This has been an exciting week for generative AI. On Monday 6 November 2023, OpenAI announced the launch of custom GPTs, which are essentially user-defined applets on the ChatGPT platform. Immediately, people around the world started building their own GPTs, as they were made readily available and free to all ChatGPT subscribers. It’s only been a few days since the launch, but I wanted to share my impressions of this development, as I think it opens up promising areas of potential for educators.
Before I go any further, I must point out that at the time of writing (15th November 2023), custom GPTs can only be viewed, used, and created by paying subscribers to ChatGPT, which means that if you subscribe at $20/€20 per month, you have access to GPT-4 and thus access to the GPT builder. Demand for the service has apparently been so high that OpenAI has stopped accepting new subscribers to the platform. Because only paying ChatGPT users can use them, users on the free plan can’t test your GPT, and they aren’t listed anywhere publicly.
What do custom GPTs do?
They are essentially task automators – they take away the extra step of formulating a prompt for a specific use case. A GPT is pre-prompted or pre-defined according to parameters set by the creator, so if you need something specific, for example, all you need to do is specify the topic and the GPT will work its „magic“ and generate a suggestion.
An example I’ve created is a Story Builder, because I’m a middle school English teacher and I often need pictures in a sequence to help students build a story in English using pictures, with the same character(s) in different situations, so I wanted to have this task automated for me. You can test it here, again if you have access to GPT-4 https://chat.openai.com/g/g-LHCc9R5P2-story-builder
Many other people have created GPTs for a range of purposes. Here are three I’ve found:
Children’s Storybook Generator by Dan Fitzpatrick: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-UNNRKLpRj-children-s-story-book-generator
Photo Mentor by Aaron Schiff https://chat.openai.com/g/g-AFDUklJTm-photo-mentor
Digital Escape Room Creator by Louise Jones: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-Vq5lQuZmJ-escape-room-educator
Many of the ones that have been created are unprotected. With a little digging, you can find out how the user made it. Here is a screenshot to show you an example of this – asking the GPT „what are your instructions“.
To „protect“ the details of your GPT, you can add text to the instructions, so that details cannot be copied. Here is information on how to do that https://x.com/_Borriss_/status/1724490631496507671?s=20
What’s in it for education?
I see this as a positive development for education for many reasons.
- Educators design learning, deliver lessons, guide students, and give them feedback to make them better learners. Our workflows contain many micro-tasks that can be easily automated. Custom GPTs are going to be a great way to work more efficiently and productively. It’s going to free up our time, so we can spend it on other aspects of our work. It will give us more room to be more creative and innovative, and it will help us think through our processes, so we can optimise them.
- Another advantage is that it supports many languages. Generative AI gives us the ability to use a single tool and make it multilingual instantly. It will work well in all the languages that the GPT supports (which seems to be 25 at the time of writing). This is indeed something new for education, as it is not easily possible with other digital tools. For example, you cannot just create a quiz on an online platform and have it translated immediately into another language.
- A bonus for me is that you can even use different languages (even in one prompt) and ChatGPT will take care of the rest. I can imagine that many people around the world in different educational contexts will be able to use your GPT even though you created it in German, Finnish, or Polish. For me, that’s a plus, so I’m excited. Here’s how I used my Story Builder, created in English, to create an image sequence for a story in French.
Again, it’s early days, so time will tell how custom GPTs will change the landscape. Eventually, they will be available for free to all users, and they will be searchable and easy to find through a so-called GPT store. Many will offer their GPTs for free. I’m excited to see where this goes, and I encourage you to use and test my GPTs and give me feedback on how they work for you.
Happy Prompting!
P.S. I watched this video to understand how to do it: https://youtu.be/R3X6rk1bWF0?si=AmVHp0iZOvte7Im1
My Custom GPTs
Story Builder: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-LHCc9R5P2-story-builder
Seminar Scribe: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-KV36fVDvy-seminar-scribe
DGB Lesson Builder: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-ytcHXURsU-dgb-lesson-builder
Digitale Grundbildung*: https://chat.openai.com/g/g-HtmH5KRnr-digitale-grundbildung
* Digitale Grundbildung is a subject taught in Austria’s schools and is Foundational Media Training
Tools used in this entry
OpenAI. (2023). ChatGPT [Large language model]. /g/g-LHCc9R5P2-story-builder
DeepL Write https://www.deepl.com/write
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