It’s no secret that ChatGPT opens up a lot of new opportunities for businesses. 

It can improve their operations by allowing them to automate certain tasks or generating content at scale. But that doesn’t mean that all businesses should use the technology, and it doesn’t mean all businesses are doing so in the best way possible. 

In this article, we’ll discuss both the negative and positive sides of ChatGPT application in business and provide some tips on how to use it more responsibly.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) developed by Open AI that has been trained on a massive dataset of text from the internet. 

It uses deep learning techniques to understand and generate natural language responses to user inputs, like questions or prompts. This means it can have conversations with people in a way that sounds natural and similar to how humans talk to each other. To maximize its efficiency, it's important to know how to write better prompts.

Thanks to its human-like interactions and capacity of 175 billion parameters, ChatGPT is a powerful tool for businesses. 

ChatGPT Uses in Business

We’ve already talked about how you can use ChatGPT in your business in a previous article on what is ChatGPT, but let’s briefly go over it again. 

Some of the main applications of this technology in business are:

• Customer Service: ChatGPT allows you to create a chatbot that can handle basic customer requests like answering FAQs, offering product recommendations, and helping customers troubleshoot common issues. A chatbot can cover most of this, but with an added layer of AI it can provide a better understanding of what customers want. 
• Sales: ChatGPT can help boost sales by assisting your sales team in tasks such as providing them with relevant information about your products or services in a quick and effective way or helping with lead qualification.
• Marketing: ChatGPT’s capability of generating different kinds of texts and summarizing existing pieces of content make it a powerful asset for marketers. It can help in daily tasks like creating targeted content for marketing campaigns, writing blog articles, suggesting headlines and CTAs, among others. It frees up 
• R&D: ChatGPT can analyze larger amounts of data faster than if your R&D team were to do it by hand. It can be a useful tool in conducting research and identifying trends and areas that need improvement in your company, product, and/or service. 

While for some internal tasks, your team members can resort to ChatGPT to complete them — for example, marketers asking it to create copy for a social media post — for other applications of this technology, you’ll need to use the OpenAI API. 

But what are the differences between them?

Both operate on the same underlying technology and use similar generative AI models. However, ChatGPT is designed for use by the general public, while the API is more oriented towards developers who want to experiment with other of OpenAI’s models beyond only GPT-3. 

What’s more, ChatGPT — as the name suggests — is specifically designed for conversational applications like chatbots or virtual assistants. It can also only be accessed through specific platforms or applications. On the other hand, the API is a general-purpose language model that can be used for more than conversational AI applications. And it can be accessed by anyone with a valid API key. 

Finally, in terms of use cases, ChatGPT is meant to perform tasks like the ones we’ve already mentioned (writing text, synthesizing information, analyzing data, etc.) The API, however, is more intended for testing out different machine learning models, training new ones, and integrating AI into other applications. 

Positive Implications of ChatGPT Use

We’re already seen you can use ChatGPT across different business areas. If used correctly, it can produce a lot of positive implications for your business. 

Increased Employee Efficiency

Whether you’re using GPT technology to build a customer service chatbot or if you’re marketers are using ChatGPT to help them write copy, at the end of the day, what is is automating repetitive tasks. And by automating these tasks, businesses can free up time and resources, and allow employees to focus on more important tasks that require human input.

Improved Customer Experience

With ChatGPT, businesses develop and deploy complex AI-based chatbots that can answer FAQs, offer product recommendations, and help customers troubleshoot common issues. Not just that, but like any chatbot, they're available 24/7. 

ChatGPT can also provide personalized recommendations and suggestions, making the customer experience more engaging and enjoyable.

All this can help you improve customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

Enhanced Marketing Strategies

I've already mentioned that ChatGPT can help marketers generate all types of content, from social media and campaigns copy, to blog articles and email replies. 

It also can analyze customer data much faster, which can help your marketing team develop more targeted and effective marketing strategies. 

Competitive Advantage

In the end, by incorporating ChatGPT into their different operations, businesses can gain a competitive advantage.

