ChatGPT: The AI-Powered Proofreader

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Chat­G­PT, a text-gen­er­at­ing mod­el devel­oped by Ope­nAI to sim­u­late respons­es that resem­ble human con­ver­sa­tions, saves you time and effort by edit­ing your documents.

Copy a page of con­tent into Chat­G­PT and request that it sum­ma­rize the infor­ma­tion. In sec­onds, it sum­ma­rizes the mate­r­i­al before your eyes—much faster than any human that I know.

For a tool that is just emerg­ing, it is sur­pris­ing­ly ver­sa­tile. You can ask it for help with pro­gram­ming, brain­storm­ing, writ­ing head­lines (Chat­G­PT sug­gest­ed the head­line for this blog post), trans­la­tions, mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al, and plan­ning a trip.

A quick simple test

I decid­ed to give it a test. I copied an ear­li­er blog that I draft­ed about Mad­Cap Flare and delib­er­ate­ly added errors (high­light­ed in red) to the text. In my state­ment to Chat­G­PT, oth­er­wise known as a prompt, I wrote, “Check the fol­low­ing con­tent for incon­sis­tent acronyms, con­sis­tent spelling of com­pa­ny names, gram­mar and typos, and make sure all num­bers under 10 are spelled out.” 

In under 10 sec­onds, the AI tool gen­er­at­ed a new ver­sion of the con­tent and sum­ma­rized the edits made:

Chat­G­PT quick­ly caught all the errors and even cor­rect­ed the case of “Robo­Help,” which is the offi­cial name of the help author­ing tool.

Purge passive voice using ChatGPT

Many tech­ni­cal writ­ing depart­ments fer­ret out exam­ples of pas­sive voice and strive to re-write the con­tent so it is active because the writ­ing is more suc­cinct and eas­i­er to under­stand (of course, there is a place for pas­sive voice). In the fol­low­ing exam­ple, I asked Chat­G­PT to revise the fol­low­ing sen­tences that use pas­sive voice:

In moments, Chat­G­PT revised the sen­tences so they were active:

ChatGPT does have limitations

The AI tool does have its limitations:

• Lacks under­stand­ing: If you write a tech­ni­cal report about a mine or a pro­pri­etary soft­ware pack­age, it will not under­stand the details of the con­tent. Sub­ject Mat­ter Experts must still vet the accu­ra­cy of the content.
• Good prompts are required: Typ­ing vague com­ments like “edit this doc­u­ment” and the tool may not edit what you require. If you want to check a doc­u­ment for pas­sive voice, include the specifics of what you need.
• Chat­G­PT was last updat­ed in 2021: If you require cur­rent infor­ma­tion about a major world event last year (such as Rus­sian’s inva­sion of Ukraine), Chat­G­PT will be “in the dark.”
• Be care­ful of con­fi­den­tial­i­ty. See Gen­er­a­tive AI Chat­G­PT Can Dis­turbing­ly Gob­ble Up Your Pri­vate And Con­fi­den­tial Data, Fore­warns AI Ethics And AI Law

Still, it is sur­pris­ing­ly pow­er­ful and fast tool that can help with writ­ing and edit­ing. Check out ChatGPT.