What Is ChatGPT? Google, Siri and Even ChatGPT Are Confused About Its Existence ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a variant of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) and uses powerful language to generate human-like responses

By Paromita Gupta

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Entrepreneur India

What is ChatGPT? As I sat down to do a monthly feature on the new tech on the block, I kept wondering about the technical definition of OpenAI's chat bot.

For the unacquainted, ChatGPT is a chatbot built on a variant of Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) and uses powerful language to generate human-like responses. It also answers your questions, clears doubts and helps in debugging codes to name a few.

So, like any other sane writer, I wanted answers straight from the horse's mouth. No, I did not seek Google's expertise. Rather, I simply asked the software itself "What is ChatGPT?"

It failed to give me an answer. Not once or twice, but close to a dozen times. And every single time it replied with the same set of words "I'm sorry, but I am not aware of a model called ChatGPT. Can you provide more information about it or what you would like to know?"

No, I did not just ask "What is ChatGPT", rather I tried variations of the question such as "Tell me about ChatGPT?", "Do you know about ChatGPT?" and "What does ChatGPT do?" I asked bot three other questions, about Cristiano Ronaldo, OpenAI, and Sam Altman, and it answered correctly and successfully for them.

There came a point in time when I was convinced I had broken ChatGPT. So, I had a colleague ask the same question, "What is ChatGPT?" It failed to provide a clear-concise answer, although this time it recognized GPT and answered for it instead of 'ChatGPT'.

"There is no information available about "ChatGPT". It is possible that you may have intended to ask about "GPT"…" my colleague received a reply.

I became agitated, and hence decided to take the traditional route of "Hey, Siri, tell me about ChatGPT," and it replied "I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that" and on a second try showed me the results for the GBT charger! I tried again on three different Apple phones. One answered and two failed.

Let's take the help of Google Assistant then! It failed to 'understand' the question eight times! Samsung's Bixby, a virtual assistant, understood the question the first time and later failed, whereas Amazon's Alexa was closer to answering my question. I asked thrice, and it answered correctly every time!

By now, I was simply tired of the little experiment and it was time to go back to work. Now, to answer my question of "What is ChatGPT", I ended up seeking questions about the "Google Killer" on the biggest search engine market dominator, Google itself.

Paromita Gupta

Entrepreneur Staff

Features Writer with Entrepreneur India

Covering news and trends in AI and Metaverse segments. An avid book reader running her personal blog on the side. You may reach me at paromita@entrepreneurindia.com. 
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