is there an essay on the 2023 sat

SAT Changes 2023-2024: What You Need To Know

The SAT, a widely recognized standardized test used for college admissions in the United States, is undergoing changes in 2023 and 2024. These changes aim to improve the test and provide students with a fair and accurate measure of their college readiness. If you're planning to take the SAT during these years, it's crucial to stay informed about the updates to ensure you're well-prepared.

Here's what you need to know about the SAT changes in 2023-2024.

Content changes:.

The SAT will have some adjustments to its content starting in August 2023. The College Board, which administers the SAT, has indicated that the changes will focus on streamlining the test and aligning it more closely with what students are learning in school. While specific details of the content changes have not been released yet, it's important to be aware that there may be adjustments to the test's structure, question types, and emphasis on certain topics.

Optional Essay:

The SAT Essay, which was made optional in 2021, will no longer be offered starting in June 2023. This means that students taking the SAT will no longer have the option to complete the Essay section as part of their test. However, some colleges and universities may still require or recommend the SAT Essay as part of their admissions process, so it's essential to check the requirements of the schools you're interested in.

Digital Testing

The College Board has been gradually transitioning the SAT from a paper-and-pencil test to a digital format. By 2024, the SAT will be predominantly administered digitally, with paper testing options limited to certain circumstances. This means that students may need to take the test on a computer or other digital device, and it's important to familiarize yourself with the digital testing format and practice using it beforehand.

Score Reporting Changes

The College Board has introduced a new policy called "Score Choice" that allows students to choose which scores they want to send to colleges. Starting in September 2023, students will have the option to send only their best scores from individual sections of the SAT, rather than sending their entire test scores. This policy change provides more flexibility for students to strategically send their best scores to colleges, and it's important to understand how it may affect your score reporting strategy.

Fee Waivers

The College Board has also expanded access to fee waivers for eligible students, starting in the 2022-2023 school year. Fee waivers can help reduce or eliminate the costs associated with taking the SAT, including registration fees, late fees, and additional score reports. Students from low-income backgrounds or who meet other eligibility criteria may be eligible for fee waivers, and it's crucial to explore these options to ensure that cost is not a barrier to taking the SAT.

Test Dates and Deadlines

The SAT test dates and deadlines may also change in 2023-2024. It's essential to check the College Board's website for the most up-to-date information on test dates, registration deadlines, and other important dates related to the SAT. Planning ahead and registering early can help ensure that you secure a spot on your desired test date and avoid late registration fees.

Preparation Strategies

With the changes to the SAT, it's important to adapt your preparation strategies accordingly. As the test content may change, it's crucial to stay updated with the latest information from the College Board and adjust your study materials and strategies accordingly. Additionally, practicing with digital test formats, familiarizing yourself with the online tools and features, and taking practice tests in a digital format can help you prepare for the digital SAT.

When Are the SAT Changes 2023? 

The College Board has announced that the SAT changes for 2023 will be implemented starting in August 2023. This means that the updated content and format of the SAT, including the elimination of the optional Essay section and the introduction of digital testing, will be in effect from the August 2023 test administration onwards. It's important for students planning to take the SAT in or after August 2023 to familiarize themselves with the changes and prepare accordingly. It's also recommended to regularly check the College Board's website for the most up-to-date information on SAT test dates, registration deadlines, and other important updates.

Why Is the SAT Changing? 

The SAT is changing in response to feedback from students, educators, and colleges. The College Board, the organization that administers the SAT, aims to create an exam that is more relevant to students' learning and that reflects the skills needed for success in college and beyond. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant disruption to the college admissions process, leading to adjustments in standardized testing requirements and formats. The changes to the SAT aim to address these challenges and to provide a fair and accurate assessment of students' abilities.

What Are the Main Changes to the SAT? 

The main changes to the SAT in 2023 include:

Test format

The SAT will move from a paper-based test to a computer-based test. This means that students will take the test on a computer, rather than filling in a bubble sheet with a pencil.

Test content

The SAT will focus more on knowledge and skills that are important for college and career readiness. This includes a greater emphasis on math, as well as more advanced math topics like trigonometry and statistics.

The optional essay section of the SAT will be removed. This means that students will only take the main SAT test, which includes reading, writing and language, and math sections.

The overall test time will be reduced from 3 hours and 50 minutes to 3 hours. This includes removing the essay section and reducing the number of questions in other sections.

