GPTs 101: A Comprehensive Introduction to Custom AI-Powered Chatbots
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Introduction to GPTs: A Comprehensive Guide
The metoric rise of ChatGPT and the recent GPT Store introduced the world to the term “GPT.”
Generative Pre-trained Transformers, or GPTs, help you harness and customize the power of artificial intelligence (AI). GPTs enable individuals and businesses to use AI consistently and easily, focused on their specific use case. This article will help you:
- Understand the basics of GPTs
- Learn the best use cases for GPTs
- Compare GPT builders like ChatGPT, Chipp, Poe, and Character AI
- Share how to extend the power of GPTs with Chipp
Overview of GPTs in the AI Landscape
GPTs are powerful AI models pre-trained on vast amounts of data and can generate human-like text. ChatGPT is the most common example. GPTs understand and generate coherent and contextually relevant responses, making them invaluable in applications such as chatbots, content creation, and more.
GPTs can be trained on specific tasks or information, such as your own blog posts or company documents. In this way, custom GPTs can be a faster, more consistent way to use AI than logging in to ChatGPT.
Let’s learn why GPTs matter. Then, we’ll dive into essential details about GPTs.
The Importance of GPTs
GPTs are the most common entry point into AI. Learning the basics of GPTs will help you identify the best ways to use AI to work smart and live well, as we often share on FiveMin.AI. Further, by understanding the differences between GPT models and other AI approaches like Assistant's API, you can choose the best way to use this technology for your use case.
GPTs play a significant role in the AI landscape. Learning how to use GPTs, especially when customized for your use case, will save you time and help you improve your output. As one MIT study published in Science shows, using GPTs increases productivity 40% and improves quality 18%, particularly for less skilled, newer, or generally lower performers.
In short, GPTs are a floor raiser. You can increase quality across the board when you build a specific, well-trained GPT.
Let’s decide how to build your GPT in the next section as we explore the differences between building a GPT directly on ChatGPT and building with OpenAI Assistant’s API.
GPT vs. Assistant's API: Understanding the Difference
OpenAI's offering of GPTs and the Assistants API have revolutionized the development and deployment of AI-based applications. Understanding their differences is crucial for developers and businesses looking to harness their capabilities effectively.
Technical Distinctions: Architecture and Functionalities
GPTs created in ChatGPT and the Assistants API are built on similar underlying technology but offer distinct functionalities and architectures.
GPTs built within ChatGPT are specialized versions of ChatGPT that can be customized for various tasks or topics, integrating different instructions, knowledge, and capabilities.
This customization is accessible through a user-friendly interface, allowing both simplicity and complexity in the application as required. The main charm of GPTs lies in their ease of creation (no coding required) and their operation within the ChatGPT environment, making them ideal for tasks ranging from language learning to technical support.
On the other hand, the Assistants API is designed for developers and businesses who wish to bring AI assistants into their own applications.
It provides functionalities like Code Interpreter, File Retrieval, and function calling. A significant feature of the Assistants API is its ability to handle persistent and infinitely long chat history ‘threads’, enabling builders using the Assistants API to manage thread state more efficiently and overcome context window limitations. The Code Interpreter allows the execution of Python code in a sandboxed environment, generating graphs and charts, and processing files with diverse data. File Retrieval augments the assistant with external knowledge, optimized using techniques based on OpenAI's experience with knowledge retrieval in ChatGPT.
Use Case Scenarios: When to Use GPTs vs. Assistant’s API
GPTs are best suited for applications where a simple UI and a non-coding approach are preferred.
Their integration into ChatGPT makes them ideal for Plus and Enterprise users - a paid account is required to use them - who need task-specific AI solutions without bringing the experience into their own applications, business dashboards, or other internal interfaces. They can address many applications but are bound to the ChatGPT ecosystem.
In contrast, the Assistants API is tailored for developers and businesses seeking to incorporate AI assistants into their products or services.
Its flexibility and the wider range available for integration make it suitable for more complex applications, such as natural language-based data analysis apps, embedded AI assistants, or AI-powered customer service solutions. The Assistants API is particularly valuable when there's a need to integrate proprietary domain data or user-provided documents, enhancing the AI assistant with a broader knowledge base and specific functionalities to meet your specific business or organization’s needs.
The choice between GPTs and the Assistants API depends largely on the application’s specific needs, the flexibility required, and the desired level of integration and scalability. Each offers unique advantages that cater to different aspects of AI application development and deployment.Let’s take a look at some best practices when building GPTs.
Best Practices for Utilizing GPTs
GPTs are not just fun to experiment with. They are easy to create. That means you can create GPTs that help you with tasks facing your company or you as a creator.We see GPTs helping in five main ways. GPTs can:
- Enhance productivity
- Improve creativity
- Strengthen strategy
- Generate leads
- Increase sales.
Let’s take a look at how GPTs help in those areas and then show you how to build your GPT.
