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Whether you are a student or just a bit curious, you may be wondering how to use ChatGPT to write an essay. ChatGPT has become an extremely popular AI model. If you are yet to use it, you are definitely in for a treat.

The AI bot, created by OpenAI, has been making headlines for its ability to communicate in a way that mimics human dialogue. But, that’s not all. The AI model can also do some pretty wicked stuff such as essay writing, language translations, and quite recently passing university-level exams.

Many Twitter users have been putting ChatGPT to the test by asking the model to write their essays. Surprisingly, their essays came out well-written and completely coherent, although lacked the originality you get from human writers. A Twitter user even asked it to write their Havard application essay, here are the results to see for yourself.

Without a doubt, ChatGPT essay writing is starting to be all the more common, but we would advise caution when using it. Unfortunately, it has various limitations which we have outlined below, and thanks to the increase in ChatGPT detectors, and teachers and professors starting to ‘get wise’ to essays written by artificial intelligence, there is a real risk you could get caught out.

But for the fearless among you, read on, and we’ll tell you everything you need to know.

Limitations to ChatGPT essays

There are a few things you should be wary of when using ChatGPT to write an essay. The first issue surrounds ChatGPT’s accuracy.

OpenAI warns its users that the model may produce some inaccuracies, that could have an obvious negative impact on your essay. They also state that it has the potential to produce biased responses too. This is definitely something you should be aware of, as there is a possibility that your essay could be incorrect and will need revising.

Another major concern is plagiarism. Plagiarism is definitely something to be concerned about when using AI to write your assignments. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT does not necessarily copy specific pieces of text that can be found somewhere else.

But, it does have the capability to word its response in a way that is closely similar. The best way to check this is by putting the essay through a high-quality plagiarism checker, such as Turnitin.

Write a ChatGPT essay

1

Use ChatGPT to write an essay

The time has come to get ChatGPT to write your essay. First things first, you need to make an OpenAI account to gain access to the model – if you haven’t already. Note, that to make an account you must be 18 or over.

Step

1

Launch ChatGPT

To start things off, head to the ChatGPT website and sign in with your login details. At this point, it is pretty common to be faced with a capacity error from OpenAI.

In most cases, if you wait a couple of minutes you will be let in. If this is not the case, you can read our article here which shows you how to fix it.

Step

2

Give ChatGPT a prompt

Now that you are logged in, you should be presented with the ChatGPT opening page and search bar. To get ChatGPT to generate an essay you will need to type a prompt into the search bar and click the send button.

Note, that the more detail you give ChatGPT the more specific your essay will be. For example, you can tell ChatGPT the length of the essay, to include references and the number of paragraphs.

Here are a couple examples:

  • Write a 400-word essay about the impact of climate change including references
  • Write a 4-paragraph essay about the causes of World War One

After ChatGPT has generated your essay you can ask the model to edit its response by typing and submitting “make it longer” or “write it again”.

Step

3

Make edits

To ensure your essay is the best it could be, we recommend making some edits. You can copy and paste ChatGPT’s response into a word processor such as Word or Google Docs to make some changes.

Ideally, rewriting the essay in your own words would be best, although tweaking ChatGPT’s response also works. At this stage, it is definitely important to proofread the essay and double check any facts with other sources to mitigate against ChatGPT’s accuracy limitation.

It may also be useful to run the essay through a plagiarism checker, such as Turnitin, to ensure your essay is safe from plagiarism.

Is there an AI that can write essays?

OpenAI’s ChatGPT isn’t the only AI software that could help you write an essay. Here are some other AI essay writers you could try out:

NOW READ The best free ai essay writer tools.

Final Thoughts

So that’s all you need to know about writing essays using ChatGPT. With the help of ChatGPT, you, and the right inputs and prompts, you can get a great start on essays around a wide range of topics. It also has the added bonus of being able to check for grammar, punctuation, and clarity.

There are some limitations, however, where the ai chatbot falls down, namely, its inaccuracies. We’d recommend that if you are going to use ChatGPT to help you write essays, you use it to assist with a rough draft or to give you essay ideas, rather than getting it to do the whole thing.