The field of artificial intelligence (AI) has developed rapidly and surpassed many human capabilities. AI-powered applications such as chatbots, natural language processing and machine learning (ML) have found applications in diverse sectors. While the roots of AI go back ma­ny years, of late there have been many rapid developments. The most recent, and notable, of these has been the introduction of a downloadable web application that acts as a chatbot for people searching for information. The unique search engine, la­un­ched on Nov­em­ber 30, 2022 by Open­AI, is called “Ch­at­GPT” or “Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer”, the third iteration of the Generative Pre-trai­ned Transformer (GPT-3) platform.

ChatGPT leverages knowledge from va­rious channels to compile general purpo­se aggregated data that the bot writes in a chosen style or format. For enterprises, Ch­at­GPT is an avenue for teams to fulfil ta­s­ks using an ML service that can solve re­quests. However, the firm needs to review each re­quest with accompanying content quality control. While the application follows the basic concept of a ge­ne­ric search engine, like that of Google or Bi­ng, it has a unique in­terface wherein a user, instead of facing an endless list of po­ssible solutions to a qu­e­ry, receives a si­m­ple, specific answ­er or so­l­­u­tion from the al­go­rithmic search engine. Moreover, Chat­GPT’s accessibility is acc­o­mpanied by a vast database of knowledge, through which the application is able to so­lve some of the most complicated equatio­n­s.

Recent developments

The launch of ChatGPT has further un­derscored the popularity of AI. As per data from the World of Statistics, the chatbot reached 100 million users within just two months of launch, beating popular messaging applications such as WhatsApp and Twi­tter. In the first month, ChatGPT no­tched up more than 57 million users. And in January 2023, as many as 13 million indivi­dual active users visited ChatGPT per day.

Among enterprises, General Motors is exploring uses for ChatGPT as a part of its broader collaboration with Microsoft Corporation. To speed up adoption throu­gh enterprises, OpenAI has forged a partnership with strategic consulting firm Bain & Company to integrate tools such as ChatGPT, image generator DALL·E and text-to-code programming model Codex into their Fortune 500 clients’ marketing, sales, customer service, software development and business operations. Bain & Co­mpany has also embedded OpenAI tools in many of its own internal processes. Mean­while, Coca-Cola is working with the OpenAI-Bain alliance to integrate Chat­GPT and DALL·E into its content creation and brand experiences.

India too is exploring ways to leverage the platform across various sectors. The Mi­nistry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is reportedly developing a WhatsApp chatbot for farmers po­wered by ChatGPT. MeitY’s Bhashini te­am is testing the chatbot, which will help farmers learn about various government schemes. The chatbot supports 12 langu­a­ges, including English, Hindi, Tamil, Tel­u­gu, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada, Odia and Assa­mese. Meanwhile, Velocity, an Indian financial technology company, has laun­ched the country’s first ChatGPT integrated chatbot called Lexi. According to Velocity, the integration of ChatGPT with Velocity Insights will help e-commerce giants by offering them AI-powered business solutions in a conversational manner. This will help them grow and free up critical business functions.

Potential enterprise use cases

ChatGPT is a cutting-edge AI technology that offers a wealth of benefits for medium-sized businesses. Its advanced natural language processing capabilities allow it to respond to customer enquiries and reque­s­ts with speed and accuracy, providing a seamless customer experience. With its ab­i­lity to analyse large amounts of data, ChatGPT can also help businesses make data-driven decisions, improve operational efficiency, and increase productivity. Wh­ether a business is looking to streamline its internal processes, generate leads, or create engaging content, ChatGPT has the tools to help achieve key company goals. By streamlining sales processes and providing personalised product recommendations, ChatGPT can help businesses and start-ups increase sales and revenue. Addi­tionally, ChatGPT can assist in research and development by providing relevant information and insights to help teams develop new products, services and strategies.

Some of the enterprise domains that can leverage ChatGPT are as follows…

Healthcare

ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionise the healthcare industry. It can be trained on large amounts of medical data and information, enabling virtual health assistants to provide accurate and relevant health information in response to patients’ questions and needs. The platform can assist in medical coding and billing by suggesting the most appropriate codes based on symptoms and medical history. It can also analyse large amounts of medical data, such as billing and coding data, to identify patterns, trends and opportunities for improvement. ChatGPT can also support behaviour change through personalised interventions. It can provide accurate, up-to-date information on prescriptions and over-the-co­un­ter medications, and highlight their side-effects, interactions and dosage.

Banking and finance

ChatGPT can assist banks in detecting and preventing fraud by analysing vast amounts of transaction data and identifying suspicious patterns. This can help ba­nks protect customers’ financial assets and reduce losses owing to fraud. Bank personnel can set up alerts so that security professionals get notified of suspicious activity. Additionally, the platform can assist banks in providing personalised wealth management services to their customers by ana­ly­sing customer data and providing custo­mised investment recommendations based on their individual financial goals and risk tolerance.

Manufacturing

The platform can be used for quality management in manufacturing by analysing data from quality control inspections to identify patterns and potential issues. The model can also be trained on historical data to predict when quality issues are likely to occur, and can be used to generate reports and alerts to notify quality control personnel. In addition, ChatGPT can be used to generate automated test plans and reports to increase the efficiency of quality control inspections. Moreover, the platform can be used to generate automated documentation for compliance with regulations and industry standards. This can include generating standard operating procedures, work instructions and other documents to ensure that quality management processes are followed consistently.

Education

With the growing demand for e-learning, ChatGPT has emerged as a powerful tool for generating content, answering student queries and grading assignments. It can handle a vast number of text-generating tasks, including writing essays, reports and summaries. The advanced capabilities of ChatGPT have been applied to develop several educational applications that have transformed the traditional learning experience for students. Several edtech companies in India have developed AI-powered chatbots that use ChatGPT to provide students with real-time feedback on their performance. Besides, with the ability to adapt to individual student needs and learning styles, ChatGPT can curate specific content that caters to the student’s specific learning requirements.

Challenges and outlook

There are concerns regarding the ways in which ChatGPT is accessing and producing this information along with the amount of personal information that the bot is accessing to bring the best possible outputs for a user. Given the prima facie fact of ChatGPT being an AI technology, it is probable that such usage of personal data is optimised to the best benefit of the company and may be more detrimental to the user than when the same is being sha­red by another non-AI company such as Meta Inc. ChatGPT’s privacy policy specifies that the user’s personal information may be used for “conducting research”, which may either be internal or shared by third parties or even published or made generally available. This clause indicates a considerable increase in the ambit of public sharing of information.

These concerns notwithstanding, many individuals, given the popularity of the app­li­cation, have been easily volunteering information to ChatGPT for various pur­po­ses, ranging from the need to get answers to testing the potential of the ap­plication. However, heavily regulated ba­n­ks and in­v­e­s­tment houses such as JPMorgan Chase, Gold­man Sachs, Bank of America, Wells Far­go, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank have all restricted employee access to ChatGPT.

Despite the challenges, the launch of ChatGPT is a watershed moment in technological growth, with far-reaching and significant implications for society. The functions provided and promised by it are far greater than that by any other search engine developed so far. Meanwhile, Op­en­­AI has begun the roll-out of GPT-4, a powerful AI model that succeeds the technology behind the popular ChatGPT. The latest update is expected to address the problems highlighted in previous versions. As the platform matures, it is poised to witness significant traction in terms of adoption across sectors.

Anand Kumar Sah