They can offer faster and more personalized support to their customers, develop more effective marketing strategies, and automate routine tasks. All of these can lead to increased customer and employee satisfaction and, ultimately, result in more revenue for the company. 

Negative Implications of ChatGPT Use

Unfortunately, the technology that allows you to do so much doesn’t come without its negative side, too. 

There’s concern surrounding AI as a whole, and recently, in this open letter, many people called for AI labs to put the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4 on hold for at least six months. 

According to the letter’s signatories, “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose a danger to society and humanity.” While it’s almost certain your business use of GPT-based technology won’t doom humankind, it still poses certain risks.

Inaccurate or Harmful Information

The ChatGPT model uses a database with information up to 2021. It can't access real-time data, which means that any date-sensitive question or prompt you type into the chat will produce an innacurate response. 

Unless you train it for it specifically, ChatGPT will not have a built-in "I don't know" reply. What that does is make it answer anything very confidently, even though the information provided might be incorrect. 

In the example above, there's really no harm in ChatGPT not knowing the correct answer. However, if you are using it for customer-facing tasks such as answering common questions or product recommendation, it might end up giving customers wrong answers. 

For example, a customer might ask ChatGPT a question about one of your products, whether it's a specific feature or the price. If it's a product launched after 2021, ChatGPT won't have that information in its database, but it will still produce a reply. To do that, it could look for a similar product offered by one of your competitors or for the price of another product you sell. 

When it came down to the customer wanting to finish the purchase, they would notice it wouldn't add up with the information ChatGPT provided, which will result in a negative experience. 

Bias

An AI is only as good as the data it is trained on, and ChatGPT is no different. If the data it learns from is biased in any way — whether the bias is related to gender identity, ethnicity, religion, or other — the AI will produce biased results.

Now, ChatGPT is trained, in part, on a large dataset of text sourced from the internet, which, as a rule of thumb, isn’t the safest, most unbiased place in the world, especially if we look at social media or message boards. If these biases are not addressed, they can be perpetuated by ChatGPT's responses, leading to further issues for businesses.

So, if you’re using ChatGPT, you should go over the results of its replies carefully before using them. And if you’re using the OpenAI API to further train other models, you need to be careful to ensure the data you’re using is representative and unbiased. 

You don’t want to risk tarnishing your business's reputation because of a biased response produced by an AI. 

Limited Understanding

While ChatGPT can generate human-like responses, it may not always understand the context of a given question or prompt, which can lead to inaccurate replies. In turn, it can damage your business's reputation and your relationships with your customers. 

For example, ChatGPT may not be able to provide niche information such as legal advice, which can be a liability for businesses that rely on it for customer support. Say you have a customer complaining about a refund, mentioning their country's laws as grounds to be entitled to that refund. ChatGPT probably wouldn't have all the information necessary to help in this situation, or it could provide innacurate information like mentioned in a previous section. 

Privacy Concerns

While ChatGPT itself does not collect or store personal data, user messages may still be stored in the system’s logs to improve the model’s performance. Depending on the interaction, this data may include personal or private information, which raises concerns about data privacy. 

In addition to that, as the name implies, OpenAI is an open platform that’s available to millions of users all over the world, which, in turn, makes it very attractive for hackers. 

If you’re using ChatGPT or the API for your business operations, you could become liable if any of your customers’ data would somehow be made public through interactions with the chat. So, you need to be careful in how you handle data around ChatGPT so as not to damage your relationship with your customers and the trust they put in your business.

Responsible Use of ChatGPT

So, based on the negative side of ChatGPT and the risks it may pose to your business, how can you use it responsibly?

Let’s address a few of the possible problems mentioned in the section above. 

Ensure Information Accuracy

As we talked about, ChatGPT’s responses may not always be accurate. This means businesses need to ensure that ChatGPT’s replies are reviewed and validated by humans to guarantee their accuracy. 