The SAT will return to the 1600-point scale, with separate scores for the math and reading/writing sections. The scoring system will also include subscores and cross-test scores to provide more detailed information about a student's performance.

Tips for Prepping for the Digital SAT

Preparing for the digital SAT requires some adjustments compared to preparing for the paper-based SAT. Here are some tips to help you effectively prep for the digital SAT:

Familiarize yourself with the digital format

Get comfortable with the computer-based testing environment by taking practice tests on a computer or a similar device. Familiarize yourself with the navigation tools, features, and functions of the digital SAT platform.

Practice time management

The digital SAT has a reduced overall test time, so practice managing your time effectively during the test. Pace yourself and make sure you are able to complete each section within the allocated time.

Enhance your digital skills

Since the digital SAT is taken on a computer, it's important to develop and improve your digital skills. Practice typing and using the on-screen tools effectively, such as highlighting, underlining, and flagging questions for review.

Practice with official digital SAT practice tests

College Board, the organization that administers the SAT, provides official digital SAT practice tests on their website. Utilize these practice tests to get a feel for the digital format and to practice your skills in a realistic testing environment.

Review test content thoroughly

Although the digital format may be different, the content of the SAT remains the same. Review all the test content thoroughly, including reading, writing and language, math, and any other sections that may be part of the SAT you are taking.

Use reliable study materials

Choose reputable study materials that are specifically designed for the digital SAT. Look for materials that closely mimic the format, content, and difficulty level of the actual test.

Take breaks

Just like with the paper-based SAT, taking breaks during your digital SAT prep can help you maintain focus and concentration. Take regular breaks during your study sessions to avoid burnout and to keep yourself refreshed.

Practice under test-like conditions

When taking practice tests, try to simulate test-like conditions as much as possible. Sit in a quiet environment, time yourself, and avoid distractions to create a realistic testing environment that closely resembles the actual test.

Analyze your practice test results

Review and analyze your practice test results to identify your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on areas that need improvement and adjust your study plan accordingly.

Seek additional help if needed

If you're struggling with certain concepts or sections of the test, don't hesitate to seek additional help. Consider getting a tutor, attending test prep classes, or utilizing online resources to reinforce your understanding of the material.

Preparing for the digital SAT requires adjusting to the computer-based format, but with practice and preparation, you can perform well on test day. Utilize these tips to effectively prep for the digital SAT and increase your chances of achieving a high score.

In conclusion, the SAT changes in 2023-2024 aim to make the exam more relevant, accessible, and equitable for all students. The key changes include a reduced number of questions, an optional essay section, and a focus on essential skills like analysis, problem-solving, and data analysis. The new digital format will also offer more flexibility and features for test-takers. To prepare for the new exam, students can take advantage of practice tests and resources available online, and work on developing their critical thinking and problem-solving skills. Overall, the SAT changes are designed to better align with the needs and expectations of today's students and higher education institutions.

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Upcoming Changes to the SAT for 2023 and 2024

In January 2022, the College Board (CB for brevity) announced a sweeping revamp of the SAT, its flagship college admissions test. The changes took effect for non-US testers earlier this year (2023), and they’ll be implemented for domestic testers at the beginning of 2024. These adjustments are the most dramatic shift in the world of high school standardized testing since… the last time the SAT reinvented itself, in 2016.

Sarcasm aside, the upcoming changes are substantial, and they will affect the way students prepare for the SAT to a commensurate degree. With many rising juniors now beginning the process of choosing and preparing for either the SAT or the ACT, your friendly neighborhood test experts are here to cover the changes to the SAT coming in 2024: what’s changing, what’s staying the same, and how it affects you. Let’s dive in.

An Overview of the Current SAT

The SAT is one of the two standardized tests utilized by colleges during the admissions process, with the other being the ACT . Comprised of four sections that contain a mix of multiple-choice questions and grid-in math problems, the SAT has a maximum possible composite score of 1600 points. The test bordered on a mandatory rite of passage for high school juniors and seniors for many years; despite the current proliferation of test-optional admissions policies prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic, a large number of aspiring college freshmen still sit for the SAT each year, oftentimes more than once.

The structure of the current version of the SAT is as follows:

SAT Structure Through December 2023

Until recently, there was an optional fifth section of the test that was comprised of one essay prompt; however, that Writing section was eliminated a couple of years ago, and it is currently only administered on School Day testing dates in specific states.

