ChatGPT is an AI chat assistant made by OpenAI. You type or speak a request in ordinary language, and it replies in the same way: it can draft and edit text, summarise documents, answer questions, explain topics, write code and work with files you upload. It runs on large language models, a kind of neural network trained on vast amounts of text.
OpenAI introduced ChatGPT on 30 November 2022 as a model that “interacts in a conversational way”, able to answer follow-up questions and admit its mistakes. The same announcement noted a limitation that still matters: ChatGPT sometimes writes plausible-sounding but incorrect or nonsensical answers.
How ChatGPT produces its answers
ChatGPT does not look facts up in a database of verified knowledge. It generates text by predicting, piece by piece, what is most likely to come next, based on the patterns it learnt in training and the context of your conversation. Google’s guidance on using generative AI content puts it the same way: generative models do not retrieve facts but predict a likely sequence of words.
That explains both its strength and its main weakness. It writes fluent, well-structured text on almost any subject in seconds. It can also state a wrong price, an outdated rule or an invented source with the same confidence as a correct one. Anything factual it produces needs checking before it is used.
What a business can use ChatGPT for
Take a garden centre preparing its spring pages, product descriptions and newsletter. Used well, ChatGPT saves hours:
- First drafts. A starting version of a seasonal page or a product description, which a member of staff then corrects and adds real detail to: varieties in stock, prices, local advice.
- Research and structure. Lists of questions customers ask about planting times, or an outline for a guide. Google’s guidance notes that generative AI can be particularly useful for researching a topic and adding structure to original content.
- Rewriting. Making a dense supplier description readable, shortening a long paragraph, adjusting the tone for an email.
- Ideas and variations. Headline options, subject lines for a newsletter, several versions of an ad to test.
- Summaries. The main themes in a batch of customer reviews or survey answers.
- Simple technical help. Explaining an error message or drafting a spreadsheet formula, checked by someone who understands the result.
Where ChatGPT goes wrong on a website
- Unchecked facts. Prices, opening hours, legal or medical statements and statistics must come from your own records or a primary source.
- Pages without anything of your own. Text that any competitor could generate with the same prompt does little to win customers or rankings. Google’s guidance warns that using generative AI to create many pages without adding value for users may break its spam policy on scaled content abuse.
- Metadata on autopilot. Google’s guidance says the same review applies to title elements, meta descriptions, structured data and alt text, because these appear in search results.
- Your brand voice. Without guidance and editing, AI text tends to sound alike across businesses. A short style guide and real examples in the prompt help, and an editor still has the last word.
Google’s guidance does not rule out AI-assisted writing: it describes useful ways to use it and asks for the result to be accurate, high quality and relevant. Content written with ChatGPT is judged by the same standards as any other content marketing, and a page built for SEO still needs facts, examples and experience that only your business has.
ChatGPT and your business data
Before your team pastes enquiries, customer lists or contracts into ChatGPT, check which plan they are using:
- Personal accounts. OpenAI’s help centre says that for individual services like ChatGPT, it may use your content to train its models unless you opt out.
- Business plans. OpenAI states that by default it does not train its models on data from ChatGPT Business, ChatGPT Enterprise and its API platform, and that the organisation’s data remains owned by it.
Whichever plan you use, personal data is still covered by UK data protection law. The ICO’s guidance on AI and data protection is the place to start, though the ICO notes it is under review after the Data (Use and Access) Act. A simple internal rule also helps: no customer personal data in AI tools unless the tool and the purpose have been approved. This is an overview, not legal advice.
ChatGPT or an AI assistant on your own website
ChatGPT is OpenAI’s own application, used on its website and apps. To have an assistant on your own website, developers build one with OpenAI’s models through its API, or with models from other providers.
A website assistant built this way answers from the content you give it, such as your service pages, prices and policies. You decide what it may and may not answer, when it hands over to a person, and what is logged. That control is the main difference from sending customers to a general chatbot. Our entry on artificial intelligence covers how such features are planned and built.
How we use AI in our work
When we write articles, they are drafted with AI and checked by a specialist before publication. When a client project calls for it, we integrate AI into the custom web applications we build in our Laravel development work.
FAQ
Is ChatGPT free to use?
Yes, there is a free plan with limited messages, uploads and features. OpenAI’s pricing page also lists paid plans for individuals, called Go, Plus and Pro, with higher limits and more features, and Business and Enterprise plans for organisations, with admin controls and, on Enterprise, options such as data residency and custom retention.
Who owns the text ChatGPT writes for me?
Under OpenAI’s terms of use for the UK and Europe, you keep ownership of what you enter and own the output, to the extent the law allows. The same terms note that output may not be unique, and other users may receive similar text. So ownership alone does not make a page original.
Is ChatGPT the same as GPT?
No. GPT is the name OpenAI uses for its families of language models. ChatGPT is the chat application built on them, with the interface, memory, file handling and safety rules around the model. Developers who build their own tools use the models directly through OpenAI’s API.
Can ChatGPT replace a copywriter or an SEO specialist?
It can take over parts of their work, such as drafts, outlines and variations, and make them faster. It cannot know your customers, your prices, your results or your local market unless someone gives it that information, and it cannot take responsibility for whether a claim is true. Those parts still need a person who knows the business.
