What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI assistant by OpenAI that understands and generates text. Since launching in late 2022, it has become the fastest-growing application ever, with over 200 million weekly users. It is the tool most people start with when learning AI.
What can you do with it?
ChatGPT is an all-rounder. You can use it for virtually anything involving language:
- Write texts — emails, reports, presentations, social media posts
- Summarize — long documents, meeting notes, articles
- Brainstorm — generate ideas for campaigns, project names, strategies
- Analyze — interpret data, evaluate feedback, identify trends
- Code — write, debug, and explain code
- Translate — to and from dozens of languages with context
Who is it for?
ChatGPT is suitable for everyone, but especially valuable if you:
- Do a lot of writing (marketing, communications, management)
- Regularly need to process or summarize information
- Want to quickly test ideas without bothering a colleague
- Want to speed up repetitive tasks
Free vs. paid
| Plan | Price | What you get |
|---|
| Free | Free | GPT-4o mini, basic features |
| Plus | $20/month | GPT-4o, GPT-4.5, more messages, image generation, web browsing |
| Team | $25/user/month | Everything in Plus + team workspace, admin tools |
| Enterprise | On request | Unlimited usage, SSO, analytics, privacy guarantees |
For most professionals, the free plan is already usable. Plus is worth it if you work with AI daily and want better models.
Strengths
- Low barrier — you can start immediately, no technical knowledge needed
- Broadly applicable — from email to code, from brainstorm to analysis
- Ecosystem — GPTs (custom assistants), plugins, API, large community
- Multimodal — understands text, images and can generate images
- Fast updates — OpenAI continuously rolls out new features
Where does it fall short?
- Sometimes hallucinates — invents sources or facts, always check critical information
- Limited context on free plan — forgets earlier messages in long conversations
- No real-time knowledge — does not know today's news (unless web browsing is enabled)
- Privacy — by default your conversations are used for training (can be turned off in settings)
Tips to get started
- Be specific — "Write a LinkedIn post about AI trends for HR managers" works better than "Write something about AI"
- Give context — tell it who you are, who you are writing for, and what the goal is
- Iterate — ask ChatGPT to adjust the result, make it shorter, or use a different tone
- Use examples — give an example of what you want and ask for something similar