What Are the SAT Changes for 2023 and 2024?

Now that we’ve covered the structure of the current paper-and-pencil SAT (which is still available to US-based students for 5-6 more months), let’s discuss the changes that are coming at the beginning of next year. Here are the high-level SAT changes that American students can expect to see starting in 2024.

(Note that we’re not diving into all of the content and question-type changes within each individual section; I’ll be covering that more rigorously in a future post.)

Digital Format

The first and most obvious change is that the new SAT will be an entirely digital test. The test will be administered through the Bluebook testing app, which must be downloaded to the student’s device prior to test day. This means no more bubble sheets and no more #2 pencils—just a laptop or tablet, which can be either a personal device that you bring to the testing center or a loaner device that you borrow from College Board or your school for the test.

Fewer (Types of) Sections

As I outlined above, the current paper-and-pencil SAT has four different section-types: Reading, Writing & Language, Math No Calculator, and Math with Calculator. The new digital SAT, however, will have only two: Reading & Writing and Math. Because there will be two modules of each of these two section-types, the total number of sections will remain at four; however, the number of different sections you need to prepare for will be cut in half.

See below for a table containing more details about the breakdown of the new section structure.

Shorter Test

Though the number of sections that makes up the test isn’t changing, you’ll notice if you compare the two tables above that the new version of the SAT will be significantly shorter: 2 hours and 14 minutes of testing time for the digital test compared to 3 hours of testing time for the current paper-and-pencil test. If you’re anywhere close to as lazy as I was in high school, this will be music to your ears.

Adaptive Structure

One of the less visible but still significant changes coming with the digital SAT is the introduction of a section-adaptive test structure. This means that for each of the two section-types (Reading & Writing and Math), the first module will contain questions of a range of difficulty levels in order to allow the system to assess the student’s ability; then, the second module of each section-type will be selected from two options (a harder version and an easier version) by the testing algorithm based on the student’s performance on the first module.

In layman’s terms, this means that if you crush the first Math or Reading & Writing module, you can expect to see harder questions on the second; if you struggle with the first module of either section-type, your second module of that section will contain easier problems.

New Calculator Usage Options

Calculator lovers, rejoice—the day you’ve been waiting for has arrived. Whereas the current SAT has one calculator-active Math section and one calculator-inactive Math section, both Math modules on the digital SAT will be calculator active, which means that you don’t have to do a single operation in your head anymore.

Not only that, but the Bluebook testing app has a version of the Desmos graphing calculator built into its interface. This is a major win for students who aren’t especially quick at doing things like adjusting the window and finding intersection points on their personal graphing calculators, as Desmos makes those actions extremely intuitive.

And an underrated part of the new policy is that you don’t have to choose one calculator or the other: you can bring your personal calculator to do arithmetic operations if that’s easier for you, then pull up the in-app Desmos calculator for any graphing-related questions. This promises to be a substantial improvement for students who are on the lookout for opportunities to let the calculator do some of the heavy lifting for them.

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: What’s NOT Changing?

If it wasn’t clear from everything I listed above, the SAT in March 2024 is going to look VERY different from any of its previous iterations. With that being said, however, not everything will be changing when the test shifts from paper-and-pencil to digital; in fact, there are quite a few things that will be remaining the same. Below is a list of the biggies.

• No changes to testing locations: For a hot minute during the height of the COVID lockdown, College Board had big plans to roll out at-home SAT testing for students across the globe; however, those plans have been put on hold for at least the foreseeable future. Though the new SAT will be entirely digital, it will still be administered only at schools or at approved test centers.
• No changes to scoring scales: The mechanics of SAT scoring will be changing with the rollout of the digital test. Instead of depending solely on how many questions you get correct in each section, as is the case with the current scoring system, your score will also depend on the difficulty level of the questions you get right, as well as which module they were in. On a macro level, however, the overall scaled scores that students receive after all the calculations are done will look exactly the same: a Verbal (Reading & Writing) score with a max of 800 and a Math score with a max of 800, which are added together to create a composite score with a max of 1600.
• No changes to mechanics of question format: Though the new SAT will introduce some new question-types, the composition of the test in terms of question mechanics will remain more or less the same: the Reading & Writing section will consist entirely of multiple-choice questions with four possible answers, and the Math section will consist of ~75% multiple-choice questions and ~25% student-produced-response (grid-in) questions. The only real change here is the fact that grid-ins on the digital SAT will sometimes have negative answers.
• No changes to accommodations: Documentation released by College Board states that the digital SAT will “offer students with disabilities the same range of accommodations available in the paper-based suite”; the process for requesting those accommodations will also remain the same. CB’s documents also indicate that students who require a paper-based test due to a disability will still be able to access one upon receiving approval.

