ChatGPT for Editors

I've mused here a couple of times about how useful ChatGPT would have been when I was working at the TSX as a technical writer; for example, having it write drafts of VBA macros for Microsoft Word. 

I'm not the only technical writer who is thinking about how they could use tools like ChatGPT. On her excellent CyberText Newsletter blog, Rhonda Bracey (@RhondaBracey@mastodon.social) has published a list that shows some of the things that editors (and technical writers) could do with ChatGPT. It's a long list and shows how ChatGPT and other similar tools could affect jobs in those fields. 

Here is just one example (of many):

Rephrasing one or more sentences or paragraphs in several ways; for example:

• rewrite in plain language
• rewrite in a different voice (e.g. 1st, 2nd or 3rd person, or from a different point of view)
• rewrite in a different tense (past, present, future)
• rewrite for a different audience (e.g. ‘explain this to a 12 year old’, ‘summarise this for a CEO’)
• rewrite to a word limit

And if you think this is just blue-sky thinking, Microsoft announced yesterday that ChapGPT will be integrated into its search engine, Bing, and the Microsoft 365 office suite. 

As well as a list of uses, she writes at length about some of the pitfalls of using AI tools and has suggestions on how to mitigate risks. It's a solid, well-researched article that is worth taking the time to read and think about.