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How to train ChatGPT to write in your style
Mushtaq Bilal, PhD
March 03, 2023
This week I spent some time training ChatGPT how to produce academic prose in a style similar to mine. ChatGPT is a powerful language model and the results were quite impressive.
I started by asking ChatGPT if it could “memorize“ the style of a given passage. ChatGPT replied it was an AI language model and, therefore, didn’t “have the ability to memorize or remember a specific writing style.” But it said it could “analyze the passage and provide suggestions on how to imitate its style or replicate its features.”
As an AI language model, I don't have the ability to memorize or remember a specific writing style. However, I can analyze the passage and provide suggestions on how to imitate its style or replicate its features. Please feel free to share the passage, and I will do my best to help you.
I took the abstract of one of my recently published papers and asked ChatGPT to keep it “in mind” and replicate when requested. I was hoping it would say something like “As an AI language model I don’t have a mind,” but it didn’t 😀
A screenshot of a conversation between ChatGPT and Mushtaq
Then I took a paragraph from a non-academic piece I am working on and asked ChatGPT to rewrite it in my academic style.
Here is the original paragraph:
The purpose of this ebook is to teach you how to use Twitter to create new and exciting opportunities for yourself. These opportunities could be in academia such as speaking invitations as well as in industry. To use Twitter for our purposes, we will have to start with developing the right mindset for Twitter. This is very important because if you don’t have the right mindset, you will resent the platform and that resentment will show through whatever you write on Twitter. I started writing Zotero threads because of laziness. I wanted to create a PDF and upload it for my students, but some don't have laptops and would have other excuses. I then thought of creating a Twitter thread as an archive on the web. I can show my students the workflow and steps by directing them to my Twitter account. They can then read the English prose and follow it.
And this is how ChatGPT rewrote it in my academic style:
The aim of this e-book is to provide guidance on the effective utilization of Twitter for creating novel and beneficial opportunities for individuals, including those in academia as well as industry. In order to leverage Twitter to its full potential, it is crucial to cultivate the right mindset towards the platform. A negative attitude towards the platform could manifest in one's online presence and communication, which could hinder their success on the platform. The origin of my engagement with Twitter as an instructional tool is linked to my initial reluctance towards creating PDFs for my students due to technical challenges, including the possibility of students being unable to access the materials. Subsequently, I identified Twitter threads as an alternative platform to provide access to materials for my students, demonstrating workflows and outlining procedures, all available through the provision of a link to my Twitter account. Through this medium, students are able to consume content in English and follow along at their own pace, fostering a culture of accessibility and promoting inclusivity in the classroom.
Now, this is not exactly my style but it is close to mine. If I were to write an academic paper on how I use Twitter, I would not use these exact sentence (since these are a bit too wordy), but I would certainly structure my sentences this way.
This reinforces my point of view that we should use ChatGPT to create structure and not content. I have written about it in detail and you can read it here.
I also wanted to know what GPT detectors had to say about this paragraph that ChatGPT rewrote in my academic style. So, I ran the paragraph through three GPT detectors and the results were astonishing.
GPTKit said that 91% of the text was written by a human.
Writefull’s GPT detector said only 3% of the text came from ChatGPT.
And GPTZero said the text was “likely to be written entirely by a human.“
This is the reason I always emphasize that we should be very cautious while using the GPT detectors.
Is this text entirely written by a human or partially? I don’t know the answer to this question. What I do know is that we are going to see a lot more creative manipulation of tools like ChatGPT in the coming months.
While it can imitate my academic writing style, I would not recommend depending on ChatGPT for your academic writing requirements.
The reason is simple: ChatGPT is not designed for academic purposes and can create a lot of unintended consequences.
Instead of ChatGPT, I’d suggest using Paperpal, an AI-powered app that is specifically designed to help you with academic writing especially if you are a non-native speaker of English.
Paperpal gives you 500 free suggestions a month, so if you use it judiciously you won’t need to spend any money on it. But if you plan to use it extensively, you will have to buy a subscription for $99/year, which is not too bad.
I wrote a thread about Paperpal a few days ago that went viral. You can read it by clicking on the tweet below.
One of the unintended consequences of using ChatGPT for academic purposes is the problem of fake citations it generates.
Since it uses a predictive model, ChatGPT can only predict the words that follow and preceded a give word. It cannot differentiate between fake and real citations, and I have seen a lot of people spending hours and hours looking up fake citations generated by ChatGPT.
The app that I regularly use these days to stay up-to-date in my field is R Discovery. It’s a phone app and very easy to set up.
While ChatGPT may not be a dependable companion for an academic writer, there are many AI-powered apps that are.
If you want to know more about how to use these AI apps for academic writing, I have a 139-page long ebook with complete workflows to help you become an efficient academic writer. You can get it here: https://efficientacademicwriter.carrd.co/
More than 100 scholars from around the world have bought this book and they are on their way to becoming efficient academic writers.
That’s it for this week. I’ll see you next week with more tips on academic writing.
Till then, keep writing.
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