In the past year, companies all over the world have jumped at the chance to use ChatGPT, which can be used for a wide range of tasks including writing and making images. This cheat sheet has detailed answers to commonly asked questions about ChatGPT and its competitors. The goal is to give you a good idea of what they can do and how they might be used in different areas.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI robot that was made by OpenAI using the advanced features of GPT-4 technology. GPT, which stands for “generative pre-trained transformer,” means that it can guess how likely it is that words in a string will appear. Basically, it’s a complex language model that learns patterns from very large sets of data that include both spoken and written languages.

ChatGPT doesn’t understand in the same way that humans do, but it’s very good at guessing words based on clues from its training data. It’s like an internet parrot that knows how to string together things that go together naturally. Instead of smart decision-making, all of this is based on chance calculations.

As a way to boost productivity, AI apps like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard can quickly write text, which can save people hours or days of work. Big tech companies like Microsoft and Salesforce have added ChatGPT to their services, which makes search and digital helpers better.

ChatGPT gets its information from a huge part of the internet, and people keep adding to it so that the answers sound natural. The public version can access data up to January 2022. ChatGPT Plus users can access data up to April 2023, giving them more up-to-date information.

Who made ChatGPT?

OpenAI made ChatGPT. OpenAI is a study group that has both for-profit and non-profit parts. When it was first started in 2015, Amazon Web Services, InfoSys, YC Research, and well-known investors like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel gave OpenAI money. Even though Musk has cut ties with the company since then, Microsoft stepped in and invested $10 billion in 2023.

How much does ChatGPT cost?

The basic version of ChatGPT lets you have free conversations. People who pay $20 a month for ChatGPT Plus get extra benefits like faster replies, priority access, and early access to new features and upgrades. As an example, ChatGPT Plus users currently get to use GPT-4, while free-tier users can only use GPT-3.5.

There is a waitlist for developers and groups that don’t already have a contract with OpenAI that want to use the ChatGPT API.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Enterprise in August 2023 as a subscription choice for businesses. Compared to the basic version, it has better protection features and administrative controls. If a business wants to know how much ChatGPT Enterprise costs, they can contact OpenAI’s sales team. Bloomberg says that 260 business clients have signed up for ChatGPT Enterprise as of January 2024.

OpenAI released ChatGPT Team in January 2024, which gave users access to bigger models and a place to work together. Anyone can subscribe for $25 a month if they pay for it all at once, or $30 a month if they pay for it every month.

How to use ChatGPT

It is easy to use the free version of ChatGPT. Just go to OpenAI and make an account. You’ll need to confirm your email address and give your name and phone number. There is a free version called “research preview” that you should know about. If you want to move up to ChatGPT Plus, there is a “upgrade to Plus” button on the home page’s left side.

New ChatGPT Plus users and upgrades were temporarily stopped on November 14, 2023. They could start again on December 13, 2023. Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, said on X (formerly Twitter) that they were fixing problems with GPUs at this time.

ChatGPT has many features for companies, such as helping with coding, making reports and presentations, writing emails, and making content for websites. It can also answer questions and make suggestions, like suggesting books that are related. When Microsoft announced that OpenAI would be built into Word and other parts of the 365 business suite, they showed off these features.

Before, ChatGPT didn’t save details from conversations that had already happened. But as of February 13, both free and Plus users can try out memory tools that let the AI remember chats from the past. In the settings, users can turn off memory controls or tell ChatGPT to forget.

Members of ChatGPT Plus can give custom directions to the AI, which lets them customize its responses to match their needs. Users can say, for example, whether they want material made for business people or third graders. UK and EU users will not be able to use this tool.

ChatGPT app for iOS

On May 18, 2023, OpenAI released the ChatGPT app for iOS, which gave people a free way to use ChatGPT’s conversational features. The app syncs chat history across platforms without any problems and works with Whisper, OpenAI’s open-source speech recognition system. Advanced features powered by GPT-4 are only available to iOS ChatGPT Plus subscribers. They also get early access to new features and faster answer times.

The iOS app was first released in the United States. By May 24, 2023, it would be available in 11 more countries: Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and the UK. In the future, OpenAI wants to bring the app to more countries.

