5 Things ChatGpt Can’t Do (Yet!)

In this article, I’ll discuss my experiences with ChatGPT and list a few things that I think it can’t do yet. As web publishers we should consider focusing on things like these, while technologies like ChatGPT can’t yet deliver on them.

What is ChatGPT anyway?

You’ve almost certainly heard of ChatGPT if you’re in the tech space in any capacity, and you’ve probably heard about it if you’ve listened to or read any news recently. If you haven’t heard of it, ChatGPT is a seemingly normal chatbot that you can access by signing up over at openai.com. It’s merely a little text field that you can type questions into and get answers back.

The difference between ChatGPT and a normal chatbot that you’d see on any random website is that this one is powered by an advanced, cutting-edge AI. It’s an AI chatbot that has access to a wealth of knowledge (over 500GB of raw data from various websites like Wikipedia etc.) about almost everything, but not the entire internet. It’s actually not even connected to the internet.

There are a couple things freaking people about the answers you get back from this little chat window.

1. The responses are from an AI, but seem very human-like and conversational.
2. The type of info that is being returned is often very, very helpful.

So helpful in fact, that it has workers in some industries worried about job security. ChatGPT is even able to return working code in a number of programming languages, keeping programmers and developers on their toes. ChatGPT can also return long-form content that site owners can use on their websites. Should they use it is another question.

Anyway, you can see why there’s so much buzz around ChatGPT at the moment.

Why ChatGPT could pose a threat to web publishers

You can ask CGPT about almost anything prior to 2022 and it will know the answer. Not only that, it can give you very long and detailed answers that appear to have been written by an educated, native-English speaking human.

Think…. “Write me 1200 word blog post about cooking a pot roast in a crock pot”. Even with a non-guided command like that, you’d be surprised at the level of quality you get back.

The level of complexity in the prompts you can give ChatGPT is really astonishing. You can even keep having CGPT edit the results, like a writer with unlimited revisions. Keep in mind though that ChatGPT is actually a slow typer, just an instantaneous researcher.

5 things ChatGPT can’t do yet

1. Images and visuals

As of right now, ChatGPT is unable to search the web and retrieve images to show you. I’m also pretty sure that ChatGPT doesn’t have access to any images in the data that it was trained from.

So use this to your advantage. There are things that searchers will type into Google which require a visual result of some type that ChatGPT can’t provide. Sure, Google Images might serve up results but they’ve been doing that for a while.

Also consider having content with charts, infographics, tables, graphs, illustrations, and anything else that an AI chatbot isn’t capable of returning as a result.

2. Recent information

ChatGPT is only trained on info up to mid-2021, which means if you’re a news site or are covering info that is more recent, you have an advantage over ChatGPT for now.

Eventually it will get update with more recent info and I assume even be connected to the internet, so take advantage while you can.

3. Human experiences

A chatbot will never be able to have human experiences, ever. This just can’t be replicated by AI. Traveling to another country and detailing your experiences and recommending restaurants and hotels to stay in is one example.

Or maybe sharing a recipe on your food blog that is your personal variation on a classic recipe. AI can’t cook and take pictures. AI can’t do crafts and have hobbies. All it can do is return info that is already out there in creative ways.

4. An opinion

An AI chatbot will try to give you the best result based on certain parameters, but that’s not really an opinion. An opinion is something that a human gives based on their real life experiences.

You can’t trust the so-called opinion of a chatbot, it’s often wrong and sometimes doesn’t make sense. Once this whole AI search revolution becomes more widespread, it’s my opinion that the searchers are going to realize the inaccuracies and complain.

Hopefully this drives them towards good old-fashioned human-written content. It may also force Google’s hand to keep content sites as prominent results in the SERP.

5. Factually accurate

Last but not least, ChatGPT is sometimes flat out wrong. You may get a bunch of good info that you fact check along the way then suddenly CGPT returns something out of left field that makes no sense.

You can even call CGPT on an inaccuracy and saying something like “Are you sure about [false statement]? I think that’s wrong” and it will often apologize and return different info that might be correct. That’s great and all that it can see its mistake, but it still got a simple fact wrong that most human writers would not have.

Final notes

ChatGpt is leaps and bounds ahead of all other AI software out there, of that there’s no question. With that said, I still think it is overhyped and just another shiny object for techies to play with at the moment.

I do however think is sparking the beginning of AI in search, which is going to ultimately cause a shift in the way people use search engines. How fast that shift will happen or how dramatic it will be from what we have now, only time will tell.