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: How Do They Affect You?

Reactions to all of this information will likely vary depending on the individual test-taker. I’ve worked with a number of students who would have loved to take the test on a computer, as the migration of school assignments and activities to the digital realm, which was accelerated by COVID, made them more comfortable working in that medium. On the other hand, I also know many students who value the ability to interact with the test by writing in the booklet, particularly in the Reading section.

If you fall into the latter category, I wouldn’t worry too much: reading passages on the new SAT will be substantially shorter than on the current test and will only have one question associated with them rather than 10-11, which should limit the amount of annotation that feels necessary while you read. Additionally, you’ll still have access to scratch paper on the digital test, so you’ll be able to take notes as you read even if you can’t mark directly on the passages.

One aspect of the new SAT that almost nobody is likely to complain about is the shorter testing time. A shorter test means more of your Saturday to enjoy, but it also means less mental fatigue while you’re testing; if you’re someone who tends to feel noticeably less sharp at the end of a 3-hour test than you do at the beginning, you may very well feel that your performance improves once the SAT changes in 2024.

Another consequence of the digital test format that should be universally popular is a much shorter turnaround time for scores. College Board has stated that the waiting period for testers to receive their scores should now be “days instead of weeks”; this will allow students to make decisions about repeat testing sooner, which will in turn give them more time to prep for that next test.

Finally, digital tests are more secure than paper-and-pencil tests in a number of ways. Because testers can’t return to a section once they complete it—not like “you’re not supposed to”, like “you literally can’t access it anymore”—less honest students will be unable to do things like discuss questions from previous sections during the break, then go back into the testing room and change their answers. This is a positive development for the vast majority of students who didn’t try to game the system in that way.

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: When Do They Take Effect?

As I’ve alluded to at different times in this post, the rollout for the new digital SAT suite is a multi-stage process. The new test has actually already been rolled out for international students: it began to be administered in non-US locations in spring of 2023. For domestic students, the PSAT will utilize the new digital format this year (2023-2024) for the first time; then, starting in spring of 2024, the SAT will transition to its new digital form. From that point on, the current paper-and-pencil test will no longer be available.

See below for a graphic that summarizes the timeline for the rollout of the new test.

Source: The Digital SAT Suite of Assessments Specifications Overview , Page 3

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: How to Prepare

Rising high school juniors who are starting to think about test prep are in an interesting spot right now as they decide on their best plan of action: instead of simply choosing between SAT and ACT, they’re now choosing between current SAT, new SAT, and ACT. If that applies to you, here are the main options you have and a few things to consider about each one.

Start Prepping Now and Take the Current SAT

Though the shift to the digital SAT looms large on the horizon, there are still four test dates remaining in 2023 for the current iteration of the SAT: August, October, November, and December. This means that students who are nervous about being guinea pigs for the domestic implementation of the new test still have time to prepare, test multiple times, and hopefully earn a score they’re happy with.

If that’s your plan, however, I would highly recommend starting the process ASAP. Though there is a good amount of overlap between the current SAT and the new SAT in terms of content and question-types, there are also significant differences; this means that if you get caught in a situation where you want to continue testing as the calendar rolls over into 2024, you’ll have some new material to prepare for that you wouldn’t have needed to worry about otherwise.

The advantage of taking this path is that there are a ton of materials out there for the current version of the SAT. You’ve got eight official practice tests hosted on College Board’s website , as well as a number of third-party resources (albeit of inconsistent quality) and even some unofficial previous tests floating around the internet. This provides you with plenty of ammo to get the process of preparing for and taking the SAT out of the way before the changes coming in 2024.

Wait to Prep Until the New SAT Arrives

If you don’t think you’ll realistically be able to earn an SAT score that meets your needs in the next 5-6 months, your next option is to wait for the rollout of the new test.