ChatGPT app for Android

OpenAI launched the ChatGPT app for Android users on July 25, 2023. At first, it was only available to people in the US, India, Bangladesh, and Brazil. People can download the app from the Google Play Store. Over the next week, more countries will be able to access it as well.

Browse with Bing

Customers who pay for ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise can now use ChatGPT to answer questions on the Bing search engine. The browsing function was first released in beta and then went live on October 17, 2023.

Subscribed users can just choose “Browse with Bing” from the menu under GPT-4 to go to Bing in ChatGPT. OpenAI hopes to make internet browsing available to all users in the future, even though it’s only available to subscribers right now.

Browse with Bing was temporarily stopped on July 3, 2023, to take safety precautions. It was then brought back in test on September 27, 2023. Since then, OpenAI has made changes, such as following robots.txt instructions and identifying user agents, which lets websites control how ChatGPT interacts with them.

What are ChatGPT’s competitors?

A lot of well-known AI chatbots are competing with ChatGPT. These include Google’s Bard, Baidu’s Ernie, DeepMind’s Sparrow, Meta’s BlenderBot, and more.

Google’s Bard

Google’s Bard is a strong competitor that focuses on writing that sounds natural over answering a lot of questions. Bard is built into Google Search and many other apps by using Google’s Language Model for Dialogue Applications.

Baidu’s Ernie

Even though investors were disappointed with Baidu’s Ernie at first, the robot that will soon be built into the Chinese search engine could be a threat.

DeepMind’s Sparrow

OpenAI competes with DeepMind, an artificial intelligence research laboratory owned by Alphabet. The two organizations are significantly different in terms of their aims. DeepMind focuses more on research and has not yet come out with a public-facing chatbot.

Meta’s Llama 2 and BlenderBot

ChatGPT focuses on making long paragraphs, while Meta’s BlenderBot responds in a short, conversational way. Meta’s Llama 2 and ChatGPT’s GPT-4 engine are also competitors.

Anthropic’s Claude 2

Another entry is Anthropic’s Claude 2, which is billed as a friendly AI assistant that can talk to people in natural language.

X.ai’s Grok

X.ai, which is run by Elon Musk, released Grok, a robot that was trained on the X social media platform and has a smart and rebellious personality.

What about Apple?

Apple is also said to be working on a ChatGPT rival, which will probably use Siri technology. There aren’t many details, but Apple’s CEO gave hints that generative AI might be added to new versions of iOS.

In this highly competitive market, ChatGPT keeps coming up with new ideas and changing to stay at the top of the AI robot world.

The future of AI in business

As we think about ChatGPT’s future, it’s clear that even though it’s smart, it’s still very young. OpenAI knows this and includes disclaimers about inappropriate material and possible mistakes. ChatGPT is very good at organizing words, but it might not be very good at keeping facts correct.

There are also worries about its math skills, with stories saying it is getting worse at things like finding prime numbers. This “drift” is because it’s hard to follow step-by-step directions.

New studies, on the other hand, show that ChatGPT can make writing jobs much more productive. When professionals used ChatGPT for writing, they finished tasks 40% faster and got 18% better ratings from their peers than a control group. This could be helpful, especially for people who aren’t very good at writing.

Researchers have pointed out that the general use of ChatGPT could have both good and bad effects on the workplace and job market.

Investors also keep a close eye on how AI is developing, and stock prices change when new information comes out. Microsoft’s stock went up after the GPT-4 news, but Google’s went down after Bard’s lackluster showing.

ChatGPT’s website traffic went down at first in June 2023, but it still has more users than Microsoft’s Bing.com AI. This shows that people are still interested in chat AI, but it’s still hard to say what will happen in the long run.

As a whole, ChatGPT shows promise, but its path is marked by both progress and problems, so it’s not clear what effect it will have on business in the future.

What’s next for OpenAI?

OpenAI has said that it is not currently training GPT-5, the model that is supposed to replace the current one. According to The Verge, OpenAI CEO Altman had doubts about an earlier open letter that hinted at the development of GPT-5 during a talk at MIT. Altman said the letter was bad because it wasn’t technical enough and didn’t talk about important safety worries about new developments beyond GPT-4.

“We are focusing on improving GPT-4 with additional features that raise important safety concerns that were not adequately addressed in the letter,” Altman said, stressing how important it is for AI developers to think about bigger safety issues.