1. Increasing Productivity
GPTs increase productivity by automating repetitive tasks. GPTs can easily handle routine activities such as data entry, content generation, and customer support. This helps creators streamline their workflows and accomplish more in less time. GPTs can generate high-quality outputs quickly, enabling users to focus on more complex and high-value work. This increased productivity can improve efficiency, faster turnaround times, and higher output quality.
2. Increasing Creativity
GPTs are powerful aids in boosting creativity and innovation. As humans, we often limit our ideas without realizing it and might miss connections between data or ideas. GPTs are great at forcing creators to consider new perspectives and connect disparate ideas. GPTs are creative assistants, helping individuals find fresh solutions to problems.
3. Strengthen Strategy
GPTs can be valuable tools for strategic decision-making. By feeding data into GPTs, users can obtain valuable insights and analysis that inform business strategies, marketing campaigns, and product development plans. Even asking GPTs to identify weak points in an argument or strategy can help uncover new approaches.
GPTs can process large amounts of information and identify patterns and trends that may not be immediately apparent to human users. This information can help businesses make more informed decisions, identify opportunities, and mitigate risks. By leveraging GPTs for strategic analysis, businesses can gain a competitive edge and make data-driven decisions that drive success.
4. Generate Leads
GPTs can be utilized to generate leads and identify potential customers. Using a tool like Chipp, a GPT can be shared with other users. Anyone who uses the GPT becomes a lead, easily integrated with a CRM or marketing automation tool.
By analyzing data and customer profiles, GPTs can also assist in identifying target audiences and craft personalized marketing messages that resonate with potential leads. GPTs can analyze customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history to identify patterns and trends that can inform lead-generation strategies. By leveraging GPTs for lead generation, businesses can identify and engage with potential customers more effectively, leading to increased conversion rates and business growth.
5. Increase Sales
GPTs can play a crucial role in boosting sales by providing personalized recommendations, assisting in customer support, and tailoring marketing messages. GPTs can analyze customer data and preferences to deliver highly targeted product recommendations that align with individual customer needs. Additionally, GPTs can assist in customer support by providing prompt and accurate responses to customer inquiries, enhancing customer satisfaction and driving repeat business.
GPTs can help businesses tailor their marketing messages to specific customer segments, increasing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and driving sales. By leveraging GPTs to understand customer preferences and behaviors, businesses can enhance their sales strategies and achieve higher conversion rates.
GPTs can help businesses internally and externally. Now let’s dive into how to build them.
How to Build a GPT
Now that you know how GPTs can be used, let’s go through the step-by-step process of building a GPT. This includes developing and training it with a prompt to deploying it using different platforms. We will also discuss the long-term operational considerations for maintaining and optimizing GPT performance.
Start with the Prompt - Training Your GPT
The first step in building a GPT is to define a prompt. A prompt is the instructions you give the AI for how to behave.
The prompt can include your specific questions - e.g. write me a blog post - but it should also set the context for how the AI should behave.
To create an effective prompt, you can use the RIPE framework:
- Role: Define the role or objective of the GPT. What specific task or problem do you want it to address?
- Inquiry: Craft a clear, concise question or prompt that the GPT will respond to.
- Parameters: Specify any additional parameters or constraints for the GPT, such as word count or formatting requirements.
- Example: Provide an example or demonstration of the desired output to help the GPT understand the expected result.
This video shows the RIPE framework in action to help you create prompts to write grants.
Testing Prompts in a GPT
A well-designed prompt helps the GPT generate accurate and relevant responses.
The best way to create better prompts is to experiment! You can create a prompt, test your GPT, and then edit the prompt based on the results.
You can also save time by learning from the prompts of others. Chipp offers a Prompt Library here where you can copy and paste prompts for specific use cases. Then, just edit the prompt to fit your needs. For example, this tutorial video shows how to use this prompt to create projects in a classroom.
Use Your Prompt to Build a GPT on ChatGPT
ChatGPT is the OG and the most popular platform for building GPTs.
There are a few benefits to ChatGPT:
- Easy to build
- Integrated with your ChatGPT Plus account
- Can share through the GPT store (eventually with revenue share options)
- Can add files to train you GPT
- No cost for usage outside of your monthly subscription
There are downsides to using ChatGPT, such as:
- Unable to brand your GPT
- Cannot integrate your GPT on other websites
- No visibility into who is using your app
- Only paying ChatGPT users can use your app
- OpenAI will use your GPT for training future models
To build a GPT on ChatGPT, follow this general guide and this specific quick walk-through:
ChatGPT provides an intuitive interface for training and interacting with your GPT, making it an excellent choice for beginners.
Sharing Your GPT in the GPT Store
OpenAI launched the GPT store January 10th, 2024. The store is way to distribute GPTs to paid OpenAI users, helping them find other GPTs.
This is helpful as a GPT Plus user because you can use GPTs without having to build them.