If you’re considering this route, note that you’ll probably want to delay starting to prep until closer to the end of 2023 because of the dearth of practice materials currently available for the digital SAT. As of now, there are only four adaptive digital practice tests available through the Bluebook app and four linear practice tests hosted on the College Board website; since the linear and adaptive tests pull from the same question pool, you’ll probably even notice some overlap between them, which means that these materials don’t really constitute eight unique tests. Khan Academy does also have some prep material for the new SAT, but it’s very limited.

The upshot of this is that it will be very hard to make this content last until the first digital test date in March 2024. It’s likely that there will be new practice material produced over the coming months, both by College Board and by third-party companies, but currently there’s simply not much. Make sure you’re timing your prep to ensure that you have enough material to be practicing consistently until your test date.

Take the ACT Instead

The final path you can choose is to totally disregard the changes to the SAT coming in 2024 and simply prep for the ACT instead. The ACT is a very different test in several ways, prioritizing problem-solving under time pressure over in-depth content knowledge; however, it’s just as learnable as the SAT, and often even more so for students who are able to read and process quickly. There is also a ton of high-quality practice content available, which means that most students won’t need to worry about running out of materials.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Whichever path you choose, we’d love to help you achieve your best possible score. Reach out today to learn more about how the Pros can help you beat the old SAT, the new SAT, or the ACT.

Looking To Improve Your Score on the SAT or ACT?

Sat changes coming in 2024: final thoughts.

We’ve covered a lot of ground today: changes to the structure and delivery of the SAT coming in 2024, aspects of the test that we know will not be changing significantly, and how all of this affects you. There will very likely be new information released over the coming months; if so, rest assured that they’ll lock me back in this dark room until I write something about it, so make sure you check back regularly for any new updates.

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: Frequently Asked Questions

Is there still an essay on the new sat.

Nope, you’ve dodged this particular bullet once again. The essay portion of the SAT was largely discontinued in 2021, and there are no indications that the digital SAT will be bringing it back.

Will the upcoming changes to the SAT make it easier?

It largely depends on the test-taker. There are changes coming to the test that many students will likely appreciate: reading passages will be shorter, students will have access to a calculator for the entirety of the Math section, and total testing time will decrease by more than 25%. This may make the test feel easier to many students; however, remember that your SAT scaled scores are calculated based in part on the performance of other students. If more students are consistently getting more questions correct, the bar for earning a high score will rise.

Is it still worth taking the SAT?

For many students, yes. Though most colleges and universities have moved to a test-optional admissions policy as a result of the COVID pandemic, test scores can still help you show admissions officers that you fit what they’re looking for in an incoming freshman. Look up the median SAT scores for the schools in which you’re most interested—if you believe that you can earn a score that’s at or above that 50% mark, it’s often a good idea to take the test.

Why are colleges dropping the SAT?

How much time do you have? The short answer is that most of them aren’t. With a few notable exceptions (looking at you, University of California system), the majority of schools have gone test-optional, not test-blind. This means that they don’t require you to submit scores with your application, but they will still consider them if you do. This upsurge in test-optional policies was largely caused by concerns about the ability of students to take the SAT safely during COVID, but it’s also the result of a series of debates about the utility of standardized tests that have been going on for years.

SAT Changes Coming in 2024: Related Reading

What’s a Good SAT Score For 2023?

What Calculators Are Allowed on the SAT?

An Overview of SAT Costs & Fees

Understanding the Differences Between the ACT & SAT

Do I Need the SAT For College? Deciding Whether or Not to Take the SAT

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Sat / act prep online guides and tips, the ultimate sat essay study guide: tips and review.

We've written the best guide to the SAT essay available anywhere.

To craft this guide, we have carefully read all official material available on the SAT essay from the College Board and read the best SAT books we could find and extracted the most important things you need to know to succeed on the essay section. Based on this research, we're confident that this is the most complete and comprehensive resource available for the SAT essay.

This guide gets deep into every aspect of the SAT essay, from the rubric to prompts to the nuts and bolts of how to write a high-scoring essay . You'll learn the best tips and strategies to use to maximize the value of your SAT essay practice as well as how much time to devote to prepping for the essay.

If you're looking for a comprehensive guide to SAT essay and how to improve your SAT essay scores, this guide is invaluable. Rather than trying to put all the information we've distilled into one long article, we've created this multi-sectioned guide to serve as a table of contents to each of our more in-depth articles.

We'll start by taking a high-level look at the importance of the SAT essay to colleges and which schools care about your SAT essay score. The next section delves into more of the details of the SAT essay prompt and rubric and outlines step-by-step how to write a perfect-scoring SAT essay. Finally, the third part of this guide takes you through tips and strategies to use with the SAT essay.

We suggest reading through this guide in order your first time through, as you would any other test prep resource. Alternatively, if you're just looking for a refresher on certain areas, you can use this guide as a reference you can jump around in as needed.

UPDATE: SAT Essay No Longer Offered

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In January 2021, the College Board announced that after June 2021, it would no longer offer the Essay portion of the SAT (except at schools who opt in during School Day Testing). It is now no longer possible to take the SAT Essay, unless your school is one of the small number who choose to offer it during SAT School Day Testing.

While most colleges had already made SAT Essay scores optional, this move by the College Board means no colleges now require the SAT Essay. It will also likely lead to additional college application changes such not looking at essay scores at all for the SAT or ACT, as well as potentially requiring additional writing samples for placement.

What does the end of the SAT Essay mean for your college applications? Check out our article on the College Board's SAT Essay decision for everything you need to know.

What Do Colleges Think About the SAT Essay?

Something that makes the SAT essay different from all the other sections of the SAT is its optional nature. The articles in this section will inform you about why colleges don't all require the SAT essay and whether or not it makes sense for you to take the SAT with the essay.

Does the SAT Essay Matter? Expert Guide

With the changes to the SAT essay, the importance of your SAT essay score to your college applications has grown somewhat murky. Read this article to find out why colleges still require the essay and what kind of effect it has on your college application.

Should I Take the SAT Essay? How to Decide

There are both positive and negative aspects of taking the SAT essay. This guide goes through different arguments for and against taking the SAT essay and helps you figure out which scenarios apply for you.

Which Colleges Require the SAT Essay? Complete List

Depending on which colleges you want to apply to, you may not need to take the SAT essay at all. Find out if the schools you're interested in require or recommend you take the SAT essay with this article.

Understanding SAT Essay Prompts and the SAT Essay Rubric

The next set of articles unpack the SAT essay prompt and the best way to fulfill the requirements of the essay task. You'll learn how to write consistently high-scoring SAT essays and how to preplan examples and explanations to use on the real SAT essay.

New SAT Essay Prompts: How Are They Changing?

If you're just starting your prep or are unfamiliar with the SAT essay, this article is a great introduction to the essay section. In it, we analyze the difference between the old SAT essay and the current essay for those who took the old SAT and want to see how the new essay differs. This article is also a good summary to come back to if you need a refresher on what the SAT essay asks you to do.

SAT Essay Prompts: The Complete List

One of the most important ways to improve at writing the SAT essay is to practice with official SAT essay prompts. In this article, you'll find all the free and publicly released official SAT prompts currently available, along with instructions on the best ways to use the prompts in your studying.

How to Get a Perfect 8|8|8 SAT Essay Score

Excelling on the SAT essay requires understanding the difference between an almost-perfect and a perfect-scoring essay. This article will take you through my complete analysis of a perfect-scoring SAT essay and how to improve your score. You'll learn what to be sure to do and what to avoid when writing and the key areas to focus on for maximal score increase.

How to Write an SAT Essay, Step by Step

Learn the ins and outs of writing a perfect-scoring SAT essay by following along as we go through the reading, analyzing and planning, writing, and revising stages of a sample essay. You'll get to see the whole process, from scribbled handwritten planning notes to the polished final product. At each step, you'll also discover strategies to enhance your SAT essay writing process.

SAT Essay Rubric: Full Analysis and Writing Strategies

Dive into the intricacies of SAT essay scoring with this item-by-item look at the SAT essay rubric. You'll learn about what you need to accomplish in your essay to achieve high Reading, Analysis, and Writing scores. Plus, you'll get tips on the best way to use the rubric as part of your SAT essay practice.

What's the Average SAT Essay Score?

Read this article to get a good idea of how scores are distributed on the SAT essay and how much your scores really matter.

The Most Reliable SAT Essay Template and Format

On the SAT essay, you'll always be asked to accomplish the same task (explain how the author makes their argument), which makes it possible to plan out your essay's structure ahead of time. This article teaches you how to create your own SAT essay templates for the new SAT.

6 SAT Essay Examples to Answer Every Prompt

Every SAT essay requires reading a passage and analyzing how the author constructs her argument. You can't prepare ahead of time by analyzing the exact passage that will be used, but you can familiarize yourself with techniques frequently used to add impact to argumentative essays.

