Looking Back

We started this course with an introduction to generative AI and its various applications. We explored how generative AI involves not only text but also images, video, and music.

We then moved on to discuss the company that brought Generative AI to its greatest popularity: OpenAI. Founded in 2015, OpenAI mainly focuses its research on a particular type of generative model: generative pre-trained transformers (GPT). Then, in November 2022, OpenAI released ChatGPT, a free web app for a conversational assistant powered by GPT models. It gained immense popularity, reaching 1 million users in just five days.

Applications and impact of ChatGPT

• ChatGPT has been a game-changer. Its impact on daily productivity and various industry domains is huge. Before dwelling on the ways ChatGPT could impact those areas, we learned how to set up and start using a ChatGPT account. We also learned how to properly design the most important element when using generative models, such as ChatGPT: the prompt.

• Prompts are the user’s input, nothing more than instructions in natural languages. Designing prompts is a pivotal step to getting the maximum value from your generative models, to the point where prompt engineering has become a new domain of study.

• Once we became familiar with ChatGPT and prompt design, we finally got concrete examples of how ChatGPT can boost your daily productivity and become your daily assistant. From email generation to improving your writing skills, we saw how many activities can be improved thanks to the generative power of ChatGPT.

• But we didn’t stop there. We saw how ChatGPT can boost not only daily productivity but also domain-specific activities: for developers, from code generation and optimization to interpreting machine learning models; for marketers, from new product development to improving Search Engine Optimization (SEO); and for researchers, from experiment design to the generation of a presentation based on a study.