Chat GPT has inherently capitalized on the phrase “use your time wisely” by making it easier for people to get questions answered quickly. For those who are not aware of AI software, Chat GPT is a large language model artificial intelligence chatbot which has been trained to give human like responses when provided with a prompt or a question. Think of Chat GPT as your own personal assistant with access to limitless worldwide information

Chat GPT is not new in this realm of answer response given technology. I remember back in the day there was a similar technology by the name of “Ask Jeeves” who was initially critically acclaimed because of his human like response. In fact, Ask Jeeves even had a logo in the form of a English butler who knew everything (think of Batman’s butler Alfred). But what sets Chat GPT apart from Ask Jeeves is the amount of data that Chat GPT has access to, how fast it gets the information to you, and the clarity of the answers that it provides.

The downside is that Chat GPT does its job so well that many people including myself have thought will chat GPT replace human creativity and impact the creative writing job sector. In fact, the Seattle public school district among many others have decided to ban ChatGPT because the school district “does not allow cheating and requires original thought and work from students.” But are their fears warranted? Can Chat GPT really surpass human creativity and originality? I decided to conduct two tests to determine whether or not humans could tell the difference between human creative writing vs artificial intelligence created writing using only the free version of Chat GPT (at the time of this writing the version of Chat GPT that was being offered was Chat GPT-3.5 August 3 Version)

I wanted to determine how Chat GPT measured against my own creativity. The writing prompt I used in the first test was: Write a 100 word fictional story about a unicorn and a leprechaun. I wrote my short story and then put the writing prompt in ChatGPT and had it generate its short story. I gave both of the stories to 3 people who knew me very well (my mom, my dad, and my best friend) to see which article they liked best. I did not tell them who wrote the stories only what the writing prompt was.

My second test was less blind and more focused on Chat GPT. This time I asked Chat GPT to create a one sentence writing prompt. Here is what it came up with: “As the last tree on Earth stood tall, its leaves began to emit an otherworldly glow, unraveling a mystery that could change the fate of humanity forever.” In an effort to increase the difficulty of being able to tell which article was which, I tried to mimic the style of Chat GPT and switched the order in which I presented both writing samples. Again I submitted the articles to my mother, my dad, and my best friend and asked them to decide which article that they liked the best.

The results were astonishing. In both tests all three of my test subjects picked ChatGPT each time. I was completely shocked to say the least. The reason I chose these test subjects were because they knew me the best and I just knew (assumed) in my heart that they would love my writing because they knew it was me. I began to see why school districts had started to ban ChatGPT because if 3 humans could not tell the difference between a Robot writing sample vs a human writing sample, how would a teacher, a professional, or any human be able to tell that difference.

Another thing that stood out during these tests was the fact the ChatGPT did not follow the rules. In both tests I asked ChatGPT to only write 100 words and each time it went over that threshold while I stuck to the requirements. Initially I was happy that this robot couldn’t even follow the rules and declared myself the winner of this writing bout due to a technicality. But when I delved deeper into this so called ChatGPT error, I realized that ChatGPT was not concerned about the limits that were placed on the writing, it was more concerned about making sure that the writing prompt captured its audience.

As a techie, ChatGPT is an amazing feat and I am excited about what the future holds for this type of AI. However, as a writer I was a bit unnerved that ChatGPT creative writing was chosen over mine. ChatGPT won this battle but will it win the war? Will it be regulated and then watered down to an untimely death like Ask Jeeves? Stay tuned to see who will win me or Chat GPT.

Test Your Knowledge. See if you can tell the difference between human writing vs ChatGPT in the samples below:

The answer key is after the images.

Group A:

Writing Sample 1A

Writing Sample 2A

Group B:

Writing Sample 1B

Writing Sample 2B

Writing Sample 1A written by Lissa Hawk human

Writing Sample 1B written by ChatGPT

Writing Sample 2A written by ChatGPT

Writing Sample 2B written by Lissa Hawk human

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