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The GPTs in the store are all built directly on ChatGPT so they have the same advantages and disadvantages of ChatGPT.
Namely:
- Easy to build
- Quick to share
- No control over branding
- Unable to generate leads or data from the GPTS
Here is one of the most popular GPTs, AI PDF, which summarizes PDFs.
The GPT Store and ChatGPT is a great option if you are paying for ChatGPT and are not looking to brand, generate leads, or monetize your GPT. Revenue sharing is expected in the near future, but, as of now, it doesn’t look liek there is much freedom in pricing and selling GPTs.
Use Your Prompt to Build a GPT on Chipp
Chipp allows you to build, brand, share, and sell GPTs.
Chipp is built on top of the OpenAI Assistant’s API, providing the functionality of ChatGPT with more customization options, such as embedding on other websites and enabling use by people who are not paying for ChatGPT.
Chipp allows you to:
- Brand your GPT
- Embed your GPT on any website
- Track who is using your app and connect to email marketing tools to generate leads
- Sell GPTs based on a per-use or subscription basis
- Easily create GPTs using the prompt library with complete examples
- Create GPTs without data being used for training.
The downsides to Chipp are:
- Does not offer ChatGPT4V to analyze photos
- Existing GPTs have to be copied and pasted onto Chipp
- Not integrated into your ChatGPT account
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Examples of Chipp Chats
Chipp calls their AI chats, Chipp Chats. These Chipp Chats are most commonly used to:
- Generate leads for a business
- Provide information about a business’ products and services
- Offer as a stand alone product
Let’s look at each of these in action.
Generating Leads
The Experience Institute uses Chipp to showcase their executive education training sessions with their Chipp Chat, Zeze. It uses their past sessions as training so it reflects their voice and knowledge.
Product Information
US Health Testing embeds a Chipp Chat to help clients figure out which test is right for them.
Selling GPTs
Codify Pro built a Chipp Chat to help with medical coding. Every user gets 50 free uses and then pays for additional access.
Building GPTs on Chipp
To build a GPT on Chipp, follow these steps:
- Access the Chipp platform and create a new GPT project.
- Import your prompt and configure the project settings, such as response length and temperature.
- Train your GPT using the provided tools and monitor its performance.
- Once trained, you can interact with your GPT through Chipp and utilize its capabilities.
Chipp offers advanced customization options and control over your GPT's behavior, making it suitable for more specialized use cases.
Let’s look at this tutorial to learn to build with Chipp. We will create the same as above but build it on Chipp.
Use Your Prompt to Build a GPT with the OpenAI Assistant's API
The OpenAI Assistant's API allows you to integrate GPT functionality into your own applications or platforms. To build a GPT using the OpenAI Assistant's API, follow these steps. This examples shows how to build a Financial Modeling tool with the Assistant’s API:
The OpenAI Assistant's API provides flexibility and scalability, enabling you to incorporate GPT capabilities seamlessly into your existing infrastructure.
Other GPT Builders: Poe, CharacterAI, Delphi
ChatGPT and Chipp are not the only options. Poe, CharacterAI, and Delphi offer functionality very similar to ChatGPT. A big benefit of both Poe and CharacterAI is the ability to build GPTs on the site and offer the GPTs for free to other users.
John Rush summarizes it well:
Performance and Maintenance: Long-Term Operational Considerations
The best GPTs are not built once. Instead, they are continually improved. This includes improving the prompt based on feedback from users and adding functionality as technology improves.
Here are a few things to consider to keep your GPT performing well:
- Data: Continuously update and refine your training data to ensure the GPT stays relevant and accurate. Bonus points for connecting live data into your GPT using tools like Zapier so it is constantly evolving with your knowledge.
- Fine-tuning: Periodically fine-tune your GPT based on user feedback and evolving requirements. Often sharing examples in your prompt will help improve outputs.
- Security: Implement proper security measures to protect user data and ensure data privacy. Recognize that building on ChatGPT means your data may be used for training their models.
- Scalability: Plan for scalability and resource allocation as the usage and demand for your GPT grow. If using the Assistant’s API, this will require an updated billing option and alerts when your credits are running low.
- Monitoring: Regularly monitor the performance and behavior of your GPT to identify and address any issues promptly. Often focusing a GPT on specific use cases will perform best.
By prioritizing performance and maintenance, you can ensure that your GPT continues to deliver high-quality results and meets the evolving needs of your users.
Take Advantage of the Power of GPTs
GPTs bring the power of AI to your workflow. While AI is the hot new thing, it won’t help you unless you integrate it into a sustainable process. GPTs are perfect for this.
Build GPTs that solve your specific problems. Then integrate the GPTs so everyone on your team can follow a consistent process. This will help you increase efficiency and improve your output.
By following the steps outlined in this guide, you can create a custom GPT tailored to your specific needs and leverage its capabilities effectively. Bookmark and share this article as we will keep it updated with the latest developments in the world of GPTs.
References and Further Reading
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