Many people use ChatGPT to create recipes or write work emails, but OpenAI’s Head of Product Nick Turley has some handy tips users might want to try.
In a recent episode of the “Hard Fork” podcast, the company’s head of product shared five hacks for ChatGPT users, from using its voice mode to simply speak with the chatbot to creating your own personal GPT that can act as a creative writing coach, develop marketing strategies, or turn photos into illustrations.
Although Turley said these tips weren’t necessarily “rocket science,” users who haven’t thoroughly explored the many added features in the chatbot’s latest model, GPT-4o, might find some useful new tools.
Experiment with voice mode
If you don’t feel like typing, you can now try talking. ChatGPT’s voice feature comes in nine human-like voices developed with professional voice actors, which can be changed in the website’s settings, according to the company.
“It is a completely different way of using ChatGPT,” Turley said. “It’s never existed before. It’s unlike anything else you will have tried in technology.”
Users can speak with the chatbot by voice, with some even saying they’ve been able to have “emotional, personal” conversations. However, others have cautioned against using the AI as a therapist.
All signed-in users can access the standard voice feature, while advanced voice mode, which offers natural, real-time conversations, is currently only available to Plus and Team users.
Ask ChatGPT to remember things
If you’re not a fan of repeating yourself, you can have ChatGPT remember certain things, which the AI will use to improve its responses.
“You don’t have to wait for it to infer it about you,” Turley said. “You can just tell it all the stuff that you want remembered.”
He added that memories can include “your job, it can be your family situation, it can be your preferences on how it should respond to you, it can be your favorite food.”
Users can simply tell ChatGPT to remember something, but they can also turn off the chatbot’s memory at any time or even ask it to forget things. Turley said the added effort will be “worth it” because the chatbot’s memory will “keep getting better.”
Make a GPT
Users can also consider making their own customized GPT — without any coding needed.
“People actually do this for a variety of reasons,” Turley said. “But in many cases, if you have this prompt you’re reusing all the time, make a GPT for yourself.”
GPTs can be tailored to focus on specific tasks, from language learning to analyzing data, based on the user’s instructions to the “GPT Builder.” You can also configure your personal GPT additional settings like advanced data analysis or adding DALL-E Image Generation. For example, one user shared on X, formerly Twitter, their custom GPT that turns photos of people into Pixar characters.
“It’s super easy — takes seconds,” Turley said. “And it allows you to customize everything that you want about your ChatGPT.”
While you can share the link to your customized GPTs, which can be made public and accessible by search engines, Turley assured that users can keep their GPTs private.
Upload files
This lesser-known chatbot feature is a “pretty phenomenal” one, Turley said. Available for Plus and Enterprise users, it allows any text files, documents, spreadsheets, and presentations to be uploaded and saved into an account.
ChatGPT will then be able to analyze the text, provide a summary or feedback, extract specific information or quotes, and compare and contrast two documents. Turley said the feature can be especially useful if “you’ve got a really long paper to read” or a “handbook you’re trying to process.”
“A lot of people don’t know this exists,” he said. “And it’s really, really powerful.”
Incorporating images
“I find that there’s text people, and there’s image people, and they almost don’t overlap,” Turley said.
The OpenAI exec said he wishes there was more “cross-pollination” between the two since ChatGPT can support both. Although its text applications are better known, the chatbot can also understand and interpret images.
The company’s image generator, DALL-E, is also available in ChatGPT and can create images from conversations. Turley said people may want to use the two capabilities for various tasks, like creating a birthday card.
“You’re probably going to want to use both — make a little custom image and work on a cute little poem,” he said. “So you can combine all these things in a way that I think most people don’t understand.”
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