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Earth, Energy, and Environment

This libguide supports the teaching and research needs for students, staff and faculty in the Department of Earth, Energy, & Environment at the University of Calgary.

What is Chat GPT?

ChatGPT is large language model tool that uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing to answer user-generated prompts. It was developed by OpenAI and is currently freely available for public use. 

There have been imitators of ChatGPT since it has been in the news. The correct link for it is: https://chat.openai.com/auth/login

ChatGPT Privacy & Terms of Condition

Understanding the privacy policies and terms of use of software and AI tools we commonly use is important, as they explain what information is collected, why they collected that information, how that information will be used (both in the present and the future), and how they will or will not protect that private information. In ChatGPT's case: 

  • OpenAI's privacy policy allows them to share your data with third-party vendors, law enforcement, and other users.
    • What is put into this software is not private. 
  • Their Terms of Use state "you must be 18 years or older and able to form a binding contract with OpenAI to use the Services".
  • These Terms state that users must not "represent that output from the Services was human-generated when it is not". 
    • What information gained from ChatGPT and OpenAI must be shared as from ChatGPT and OpenAI. Meaning if it is used it a paper, it must be stated as from their services and not human generated. 
  • Users are responsible for the Content generated "ensuring it does not violate any applicable laws or these Terms."
  • While you can delete your ChatGPT account and no longer use it, your prompts and questions belong to OpenAI and become a part of the company’s collected data. 

ChatGPT Common Browser Extensions

Other Common AI Tools

  Though ChatGPT is popular in the news currently, it is not the only AI tool out there. Here are some other common tools: 

  • Jasper – A commercial product that is advertising heavily designed for writing ad copy, blogs, and other content. Although primarily aimed at sales and marketing, it also has the capability of “improving” a piece of writing, can create or improve long form text (it advertises writing of books), and operates in multiple languages, and does plagiarism and grammar checks.  It is one more frequently reviewed products in this space. Starts at $40/mth, or $80/mth (Boss mode). 
  • Writesonic – “Writesonic’s GPT-3 language model deploys powerful AI to generate blog posts, landing pages, adverts, product descriptions, and emails, so it’s a top choice if you need a versatile writing tool.” (TechRadar, 2022) Works in multiple languages.  Also advertises a ChatSonic version (“like Chat GPT, but with superpowers”).  About $15/mth for an individual. 
  • Article Forge – Advertises that it “writes entire 1,500+ word articles automatically” in about 60 seconds.  Many of the others will write long format also, but this tool seems to be particularly designed for this.  Also does plagiarism checking. Starts at $30/mth. 
  • WordAI – Advertises that their tool is best at improving existing content.  This tool is a favorite (according to techradar) of people in tech.  It is more of a rewriting tool than a content creation tool. “This tool can totally restructure your sentences and paragraphs to make them easier and more pleasing to read, and WordAI will automatically add keywords, make your writing more varied and fix spelling and grammar mistakes. It can use AI to improve clarity, and it’ll avoid duplicated content and create up to 1,000 rewrites per article.” (TechRadar, 2022)  $60/mth or $30/mth for an annual license. 
  • AI Writer – Like many of these tools, AI Writer is geared toward the production of web content and search engine optimization (SEO).  It is largely designed for sales and marketing. Unlike many of the other tools, AI Writer provides a list of sources and citations. Also does text rewording, although partly this is for SEO optimization, not just readability. $30/mth. 
  • Ink – A relatively new product built on GPT-3, it is designed for expanding text you have written, rewriting/editing text, and generating text.  Like some other tools, it will give you multiple variations to choose from for each prompt.  It also includes grammar support and a readability score, so if you do your own writing/editing it shows you how the readability changes. $60/mth or $45/mth for an annual license. 
  • Moonbeam – This tool has been mentioned in recent Inside Higher Ed articles on AI probably because pricing and because it is trained to write essays makes it attractive for students. $0 up to 30k words/mth, $20/mth for pro version. 

Thank you to the University of Toronto Artificial Intelligence in Teaching & Learning curated bibliography for this information and descriptions.