Learn how to identify the six persuasive techniques most commonly found in SAT essay prompts and the effect each technique has on the reader with this guide.

SAT Essay Strategies and Tips

Now you've gotten both a basic understanding of what the SAT essay is and a good grasp of what's required to write the best SAT essay possible. Huge success!

The next step is to take that knowledge and understanding and apply it in the most effective ways. To help you with that, we've compiled our top strategies and tips for when to take the SAT essay and how to make your SAT essay practice as efficient as possible.

SAT Essay Tips: 15 Ways to Improve Your Score

Your time is a limited and valuable resource when it comes to the SAT essay, both in terms of how much time you have to spend prepping and the 50 minutes you get to analyze and write about the prompt on the real SAT. Read this article to find out what tweaks you can make to your essay writing process that will have a large positive impact on your essay score.

Does Messy Handwriting Hurt Your SAT Essay Score?

Essay graders are trained to read all sorts of handwriting, so it's not likely your essay will be completely thrown out because the graders can't read it. However, even occasionally illegible handwriting can still affect your essay score in negative ways. Find out how messy handwriting might negatively affect your essay score and how to fix the problem in this article.

What's Next?

There's a lot of information in this guide to digest, but your SAT essay practice shouldn't stop at reading this articles and strategy guides. The best way to prep for the SAT essay is to write timed essays in response to real SAT essay prompts .

Before you score your essay on the rubric, be sure to read through our guide to diagnosing your weaknesses and reviewing your mistakes . The article uses examples of multiple choice questions, but the strategies of honing in on your weak spots work equally well for the essay.

Above all, stay motivated ! And if you liked this guide, don't forget to read our other ultimate SAT prep guides for SAT Reading , Writing and Language , and Math .

Laura graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Music and Psychology, and earned a Master's degree in Composition from the Longy School of Music of Bard College. She scored 99 percentile scores on the SAT and GRE and loves advising students on how to excel in high school.

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The Optional SAT Essay: What to Know

Tackling this section of the SAT requires preparation and can boost some students' college applications.

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Even though an increasing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements, students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so.

Although the essay portion of the SAT became optional in 2016, many students still chose to write it to demonstrate strong or improved writing skills to prospective colleges.

In June 2021, the College Board opted to discontinue the SAT essay. Now, only students in a few states and school districts still have access to — and must complete — the SAT essay. This requirement applies to some students in the SAT School Day program, for instance, among other groups.

How Colleges Use SAT, ACT Results

Tiffany Sorensen Sept. 14, 2020

Whether or not to write the SAT essay is not the biggest decision you will have to make in high school, but it is certainly one that requires thought on your part. Here are three things you should know about the 50-minute SAT essay as you decide whether to complete it:

• To excel on the SAT essay, you must be a trained reader.
• The SAT essay begs background knowledge of rhetoric and persuasive writing.
• A growing number of colleges are dropping standardized test requirements.

To Excel on the SAT Essay, You Must Be a Trained Reader

The SAT essay prompt never comes unaccompanied. On the contrary, it follows a text that is about 700 words long or approximately one page. Before test-takers can even plan their response, they must carefully read and – ideally – annotate the passage.

The multifaceted nature of the SAT essay prompt can be distressing to students who struggle with reading comprehension. But the good news is that this prompt is highly predictable: It always asks students to explain how the author builds his or her argument. In this case, "how” means which rhetorical devices are used, such as deductive reasoning, metaphors, etc.

Luckily, the author’s argument is usually spelled out in the prompt itself. For instance, consider this past SAT prompt : “Write an essay in which you explain how Paul Bogard builds an argument to persuade his audience that natural darkness should be preserved.”

Due to the essay prompt’s straightforward nature, students should read the passage with an eye toward specific devices used by the author rather than poring over “big ideas.” In tour SAT essay, aim to analyze at least two devices, with three being even better.

The SAT Essay Begs Background Knowledge of Rhetoric and Persuasive Writing

Since your SAT essay response must point to specific rhetorical devices that the author employs to convince the reader, you should make it a point to intimately know 10-15 common ones. The more familiar you are with rhetorical devices, the faster you will become at picking them out as you read texts.

Once you have read the passage and identified a handful of noteworthy rhetorical devices, you should apply many of the same essay-writing techniques you already use in your high school English classes.

