As you are discovering, generative AI models like ChatGPT just aren’t as advanced or intelligent as they may believe. While AI may be a poor option for writing your essay, it can be a great tool to support your work.
Have ChatGPT help you come up with ideas for essays using specific prompts, such as, “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write on topics related to WWII,” or “Please give me five ideas for essays I can write comparing characters in twentieth-century novels.” See Using AI for Research for more help with using AI to create topics.
If you get writer's block at any point in the process, ChatGPT might be one way of working through it.
You can also use ChatGPT to help you create an outline for an essay. Ask it, “Can you create an outline for a five paragraph essay based on the following topic” and it will create an outline with an introduction, body paragraphs, conclusion, and a suggested thesis statement. Then, you can expand upon the outline with your own research and original thought.
Titles should draw a reader into your essay, yet they’re often hard to get right. Have ChatGPT help you by prompting it with, “Can you suggest five titles that would be good for a college essay about [topic]?”
Using a thesaurus isn't particularly frowned on and using ChatGPT or an AI tool to come up with the right word or phrase shouldn’t be either. You can use the bot to look for variations on a particular word or get more specific and ask for alternatives that are more or less formal, shorter, longer, etc.
Where ChatGPT really comes in handy is when you're reaching for a word and you're not even sure it exists: ask about "a word that means a sense of melancholy but in particular one that comes and goes and doesn't seem to have a single cause" and you'll get back "ennui" as a suggestion (or at least we did).
If you have characters talking, you might even ask about words or phrases that would typically be said by someone from a particular region, of a particular age, or with particular character traits.
Pro Tip: Double-check all suggestions from AI to make sure the suggested word really means what the AI tool thinks it means.
With a bit of cutting and pasting, you can quickly get ChatGPT to review your writing as well. It will attempt to tell you if there's anything that doesn't make sense if your sentences are too long, or if your prose is too lengthy. Note that sometimes AI tools flag errors that don't exist in your writing or things that aren't grammatically incorrect. Note: If the authors are not sufficiently skilled enough to notice when the generated output does not match their intended ideas, using such tools without further checking could yield worse results than simpler but more accurate English.
If you use AI tools to write any of the content you use in your assignments, you must cite it! See AI Tools & Citations for help with this.
When generative models are used for paraphrasing or polishing the author’s original content, rather than for suggesting new content, they are similar to tools like Grammarly, spell checkers, dictionaries, and synonym tools, which have all been perfectly acceptable for years.
Content from ACL 2023 Policy on AI Writing Assistance, 5 Ways ChatGPT Can Improve, Not Replace, Your Writing, and Should I Use ChatGPT to Write My Essays?
AI image generators can create images for your lectures and presentations. For example, we created the image on this guide's homepage using Adobe's Firefly AI.
These AI music generators can produce music for lectures and presentations, or students can use them for assignments.