Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence that creates new and original content, like art, music, or text, by learning patterns from existing data. It uses complex algorithms and models to generate content that resembles human-created examples. This technology finds applications in art, content creation, data science, fashion, chatbots, and more. However, it's important to remember that generative AI doesn't truly understand or think—it replicates patterns it has learned.
ChatGPT is probably the most popular generative AI tool at this time. ChatGPT is a chatbot that produces human-like text responses to written prompts. While ChatGPT provides very human-like responses, the information it provides may not always be accurate or reliable, so it's a good idea to verify important information from trusted sources.
ChatGPT is trained on vast and varied data from the internet including books, articles, websites, and other written content. While some of the contents of the dataset it is trained on is publicly available, the full extent of the dataset is unknown.
What we DO know is that the free version of ChatGPT is trained on data from April 2023 and earlier, which means when looking for text with information on current events, ChatGPT will not provide accurate information. The paid version of ChatGPT is trained on data through June 2024, but can fetch current information from the internet.
Because ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are trained on data that may be biased, outdated, or incorrect, it is imperative that we critically evaluate the information contained in their outputs. Using these strategies will help you evaluate the information: