GPT-3 stands for Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 and the number 3 refers to it being the third generation. GPT-3 is a machine learning system that can create many different types of written content. It was developed by a company in San Francisco called OpenAI and creates text using pre-trained algorithms. This means that it already has all the data it needs to carry out its task. The source of their knowledge comes from publicly available datasets like CommonCrawl and the entirety of Wikipedia.
What does it do?
GPT-3 can generate anything that has a language structure. So, it can answer questions, construct essays, summarise long pieces of text, translate languages, write blog entries, repurpose content, and much more. It is essentially a language prediction model. This means that it uses a pre-existing piece of text as an input and then tries to successfully predict the text that would naturally follow on from the input.
How does it work?
GPT-3 relies on something called semantic analysis which means it doesn’t focus specifically on the meaning of one word but instead focuses on the context of the words around it. It goes from there to analysing the meaning of the whole sentence, then a paragraph, and so on until it has analysed the entire text.
What does this mean for content marketing?
A well-programmed AI like GPT-3 will always have the potential capacity to outperform humans. Even an entire team of well-trained writers would not be able to compete with the sheer output that an AI is capable of. An AI that can create accurate human-like content spells the beginning of an automation process when it comes to content marketing.
Now it’s important to note that while GPT-3 promises to deliver high-quality text, OpenAI still recommends that a human edit the output before publishing. So, it's possible that instead of writers being replaced in the future, content writing services like ours will still exist, but we’ll probably be hiring more editors and less writers.
GPT-3 also has some significant limitations. It currently lacks something akin to human creativity or the ability to generate emotional appeal. These factors often lead to the writing coming off as formulaic with little variation in terms of sentence length or type. It also has difficulty analysing more complex information such as financial data or business analytics.
How Do I Get GPT-3?
Right now, you can only get access by joining a waitlist. Users have to fill out a form which includes explaining what they want to use the AI for and detail the risks and benefits of using the AI. The company OpenAI operates on a safety-first mindset for good reason. In the past, critics of GPT have pointed to a mental health advocacy program that was being tested. In that program, GPT-3 encouraged some patients to harm themselves.
The Marketing Benefits It Has Right Now
Since it lacks creativity, custom article writing might be a stretch without strong human intervention. However, its capacity to create short-form content like meta descriptions, alt text, footer copy, or product descriptions is excellent. You could also use GPT-3 to create a rough first draft and then hand it off to a writer to speed up the content creation process.
This would also free up some of the writer’s time and allow them to work on more projects at once.
The Disadvantages of GPT-3
Whatever time might be saved utilising GPT-3 will not currently outweigh the value of content produced by a professional writer. Weak content will undermine your position as an expert in your industry and hurt your brand in the long term. An emotional component is also essential for effective copywriting which GPT-3 severely lacks.
It also requires a large amount of processing power in order to operate which will exclude smaller and medium-sized businesses from considering it. The software itself begins to struggle with long-form content. In fact, the longer the text, the more likely it is to produce nonsense.
In the future, these obstacles will likely be overcome as computing power becomes cheaper and the volume of data that can be processed increases. But it's just as important to know what’s available now as well as preparing for the future.
In Conclusion
Right now, most companies do not even have access to GPT-3. But as it continues to grow, we’ll be seeing it creating content more and more. It’s growing abilities cannot be underestimated. At the moment, GPT-3 has limited utility but its future is looking very bright for content marketing.
