ChatGPT can turn bad writers into better ones

Shakked Noy and Whitney Zhang recruited 453 marketers, data analysts, and college-educated professionals and got each of them to complete two kinds of tasks they'd normally undertake as part of their jobs, such as writing press releases, short reports, or analysis plans. Half were given the option of using ChatGPT to help them complete the second of the two tasks. Each piece of work was evaluated by three people working in the same professions, hired through the research platform Prolific. The writers who chose to use ChatGPT took 40% less time to complete their tasks, and produced work that the assessors scored 18% higher in quality than that of the participants who didn't use it. The writers who were already skilled at writing were able to reduce the amount of time they spent on their work, while those who were assessed as being weaker writers produced higher-quality work once they gained access to the chatbot.