ChatGPT: Is it too good to be true?

The dreaded job search --monotonous cover letters, disengaging interviews and regurgitated resumes. Jumping into the pool of job applicants, many unemployed Americans are left swimming – some drowning – in an endless sea of repetition, which is born from rewriting and constructing individualized resumes and cover letters for recruiters. The unlucky applicants enter a process of writing and rewriting cover letters and resumes only to be faced with the cold hand of rejection, leaving many hopeless and disheartened. Well, glum friends, there is nothing to fear. ChatGPT is here to save you from the rotting hole of repetitive writing.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence platform that generates outputs when given a written command.

In layman's terms, OpenAI describes ChatGPT as a free form of AI technology — computers that mimic human responses and tasks. Furthermore, ChatGPT runs on natural language processing – computer technology that understands speech – and is able

Story and photos by Isabella Marzban

to create detailed responses from prompts given by the app's user. The platform was created by an AI team from the company OpenAI, located in San Francisco, California. Some of the features and capabilities of ChatGPT are that the app is able to make AI-generated essays, cover letters, resumes, songs and poems; it can even solve complex math problems.

How does one use ChatGPT?

After a user downloads the app on a computer or phone, a text box will appear awaiting a user prompt. To start off, a user can ask ChatGPT a question, such as, “How do you make chocolate chip cookies?” In a matter of seconds, ChatGPT will provide a recipe for cookies, similar to Google's search engine but without the monetized ads and billions of web pages. The same thing can be done for cover letters and resumes, and student essays are also a popular request. At first glance ChatGPT appears like a search engine, but in reality, the service provides AI-generated, individualized responses instead of links to websites. ChatGPT is able to achieve these results by computing data from websites across the internet and comparing selected sources to determine the best data response for a user’s prompt.

University of Florida media entrepreneurship instructor William Stump says that ChatGPT’s rise to fame is partially due to human nature, describing humans as beings wired to find hacks and shortcuts for repetitive tasks.

“Humans seek less effort, not more,” Stump said. “These tools can help eliminate some basic business functions and repetitive work, but it's not creative beyond the input it gets from scraping what exists on the web.”

Although there are other AI services similar to ChatGPT, this specific platform has gained immense popularity, leaving similar platforms lost in the digital clouds of internet space.

According to Statista, ChatGPT reached a million users in five days. In comparison, it took Netflix three and a half years to reach the same number of users. ChatGPT's growth rate has beaten digital demigods such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, leaving the technology world stunned by the AI platform's internet dominance. ChatGPT's audience continues to drop jaws with its latest achievement of 100 million users in the first two months of launch, according to recent UBS reports. Since launching in November of 2022, the app has set fire to social media platforms and university classrooms by pushing the limits of personalized AI services.

Colleges including The University of Vermont, Washington University and Furman University are working on changing their honor codes to address concerns of cheating and plagiarism involving ChatGPT.

Sadly, “all that glitters is not gold,” and that Shakespearean proverb can be applied to ChatGPT's newfound success. ChatGPT's popularity can be seen on social media platforms, including TikTok, Twitter and YouTube. On these platforms, students in high school and college are sharing how to use ChatGPT's AI service to generate essays for classes. So many students are using ChatGPT for this purpose that other apps, such as Originality AI, were developed to detect essays written by ChatGPT. Currently, Canvas – a learning management system used by schools across the nation – is in the process of adding AI detection for apps with natural language processing systems similar to ChatGPT’s. Across the U.S., universities are exploring the possiblity of adding clauses about ChatGPT or similar resources in their honor codes. Currently,

At the University of Florida, many students are not surprised by universities’ negative reactions to ChatGPT but are left with mixed feelings about the college's one-dimensional view of the AI service, viewing it only as a vehicle for cheating. "I can see how some people might abuse the services and try to use it to cheat on exams and assignments, so that could definitely be a negative effect," UF student Erina Anwar said. "But I also think that people who are really ambitious and people who truly just want to learn to become a better professional will really rely on it [ChatGPT] just as much."

Currently, ChatGPT has a chokehold on American universities and is causing fear among advertisers who are frightened by the possibility that the app might overtake Google's search engine. At face value, these fears may seem impending, perhaps inevitable, but these concerns are not held by many in Generation Z. Instead, many young adults in the creative writing and reporting fields see an opportunity in the AI platform.

"I feel like a lot of research and looking for sources is a big part of reporting and writing," said

Naomi Volcy, Independent Florida Alligator reporter and UF student. "In terms of background and the research aspect of covering some breaking news, I think that's where ChatGPT should be very helpful"

When discussing the uses of ChatGPT, Anwar shared stories of her friends using ChatGPT not to cheat but rather to organize notes and summarize long reading assignments.

"I asked my friends what they might use it for, and one of them said that he uses it to organize his notes and condense long readings and find the main talking points," said Anwar, "I might use it for that because a lot of times professors assign long readings, and it could be good to use it [ChatGPT] to condense the most important points."

For some, ChatGPT is an angel, floating from heaven's clouds. Others see the app as the devil's reincarnation, climbing up from the depths of hell to thrust America into a degenerate society run by computers — no individuality or creativity. However one views the advanced AI tool, one thing is for certain — ChatGPT is here to stay, and new AI is on the way.