGPT some context by asking it to write an opinion piece. We asked the AI to determine whether Genshin Impact is a dying game, and here is the result.
While the AI is able to create a sound argument, and used the expansion of the development team as an a reason why Genshin Impact is still a thriving game, it however referenced games that were released much earlier as it is current news. Cyberpunk 2077 was indeed a highly anticipated title, but it was already released back in 2020. As with whether the game is dying or not, ChatGPT basically gave a non-reply, which I think its actually a good thing. At least the chat bot is trying to be as non-biased as possible.
Test #3: Video Content Ideas
For our last test, we tried to ask the AI to do something more complex: writing a full video script for the new Apple Mac Mini M2.
This is where ChatGPT impressed the entire team. It provided us with footage ideas, storyboarding, and even voiceover cues for the entire video. As with our first test, it did suggest to us that we film a gaming footage, even though Macs aren’t known to be gaming machines. Other than that, the points are great, with good execution on the voiceover style even when we did not ask it to.
Final Thoughts
While I do not believe ChatGPT is a replacement for human creativity and expertise, as it still required human input for its data source, I believe it can transform how we writers work in the near future. Yes, there are quite a few ethical concerns regarding bias and inaccuracies, but in the long run things will definitely change.
Think about it, instead of wandering off whenever we have writer’s block, we can just ask the AI to generate some pointers for us to think about, and increase our overall productivity. Or when we need to research about something and not know where to start, we can just ask ChatGPT for some talking points before we go more in-depth.
Let’s just hope that it does not become self-aware and attempt to take over the world like Skynet in years to come.
