Don’t Worry, ChatGPT Won’t Be Taking Over the Writing World Anytime Soon

“ChatGPT is a revolutionary artificial intelligence technology that is changing the way we write essays. With the ability to generate human-like text, ChatGPT has the potential to transform the way we create written content.” 

This is what ChatGPT, the aforementioned “revolutionary” AI bot, responded when prompted with the question “Is ChatGPT changing essay writing?” Launched in November 2022, ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) is a prototype chatbot developed by OpenAI. The bot quickly gained attention for its surprisingly articulate and detailed responses across nearly any topic. Is this AI, with a powerful conversational voice capable of writing seemingly anything, transforming the writing world? Well, according to itself, it is.

“One of the primary benefits of ChatGPT is its ability to save time and effort when writing an essay. Rather than spending hours researching and drafting an essay, ChatGPT can quickly generate a first draft that can be edited and refined by the writer. This is especially useful for students who may be struggling to find the time to complete their assignments.”

So says the AI, claiming it saves writers time in researching and drafting. This is certainly true; often the most difficult part about writing is finding that flash of inspiration, that first word to write that will set you off. For many, the extensive research process can be daunting, the blank page intimidating. ChatGPT solves this problem: it writes your entire paper, so you can spend your time refining a piece of work instead of struggling to write your own.  

However, this is also the bot’s downfall in the essay-writing process. While it is true that writers can dedicate their efforts to shaping a piece of writing that the AI churns out, the writing inevitably lacks nuance. A personally researched and developed essay has the potential to analyze far more in-depth information than that of the AI, and using the bot’s generations as the substance of a work severely limits the scope of the writing. Further, ChatGPT doesn’t always have the most accurate information, and it rarely provides sources—if at all.

ChatGPT is no substitute for a  writer’s unique voice and style. Although coherent and well-organized, its writing is often emotionless, surface-level, and bland. As shown above, while responses are certainly free of errors, the bot  fails to utilize complex sentence structures or incorporate what could be an author’s own “special touch.” 

This is not to mention another critical restraint when using ChatGPT: its usefulness to students “struggling to find the time to complete their assignments.” The heart of school assignment writing is the student’s ideas, not those generated by an omniscient internet creator. Using an artificial intelligence to write an essay is blatant academic dishonesty, if not borderline plagiarism.

However, for all of its shortcomings, it must be acknowledged that ChatGPT is definitely making waves among students lacking passion, motivation, or time for writing. In fact, the AI is already banned on Chromebooks; clearly, the school district considers it somewhat of a threat. English teachers have been compelled to announce to their classes that using ChatGPT to write papers is not allowed, but there is no doubt that there are sneaky students who believe they can get away with submitting a refined AI-written essay.

Ultimately, ChatGPT’s powerful capabilities may be changing the high school essay-writing scene, but its quick banning might be enough to stop it in its tracks. Certainly, it is not revolutionizing the journalism world where it cannot outshine the beautifully written think-pieces of a seasoned writer. Perhaps there is still hope for us humans yet!

by JANET LIU