Some of the ways to achieve this are human review of ChatGPT’s responses, regularly test and iterate the chat’s responses for accuracy, and provide feedback to OpenAI to improve the technology’s accuracy in the long run.

Address Bias

One of the most important aspects of responsible use of ChatGPT is addressing bias. As I mentioned earlier, ChatGPT is trained largely on text sourced from the internet, which we know can contain biases. For that reason, business should try to identify and address these biases to ensure they're using ChatGPT provide fair and accurate replies. 

If they’re using the API, businesses can ensure their training data is diverse and inclusive. They should also test ChatGPT’s replies regularly for biases, and use human oversight to keep responses appropriate. 

Protect Customer Privacy

Another of the main concerns surrounding the use of ChatGPT in business is protecting customer privacy. 

To keep their customers’ trust and protect their privacy, businesses need to be transparent regarding how ChatGPT might use their data. There must be a clear communication of a business’s privacy policy, as well as an attempt to only collect user data for specific purposes. And businesses should have security measures in place to protect their users’ data every step of the way. 

Use ChatGPT *Only* for Appropriate Purposes

It should go without saying that businesses should only use ChaGPT for appropriate purposes, and not towards any malicious activities such as spreading misinformation. 

Since ChatGPT can be accessed by anyone in a company, businesses can aim to develop internal guidelines for how employees should use the tool, regularly review employee usage of the tool, and provide training on the responsible use of ChatGPT. 

Examples of ChatGPT Usage by Different Businesses

Learning about the theory is great, and it’s important before you start using any technology. But learning by example is also important, so let’s have a look at some of the businesses that are already using GPT technology in their operations. 

Landbot

Not to toot my own horn, but the product we’ve been developing with GPT-like technology — Landbot AI — is pretty amazing. 

Landbot AI is a range of beta features, integrations, and components that bring the power of AI to our no-code builder. 

You can use our GPT-3 integration to build the ultimate FAQ chatbot, or use our Text-to-Bot feature to write a prompt describing what you want your chatbot to do (ask for contact information or make appointments, for example), and Landbot AI will generate the chatbot template for you. You should be as descriptive as you can in the prompt, and even include the tone of voice you’d like the chatbot to use, so that the result meets your expectations and needs as much as possible. 

Here is the Text-to-Bot feature in action:

Duolingo

Duolingo, the language learning platform and most famous owl on TikTok, has recently launched a new feature that uses the OpenAI API and leverages the power of GPT-4. 

It’s called Duolingo Max, and it’s a subscription tier that gives users access to two new, AI-based features — Explain My Answer and Roleplay. 

The first lets users learn more about an answer they gave, whether it was correct or not, by tapping a button and entering a chat with Duo. It will then give them a simple explanation of why their answer was right or wrong. 

The second new feature, Roleplay, allows users to practice their conversation skills by chatting with AI-based characters on the app. After the interaction, they get feedback on the accuracy and complexity of their responses, as well as tips for future conversations.

Snapchat

Snapchat, the multimedia instant messaging app, has recently launched its very own chatbot powered by ChatGPT. 

The new feature, called My AI, can answer user questions, offer recommendations, and write pieces of content by request. Users can give this AI assistant a name and even design a custom avatar for it. 

Despite how innocent the premise sounds, concerns quickly arose surrounding Snapchat’s new feature, especially due to the platform being popular among young and even underage users. 

Although Snapchat has claimed that “about 99.5% of My AI responses conform to its community guidelines,” it has been shown to chat with supposedly underaged users about drinking and ways to cover up the smell of alcohol.

Conclusion

ChatGPT can be a powerful tool for business, but as the Snapchat example shows, it must be used responsibly and carefully. 

It’s understandable that businesses would want to jump on the bandwagon of ChatGPT, AI, and all the possibilities it unlocks. But as with anything in life, it’s not worth trying to be part of a trend just for the sake of participating. 

Instead, businesses need to ensure they’re addressing all possible concerns surrounding the technology and make an effort to mitigate them. Only then will the technology enhance their operations and become a useful asset. 

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