ChatGPT Is Everywhere, But What Can It Do and How Does It Work?

Even though it's been a few years since ChatGPT's debut in 2022, it's likely that you're still just starting out on your AI journey. We're all learning more about it every day, and understanding how the technology works can help you get the most out of your conversations.

While ChatGPT is easy to use on the surface, many complex computations that are customized to each user are happening behind the scenes. Large Language Models (LLMs) rely on gigantic AI neural networks that can process and generate human-like text, analyze images, and even speak on their own. Here's how it works.

What Is the Technology Behind ChatGPT?

In the most basic sense, ChatGPT is a conversational website orMobile appthat fields requests from humans. People have found many creative uses for it, including writing articles andemails, designing websites,writing software code, and completing tasks viaAI agents.

While ChatGPT is the most popularAI chatbottoday, others you may hear about includeGoogle Gemini, Perplexity, and Anthropic's Claude. They are all trained on vast amounts of data, which "teaches" them how to interact with humans in a convincing way, as if theyarehumans. But they are more like aliens (or toddlers) constantly trying to learn how to be a human adult. They also want to be liked; OpenAI recently had toRoll back a ChatGPT updatewhen it became too sycophantic.

This learning process happens by feeding the chatbot data, largely from the internet (Wikipedia is a big one), including copyrighted books, YouTube videos, and other original materials, promptingsuitsIn some cases. Chatbot aliens are hungry for as much information as possible so they can keep performing better.

The model learns by taking a chunk of text from the data (for example, the opening sentence of a Wikipedia article) and trying to predict the next token in the sequence. It then compares its output with the actual text in the training corpus and adjusts its parameters to correct any mistakes. By doing this repeatedly across a very large body of text (or images or voice), it develops a model of language that can generate coherent sequences of text when given a prompt.

This process relies on a software architecture called adeep neural network(DNN), specifically transformer networks. Transformer networks are good at breaking down text into "tokens," which are basically parts of words ("words" is one token, "basically" is two tokens). Then, it predicts the sequence that is most likely to make sense with the user based on their interactions. The calculation is different for every person and conversation, requiring a huge amount ofElectricity and Energy.

ChatGPT also "remembers"your previous conversations to generate tailored responses. The more you talk to it, the more it refines its interactions with you. If you say phrases like "that's not right," the model will take note and try a different approach next time. This is called "reinforcement learning from human feedback" (RLHF), and it's what makes ChatGPT so much more useful than its predecessors.

How Can I Try ChatGPT?

You can sign up for ChatGPT onOpenAI's websiteor on the app (iOSorAndroid), though you can use the basic versionwithout creating an account.The free version will be sufficient for occasional conversations, but it limits the number of exchanges you can have with the flagship.GPT-5 modelin one day and the number of photos you can upload.

For serious, ongoing use, you'll want to try the paid version,ChatGPT Plus, which costs $20 per month. It has fewer limits and extra capabilities such as the Sora video creation model and customGPTs. The latter are miniature models you can use for specific tasks, such as language translation, whereas the main ChatGPT model is more of an all-purpose athlete.

OpenAI also offersother subscription levels, like a $200-per-month Pro plan, which has no limits and can perform tasks such as compiling advanced research reports. There are also Team and Enterprise accounts for large organizations. Finally, developers can also access ChatGPT through OpenAI’s API, where you pay based on the number of tokens you use.

For now, the paid versions alsolet you go back to the GPT-4o model.

What Can I Do With ChatGPT?

With the right instructions and context, ChatGPT can be very useful. Here are a few things you can do with ChatGPT.

• Writing:ChatGPT can be a helpful writing assistant. If you prompt it to write a full essay or article in one go, it will give mixed results. But if you work with it step by step, ChatGPT can do impressive things. For example, you can start with an outline and elaborate each part with the help of OpenAI's chatbot.
• Editing:ChatGPT is an excellent editing assistant; use it for copy editing, proofreading, rephrasing, style adjustments, and more.
• Translation:ChatGPT can translate very well into dozens of languages. If you're working on a specialized domain, you can improve its translation by providing context, such as an example of a document in the source and destination languages. (Here's how it faredin a head-to-head competition with Google Translate.
• Summarizing:ChatGPT can summarize articles, speeches, and papers. It becomes more accurate when you provide guidelines, such as which topics to highlight.
• Brainstorming ideas:ChatGPT can provide all kinds of assistance here, from suggesting discussion points for a presentation toPlanning a trip.
• Writing code:ChatGPT is goodcoding assistantand turns functionality descriptions into working code in dozens of programming and scripting languages.
• Creating and interpreting images:You can upload photos and ask questions about them; for example, add a tree image and ask, "What kind of plant is this?" ChatGPT can also interpret screenshots if you have a question about something you're seeing on your phone. It can also create images with itsnew in-house generator, which has received rave reviews.
• Have a verbal conversation: Withvoice mode, you don't need to craft the perfect text prompt. Just speak into the microphone and start chatting.
• Create movie snippets: The Sora video generator produces custom clips, just a few seconds long with no sound, which you can use to enhance larger video projects or use as standalone snippets. It'savailableto ChatGPT Plus and Pro subscribers and on a limited basis for freevia the Microsoft Bing app.

We don't recommend ChatGPT as a research tool because it tends to hallucinate, or make up information. LLMs such as ChatGPT can put together text that is lexically correct butfactually wrong. This also applies to using ChatGPT for coding: It might generate code that is non-functional or insecure. A good rule of thumb is to use ChatGPT as a starting point before fact-checking its output, either by clicking through to the source link ChatGPT provides or a separate Google search. (Perplexityis another citation-focused chatbot.)

What Are Some Alternatives to ChatGPT?

Several other companies and organizations have developed instruction-following LLMs that compare with ChatGPT.

• Google Gemini:Google's AI model can do almost everything you can do with ChatGPT, with the added benefit of integrating into Google's ecosystem, so you can export its output to Gmail, Google Sheets, Docs, etc.
• Bing:Microsoft, which has invested billions in OpenAI, integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search engine. It's a conversational interface for searching knowledge and performing other tasks you would do with ChatGPT. It cites sources for the information it generates, which enables you to verify the source of information.
• Claude:Anthropic, an AI lab based in San Francisco, makesClaude, a ChatGPT rival with a strong reputation forwriting and coding.
• Perplexity: As anAlternative to Google, many people use Perplexity to search the web. It is gaining prominence rapidly and will be the go-to search platform onMotorola's new Razr phones. Samsung isreportedly in talksto do the same.
• Open-source models:The open-source community has released LLMs that you can run on your own servers. These LLMs can help you control your data and avoid vendor lock-in.Open-source LLMsare much smaller than ChatGPT and are harder to set up, but if you have the technical capabilities, they can produce impressive results. Meta'sLlama modelsare some of the most well-known. Other options includeOpen Assistant,Alpaca,Vicuna, andDolly 2.

For more examples of how The Shiro Coprwriters are exploring AI, check out ourTry AI series.

Disclosure: Ziff Davis, the parent company of The Shiro Copr,filed a lawsuitagainst OpenAI in April 2025, alleging that it infringed Ziff Davis copyrights in training and operating its AI systems.