AI is taking businesses into realms once thought reserved only for human operators. Advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) may result in a civilization where humans and machines live in harmony.
According to a study, 81% of corporate executives consider AI a mainstream technology for their businesses. A report by management consulting firm Gartner indicated that firms using AI might see a 25% increase in customer satisfaction by the end of 2023. The correlation between businesses and AI technologies is expected to increase, especially with new technologies and disruptive chatbots like ChatGPT that can produce human-like text in a conversational context.
This distinctive ability makes ChatGPT beneficial in various business applications, particularly when automating customer interactions. Built by Open AI, how is it expected to transform the commercial landscape?
A few people say ChatGPT will essentially “change everything in marketing, forever.” Others say it has “passed the tipping point,” while another writer referred to it as a “pocket nuclear bomb and should be withdrawn from our collective grasp immediately.”
Read on as we explore the several applications of ChatGPT for businesses and their advantages and limitations.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is a language generation tool developed by a research institute called Open AI. This language model is developed by a group of entrepreneurs and scientists such as Elon Musk, Greg Brockman, and Sam Altman. It is based on Open AI’s GPT 3.5 series of language learning models (LLM) – a computer language model based on natural language processing (NLP) techniques designed to understand and carry conversations with people.
As a language model that has already been pre-trained, ChatGPT uses an enormous amount of training data set to understand the structure and pattern of natural language. As a result, it may produce a wide range of texts, including articles, blogs, screenplays, stories, and more, with more robust and coherent responses. Companies can also use this software platform to generate code and other technical documentation.
Because of its NLP capabilities, firms are increasingly considering employing ChatGPT in their operations (especially for business applications such as content marketing, customer service, and personalization, among others).
How ChatGPT & Open AI is Revolutionizing Business Landscapes
Currently, the average chatbot is beneficial but far from ideal. You enter a query, and if the system is capable, it responds with an answer. They can only react to simple queries since they are not intelligent and sophisticated enough to glean meaning or context from your question. If you’re lucky, they’ll direct you to a person who can handle the question and offer solutions and services.
That is about to change.
One of the most critical findings from ChatGPT’s testing is how human-like it seems. With generative AI, you can have a real conversation, and it picks up new words as you input them. The way people engage with businesses and make purchases of goods and services is about to change due to ChatGPT.
Although these language models are in the nascent stages of scaling, businesses have started seeing the initial batch of applications across functions such as:
- IT/Engineering – Writing and reviewing code and technical documentation; generating synthetic data; and generating or completing data tables automatically while providing contextual information.
- Marketing & Sales – Writing marketing, social media, and technical sales copies; creating user guides and product manuals; analyzing customer feedback; and improving sales support chatbots.
- Risk & legal – Summarizing and highlighting changes; answering complex questions; drafting and reviewing legal documents and annual reports; and extracting valuable data from vast legal manual databases.
According to Guy Elliot, Executive Vice President (VP) of retail at Publicis Sapient, “There are so many use cases, it’s impossible even to start to describe them.”
“Dynamic development of product descriptions as well as the acceleration and automation of the definition of navigation and taxonomy in retail, for example. The huge amount of human labor currently required would be eliminated, thanks to dynamic loading and intelligent categorization of product catalogs,” he adds.
Additionally, it would enable immediate support for many languages through high-quality automatic translation (not necessarily ChatGPT, but AI technology like Deep), increasing the appeal of products to a broader audience.
Elliot also cited the vast volumes of data and client insights that AI bots like ChatGPT may contribute.
“Retailers are given tremendously powerful insights into their business and product development through deep data analysis on purchase patterns, customer reviews, sentiment analysis, promotion performance, and returns data in near real-time. Everything from the product lifecycle to purchasing, inventory management, and routing would be accelerated as a result,” he claims.
According to a study by Opus Research, 48% of consumers don’t care whether a human or an artificial chatbot assists them with a customer service query. Moreover, 35% of consumers want to see more businesses use chatbots.
Overall, ChatGPT can be helpful for any scenario where you need to produce human-sounding text based on input data.
ChatGPT Has Huge Potential, But Caution is Required
Although generative AI’s astounding accomplishments can give the impression that it is a ready-to-use technology, this is not the case. Executives must exercise extreme caution because of its infancy. Many practical and ethical questions are still unresolved, and technologists are still working out its quirks. Here are a few examples:
- Just like humans, generative and conversational AI can make mistakes. For instance, ChatGPT occasionally “hallucinates,” which means that it confidently produces false information in response to a user inquiry and lacks any internal mechanism to alert the user or challenge the result. For instance, in situations when the tool was asked to generate a short biography, it created multiple inaccurate facts about the person, such as naming the wrong educational institution.
- Intellectual-property questions still need to be addressed. When a language generation model ideates a new product design based on user input, who can assess it as their own? What happens when it copies information from a source based on its training data?
- Systemic biases still require attention. These systems use vast volumes of data, which may have unintended biases.
- The norms and values specific to each firm are not represented. Companies will need to integrate the technology to reflect their culture and beliefs, which will involve more technical expertise and computing capacity than some businesses may have at their disposal.
Will ChatGPT Affect the Job Market?
2023 is expected to be one of the most exciting years for AI yet because of generative AI. But as with any new technology, business leaders must proceed cautiously because the technology poses numerous moral and practical challenges.
AI and robotics can potentially eliminate 85 million jobs globally by 2025, according to a report from the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report published in 2020.
Conversely, the shift could result in the creation of an additional 97 million job opportunities.
Future language models and ChatGPT will become essential and affordable parts of an SME’s operations.
According to Raj Shah, Head of Telecom, Media, and Technology at Publicis Sapient, “Automated customer services and assistance may be over the horizon, though a narrower vocabulary and subject matter set is the next challenge as AI chatbots work in specific sectors like retail – or even a more specific space like luxury.”
This horizon could be much closer than Shah anticipated last year since ChatGPT employs a deep learning method called “transformer architecture” to sift through several terabytes of data containing billions of words to generate answers to prompts or inquiries.
“Professionals shouldn’t have to be concerned about AI having a significant impact on the job market,” said Marcel Hollerbach, Chief Innovation Officer (CIO) at Productsup.
ChatGPT will increase business productivity, which many employees would appreciate as it relieves them of tedious administrative responsibilities. It is essential to understand that tools like ChatGPT do not operate with 100% precision, implying all outputs need fact-checking, revision, and editing.
Businesses using ChatGPT will perform better than the ones without the software. However, the quality of AI will always depend on the data you feed it or, in this case, the questions you ask.
Undoubtedly, the use of AI in the future will change the face of many other industries, with ChatGPT possibly representing the most significant advancement in accessible AI so far. But according to the general consensus, not too many of us need to be concerned about OpenAI’s new language model – yet.
The Bottom Line
To conclude, AI systems like ChatGPT have the potential to increase productivity and efficiency in a range of business scenarios by automating operations that are typically performed by people.
Although ChatGPT is a relatively new technology, its capabilities will probably develop and keep improving over time.