There is a lot of hype in the IT industry about artificial intelligence (AI) right now and one system in particular that has dominated the media coverage – OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

ChatGPT is a large language model (LLM) designed to provide natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. It has been trained on a massive dataset of text and can generate human-like responses to various queries and prompts, as they are called.

Whilst there are many potential benefits to using ChatGPT in business, there are also some potential risks that should be considered. It is worth understanding the pros and cons of using ChatGPT or any other generative AI/ LLM so that, as a commercial organisation, you can decide if you wish to allow the system to be accessible on your work computers or if it should be restricted.

Unfortunately, this is not a clear-cut decision that we can advise on; it is a business decision whether you allow access to ChatGPT or not, and so must fall with your organisation. However, we can report that some firms have banned staff from using ChatGPT, whilst many are drafting policies on ChatGPT use.

Here are a few key benefits versus risks to help with your decision:

Benefits of ChatGPT in business:

• ChatGPT can be used to assist in generating grammatically correct email responses, this can increase efficiency and reduce response times.
• ChatGPT can assist in generating content for marketing campaigns. It can help with writing product descriptions, social media posts, and other marketing materials.
• Reports and summaries can be generated using ChatGPT; It can quickly analyse data and create reports based on the information provided.
• It can also be used as a translator for the times when speaking to other countries is required.

 Risks of using ChatGPT in the workplace:

• By default, Chat GPT stores all responses in a database hosted by its developer OpenAI, so any sensitive or confidential information will be stored in a database that is out of your control. This raises a potential breach of GDPR if information input into ChatGPT is private or commercially sensitive.
• There is no way to know what OpenAI are doing with the data stored or how good their security is which raises concerns.
• ChatGPT may produce incorrect or inappropriate responses. The system may not always understand the context or intent of the question, which could lead to incorrect or inappropriate responses.
• There is also a risk that ChatGPT cannot replicate the empathy and emotional intelligence that a human customer service representative can provide.
• ChatGPT’s core dataset was only relevant up until the end of 2021 so some answers may be outdated.

With the fast pace of development in generative AI, the risks, and benefits of using ChatGPT for business will change almost daily. Firms will need to make a decisive and well-considered commercial decision about access to, and the use of AI such as ChatGPT.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the impact of generative AI on your organisation, speak with ITSD today.