Matt v Machine: Can a Web Summit copywriter take on ChatGPT and win?

There’s a lot of buzz around ChatGPT, but can it beat a human writer? Let’s find out.

The Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, otherwise known as ChatGPT, was launched by OpenAI in November 2022 and has been widely hailed as the best chatbot AI to date.

There is already a flurry of ideas on its potential applications in a range of fields, including marketing and education. But it is not without its critics. Leading public intellectual Noam Chomsky expressed a great deal of scepticism about large language models at Web Summit 2022.

With that in mind, we decided to do some experimentation with ChatGPT, pitting it against one of our copywriters, Matt, in a series of writing challenges. It’s worth noting, in the interest of transparency, that these responses took ChatGPT a few seconds, and our copywriter two hours.

Here are the results:

Prompt: What is going to be the biggest topic of interest at Web Summit 2023?

Matt:

At Web Summit and Collision in 2022, it was clear that we’re entering a challenging economic period for the tech industry. I expect this to continue into 2023.

What makes it the ‘biggest’ topic? It tends to dominate across a range of different speakers, stages, topics and formats. It comes up in most conversations.

ChatGPT:

I’m sorry, I am not able to predict future events or the specific topics of interest at a conference such as Web Summit. My training data only goes up to 2021 and I do not have any information about future events.

Prompt: Are we alone or are there other lifeforms in outer space?

Matt:

It seems pretty unlikely that life on Earth is unique across the entire expanse of the universe. But, as the Italian physicist Enrico Fermi once asked, “where is everybody?”. If there is life, it may not be intelligent. If it is intelligent, it may be long dead or so far from us that we will never encounter it. If we did encounter it, it might be so different from us that we wouldn’t recognise it or be able to communicate with it.

Whether or not there is other life in the universe, we are alone.

ChatGPT:

It is currently unknown whether or not there are other forms of life in outer space. Many scientists believe that the conditions necessary for life to exist, such as the presence of water and a stable environment, are common in the universe and therefore it is likely that there is other life out there. However, there is currently no definitive evidence of the existence of extraterrestrial life and the search for it is ongoing.

Prompt: Write a three- to five-sentence story about a penguin who falls in love.

Matt:

Mikhail the penguin was never alone, but always lonely, huddled with strangers in the freezing cold perpetual darkness of Antarctic winter.

One day, when the colony was moving away from the harsh winds of the shore, Mikhail fell behind.

Scared of being abandoned completely, he trudged through the snow as fast as he could, when he heard a cry in the distance.

Getting closer, he saw that it was Natalya, a penguin who he had seen before, who lived on the beach – a penguin like him, who had loneliness in her eyes.

He reached her, and together they continued on through the icy mist, and when they rejoined the colony, they huddled together and were never lonely again.

ChatGPT:

Once upon a time, there was a little penguin named Peter. He lived in the cold and snowy Antarctic with his colony of penguins. One day, while out on a swim, he met a beautiful female penguin named Penelope and they fell deeply in love. They swam and played together every day, and their love continued to grow stronger.

Prompt: Write an intro for an email about AI

Matt:

The hype around AI is getting louder and louder. That’s why we’ve put together a fun challenge, pitting our own copywriter against the ChatGPT bot. So, let’s answer the question: is AI intelligent, or just artificial?

ChatGPT:

Dear valued colleagues,

As technology continues to advance at a rapid pace, the field of artificial intelligence (AI) has become an increasingly important topic in the industry. With the ability to analyse and process large amounts of data, AI has the potential to revolutionise the way we approach problem-solving and decision-making in our organisation. In this email, we will explore the various applications of AI, its potential benefits and challenges, and what it means for our company’s future.

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Main image of person arm-wrestling a robot: SunshineVector/Shutterstock