OpenAI’s natural language processing tool, ChatGPT, has become a trending topic among tech enthusiasts and businesspeople alike.

It’s free to the public, although a paid subscription version, ChatGPT Plus, gives you unfettered access to the tool, along with any new features. Because it’s still in its research phase, it’s a work in progress. Nevertheless, it’s a time-saving tool that seems to be perfect for busy entrepreneurs.

ChatGPT can make everything from budgeting and coding to strategy and research easier – but what are some of the perils of using it, and how can you be sure you’re using it to maximum efficiency?

Good features, bad features

Like anything new and designed to be human-like, the user-friendly chatbot comes with both advantages and flaws.

As a small-business owner, you’ll appreciate its ability to answer any question you ask, draft a business plan, brainstorm ideas, field customer-service enquiries and help you market your products.

However, it has been “trained” on the internet, where the quality of content varies greatly. ChatGPT regards sources such as peer-reviewed scientific papers and biased or uninformed blog posts as roughly equivalent, and it won’t hesitate to draw on imperfect data sources when generating content.

For this reason, everything it tosses out blithely should be rigorously fact-checked, since it often fabricates information, and has even been known to lie about it. Although this will change as the tool evolves, it’s a good rule of thumb to consider all “facts” as suspect unless verified.

If you’re using ChatGPT to write on your behalf, you need to learn how to ask better questions to get more useful answers. For example, a generic proposal that sounds like dozens of others won’t convince a funder to invest in your business – but a more considered presentation may find favour. The bottom line? The more targeted your prompt, the more precise the output.

What are the ethical considerations?

Unless you’ve subscribed to ChatGPT Plus, everything you input while using the tool will be saved in cloud storage and added to the learning model, so don’t share any proprietary information about your (or other) businesses. Even when using the premium version and switching that off, your data may be held for up to 30 days.

The idea is that content contributed to ChatGPT will help the bot to learn, especially as its training data doesn’t extend beyond 2021. However, if you don’t want someone else accessing your intellectual property, be cautious about what you share.

Another potential ethical hazard is copyright.

Because ChatGPT draws on internet data indiscriminately, it may inadvertently lead you to quote works under copyright. This presents a legal dilemma – as does the idea that ChatGPT content itself may be protected.

While it’s unclear who has the rights to the content, it’s worth referencing ChatGPT as a source if you used it for any writing. It may be wise to say “Written by John Smith with the help of ChatGPT” if quoting content generated by the bot.

How to use ChatGPT in your business

Before looking into using ChatGPT in your business, you should understand that it can’t solve all your problems. Not everything can be done with ChatGPT, and not everything should be done with it, so you need to think about where it makes sense for you to use it.

It can be handy when it comes to brainstorming and copywriting, but less so when you need to perform complex tasks, such as analysing finance trends over a period of time.

Using ChatGPT with other tools may allow you to automate some of your day-to-day tasks, such as emailing, building workflows, or summarising important information. But remember that you’ll still need to manage your own finances and run your business yourself.

It’s easier to perform a comparative search of your competitors’ websites, or include citations in reference papers, now that Bing has become the default search engine of ChatGPT. Microsoft, a major investor in ChatGPT, is considering making ChatGPT, Bing Chat and Microsoft’s Copilot platform interoperable, compounding the power of these nascent technologies.

The internet is full of helpful information about how to get the most out of ChatGPT, but it pays to jump in and start experimenting with the bot yourself.

A good starting point might be to prompt ChatGPT to tell you how it can make your small business operate more efficiently. Just remember to use a targeted prompt, such as “As an expert in entrepreneurship, can you tell me which aspects of AI I should use to improve operational efficiency in my small business?”

Using ChatGPT smartly will be like using the services of a highly paid consultant, with half the verbosity. It will speed up your processes – but don’t forget to fact-check!