If you want to use the most popular AI chatbot available, we’ll walk you through how to get started with ChatGPT, get the most out of it, and learn what the latest updates entail.
OpenAI’s ChatGPT unleashed an artificial intelligence (AI) movement when it rolled out last fall. Since then, the AI chatbot has dominated headlines and preoccupied the minds of those running Twitter, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, inspiring them to create their own generative AI projects.
ChatGPT is certainly not overrated; users can come up with creative ideas for prompts, such as asking questions in search of funny answers, creating content, improving their writing or Excel skills, finding and correcting a bug in code, or summarizing a book.
Across all these areas, one thing is abundantly clear: what makes this AI tool remarkable isn’t how innovative it is but how great it is at generating text and how accessible and easy it is to use. ChatGPT can hold conversational text interactions with users, which feel as natural as conversing with a well-informed person (who sometimes hallucinates).
Though ChatGPT only launched in November, it gained 100 million users by January, quickly becoming the fastest-growing ‘app’ of all time, surpassing TikTok — until Threads dethroned it in July. ChatGPT is so popular and high-performing that some wonder if the AI chatbot could replace programmers, writers, and even doctors and how it could revolutionize different industries.
1. Go to chat.openai.com and log in or register
Start by going to chat.openai.com and then use an email address or a Google or Microsoft account to sign up. You need to create an account on the OpenAI website to log in and access ChatGPT, but it is free.
If you’ve never created an account, click ‘Sign up’ and follow the prompts to enter your information. OpenAI does require a valid phone number for verification to create an account on its website.
If you haven’t created an account, click on ‘Sign up’. Otherwise, log in with your OpenAI credentials.
2. Accept the disclaimers from ChatGPT
Next, you’ll see a few disclaimers before you can chat with the AI chatbot. Read and accept them one by one to enter the chat.
The terms will come up in three stages, click Next on the first two and Done on the last one.
3. Learn how to use ChatGPT
Once you’ve logged in to your OpenAI account on the ChatGPT side of the website, it’s time to get to know the AI tool’s window. Here’s a breakdown of what you will see, with the image below as an example:
The numbered areas are explained above.
4. Start writing your prompts and questions
Now you know how to log in to and access ChatGPT, it’s time to get started. You can ask the language model any burning questions you might have and see what answers you get — the possibilities are, quite literally, endless. ChatGPT is a tool that can be applied in endless projects, from software development to writing to translations, and so much more.
Type in any ChatGPT prompts in the text bar at the bottom of the page and press enter to submit your questions. The AI chatbot will then generate text to provide helpful answers to your queries.
Start writing in the text box at the bottom of the page. Then, press enter to submit your prompt.
ChatGPT can generate responses to prompts (a feature that could eventually challenge search engines) that are enough to become an essential tool for content generation, from writing essays to summarizing a book for you. Still, it can also write and fix code, make calculations, help you compile your resume, write Excel formulas, translate information, and more.
The better the prompt, the better the response will be. Here are examples of prompts you could start with:
ChatGPT is a large language model that uses artificial intelligence to hold text conversations with users.
These conversations can feel as natural as if you were asking someone questions.
