Until recently, chatbots were essentially literal machines that refused to work unless given exact commands. But thanks to large language models, we’re now seeing a lot more flexibility in how we interact with computers, and surprisingly, how intelligent they can be as well.

One of the chatbots that’s garnering the most attention lately is ChatGPT, a tool from the tech company OpenAI that uses a machine learning approach to natural language processing. GPT is an acronym for Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and it’s the underlying technology that powers this bot and others like it. While most GPT-powered chatbots use the same basic architecture, each offers a different set of capabilities and can be trained with unique data sets to focus on specific topics.

You can get started with ChatGPT by visiting the official website and filling out a form to create an account. This includes a name, email address, desired password, and an agreement to the terms of service. After submitting the information, you’ll receive an email with verification instructions. Once you’ve verified your identity, you can log in to your new account and navigate to the ChatGPT Plus menu in the left sidebar.

From there, you can choose a topic to train on and customize the language used to describe that topic. Then, ChatGPT Online can prompt the chatbot with questions about that topic, and it will spit out responses. If you like a particular response, you can copy it using the clipboard icon next to the answer. You can also provide feedback on responses, which will help ChatGPT improve and fine-tune future dialogue.

Another great thing about ChatGPT is that it excels at answering math questions, including the types of complex algebraic problems that might be challenging for some students to understand. You can even add custom instructions to your bot, such as reminding it that it’s communicating with an eight-year-old child and that it should use kid-friendly language.

If you want to try something a little more creative, you can ask ChatGPT to summarize a topic or subject for you. It’s an excellent way to quickly get a broad overview of a topic without having to read through lengthy books or articles. It’s also great for creating a Wikipedia page or generating an abbreviated bio of a famous person.

As a bonus, you can even use the tool to generate quizzes for your students. This can be helpful for instructors who need to generate a set of questions for a course or a final exam. This can save you a bit of time and free you up to concentrate on more important aspects of the lesson or class.

While some people might find ChatGPT limited, it’s a powerful and flexible tool that can be used for a variety of applications. And it’s only going to get better, as more and more companies experiment with their own versions of GPT-powered chatbots. Google, for example, is working on a similar chatbot called Google Bard, which is based on its homegrown language model, LaMDA.