It may be something you’ve heard about already, but haven’t yet dived into find out more, but ChatGPT is making waves in the way it creates content for blogs, chatbots and even musical composition.
So, what is it and how could ChatGPT help you with your own challenges as an online retailer?
GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer), is an artificial intelligence (AI) language model developed in 2018 by OpenAI. The first version of GPT, called GPT-1, was trained on a dataset of web pages and books, and was able to generate coherent and realistic text in response to various prompts.
In 2019, OpenAI released GPT-2, a significant improvement over the first version and trained on a massive dataset of over 8 million web pages. It was able to generate highly coherent and realistic text that was difficult to distinguish from human writing.
In 2020, OpenAI released GPT-3, which uses an even larger dataset of over 45 terabytes of text to generate highly coherent and sophisticated text in a variety of styles and genres.
Since its introduction, ChatGPT has been used in a wide range of applications, including chatbots, language translation, content creation, and even musical composition and its ability to generate human-like text is turning heads and it’s becoming a valuable tool for businesses, researchers, and developers who are using AI.
Is ChatGPT for retailers?
As reported in Modern Retail, ChatGPT has, for now, mostly been used by larger, tech-driven corporations like Amazon and Shopify. However, some start-ups are also leveraging the interest in ChatGPT in their marketing campaigns. Knife brand Misen, for example, mentioned the AI tool in a recent email campaign.
So how can ChatGPT impact online retailers? Well, there are several ways it might be of benefit to online retailers.
- Customer Support: Online retailers can use ChatGPT to improve their customer service by integrating it with their chatbots or live chat systems. ChatGPT can help retailers answer customer queries and provide support 24/7, which could create higher customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Product recommendations: ChatGPT can help provide personalized product recommendations to their customers based on their preferences, past purchase history, and other relevant data. This can lead to higher conversion rates and increased sales.
- Content creation: ChatGPT could help retailers create content such as product descriptions, blog posts, and social media updates. This can save retailers time and resources and make sure their content is engaging and relevant to their target audience.
- Market research: online retailers conducting market research could have customer feedback and social media conversations analysed by ChatGPT. This can help identify trends, understand customer preferences, and make data-driven decisions.
Is ChatGPT better than a human?
While ChatGPT is capable of generating impressively coherent and realistic text, it is still an AI language model and as such, it is not better than a human… yet.
To do what it seems to do so well, ChatGPT uses a massive dataset of text, and statistical patterns and machine learning algorithms to generate responses. While this gives it the ability to create text that is difficult to distinguish from human writing, it lacks creativity, emotion, and subjective experiences that are unique to human beings.
This means that it doesn’t always hit the mark. For example, when responding to live questions from a customer, it may not be able to provide the exact answers needed as it won’t take into consideration the emotion behind a customer’s questions or maybe even typos and local colloquialisms.
There is also the issue that ChatGPT could generate biased or inaccurate responses due to incomplete or misleading information in its training data. Human beings on the other hand can use their judgment and reasoning alongside critical thinking to make informed decisions in their responses.
That being said, ChatGPT can process and analyse vast amounts of information quickly and accurately, as well as performing repetitive tasks without getting tired or making mistakes.
So, is an AI model responding on your behalf right for you and your online business? Well, much of that depends on whether you’re truly looking for personal interactions with your customers, or if there are parts of your customers’ journey on your site that could be automated.
It’s likely these stages of the customer journey will be frequently asked questions and other day-to-day communications for the time being, but that might not be for long… who knows what AI evolutions will bring?
