AI chatbots like ChatGPT can be used to make summarizing long articles, research papers, and books an easier job. If you’re tasked with writing a summary for school or work about a body of written text, and you’re pinched for time, ChatGPT can help you understand the necessary components.
You should remember that ChatGPT is a tool that can help you further understand a topic, and it may not be in your best interest to have it write your work for you.
Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations
If you’re a student writing a research paper, someone who is keen to discover more about a lengthy article, or someone who wants to dive into a complicated subject, you can use ChatGPT to simplify the process.
How ChatGPT can create summaries for you
Materials needed: You’ll need a device that can connect to the internet, an OpenAI account, and a basic understanding of the article, research paper, or book you want to summarize.
Also: This AI chatbot can sum up any PDF and answer any question you have about it
The process should take about one to three minutes.
FAQ
What are ChatGPT’s limitations?
If you’re using ChatGPT to summarize an article, book, or piece of research, keep in mind that ChatGPT isn’t aware of events that occurred after September 2021.
Also: 4 things Claude AI can do that ChatGPT can’t
ChatGPT is a large language model that uses queues and millions of data points to mimic human responses. This form of mimicry is why ChatGPT will answer questions even when it doesn’t output the correct answer. So, make sure you’re not using any information from ChatGPT without fact-checking it.
If you try to get around this obstacle and provide ChatGPT with an article that contains information post-2021, it might hallucinate. Here, I asked the chatbot to summarize an article about a new app I wrote about, and it made up a few details.
Can ChatGPT summarize a PDF?
Copying and pasting a URL into ChatGPT won’t yield you the best results. If there is a specific paragraph or sentence you’re struggling with, you can copy and paste it into ChatGPT and ask it to explain it to you. Still, it’s best to read the PDF and use the chatbot as a summary tool and not as an educator.
Also: How to use ChatGPT to write code
If you’re looking for an AI chatbot that you can regularly rely on to give you an accurate summary of a PDF, consider using ChatPDF. You can summarize up to three PDFs of up to 120 pages per day, and an upgraded plan is available for $5 per month.
Can ChatGPT summarize an email thread?
Sort of. If you want to copy and paste every single email, ChatGPT can summarize the thread’s contents for you. It would be more helpful to scan an email thread yourself and ask ChatGPT to help you write a response based on the key points you know about the conversation.
Editor’s note: We’ve added additional context to the step concerning ChatGPT summarizing articles by URL.
How to use ChatGPT to summarize a book, article, or research paper