For instance, you should start by brainstorming to see which devices you have the most to say about. After that, develop a concise thesis statement, incorporate quotes from the text, avoid wordiness and other infelicities of writing, close with an intriguing conclusion, and do everything else you could imagine your English teacher advising you to do.

Remember to always provide evidence from the text to support your claims. Finally, leave a few minutes at the end to review your essay for mistakes.

A Growing Number of Colleges Are Dropping Standardized Test Requirements

In recent years, some of America’s most prominent colleges and universities – including Ivy League institutions like Harvard University in Massachusetts, Princeton University in New Jersey and Yale University in Connecticut – have made submission of ACT and SAT scores optional.

While this trend began as early as 2018, the upheaval caused by COVID-19 has prompted many other schools to adopt a more lenient testing policy, as well.

Advocates for educational fairness have long expressed concerns that standardized admissions tests put underprivileged students at a disadvantage. In light of the coronavirus pandemic , which restricted exam access for almost all high school students, colleges have gotten on board with this idea by placing more emphasis on other factors in a student’s application.

To assess writing ability in alternative ways, colleges now place more emphasis on students’ grades in language-oriented subjects, as well as college application documents like the personal statement .

The fact that more colleges are lifting their ACT/SAT requirement does not imply that either test or any component of it is now obsolete. Students who must write the SAT essay can still stand to gain from doing so, especially those who wish to major in a writing-intensive field. The essay can also demonstrate a progression or upward trajectory in writing skills.

The SAT essay can give a boost to the college applications of the few students to whom it is still available. If the requirement applies to you, be sure to learn more about the SAT essay and practice it often as you prepare for your upcoming SAT.

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The SAT Essay 2022-2023: What to Expect

Last updated: March 2022

How to write the SAT essay:

• Read the prompt to understand the task.
• Read the sample passage, underlining the examples and evidence.
• Come up with a thesis statement.
• Outline your SAT essay.
• Write a draft.
• Edit it: check arguments and evidence, make sure there’s a logic in the essay.
• Proofread your SAT essay: check grammar, spelling, sentence structure, etc.

Good news for those afraid of SAT essays:

This section is optional now. It means they won’t require you to write the SAT essay this year.

Many colleges still recommend it to see your writing and critical thinking skills.

What are those colleges that require SAT essays? How long is the SAT with essays? How to write it? And what is the SAT essay, after all?

Keep on reading to find out all the details, and get ready to earn the highest score for your essay this year.

Source: Unsplash

That’s what you’ll learn in this guide:

Table of Contents:

• Organization
• The SAT essay: to take or not to take?
• How to decide when to take the SAT
• How to register for the SAT
• Top changes to SAT essays in 2022
• How to write SAT essay?
• SAT essay tips
• Colleges that require SAT essay

What is the SAT?

Invented by Carl Brigham in 1923 , the SAT is owned and developed by College Board. It’s a not-for-profit organization in the USA, with over 6,000 schools, colleges, and universities being its members.

SAT Purpose

The purpose of the SAT is to measure your readiness for college. It’s focused on the knowledge and skills you’ve got in high school, and it provides colleges with one common score to compare all applicants.

College admission officers review the SAT score alongside with your other achievements such as:

• Your high school GPA.
• The admission interview.
• Your personal essay .
• Letters of recommendation from your teachers.
• The classes you took in school.
• Your extracurricular activities.

The higher your final score, the more options you’ll have for admission.

SAT Organization

The SAT includes three mandatory parts: Reading, Writing, and Math. As per 2016, an SAT essay is optional for applicants to take, though many colleges still require it.

You’ll have three hours to complete your SAT (without the essay). If you write the essay, you’ll have 3 hours 50 minutes to finish the whole test.

To succeed with the test, you should complete its all sections. If you leave some questions unanswered, your scores will be canceled.

The total you can get for your SAT is on a scale of 400–1600, with 200–800 for each of two sections: Reading and Writing + Math.

Sounds difficult?

Okay, here’s a kinda SAT score calculator for you:

If you write an SAT essay, you can get an extra 2–8 points for each of three criteria. What are these criteria, and what is a good essay score?

Two graders from College Board score each SAT essay on a scale of 1-4 across three criteria:

• Reading: it should be clear from your essay that you’ve understood the material. So, cover its main points and show how they interrelate.
• Analysis: an essay should include persuasive claims about the text’s main points. So, evaluate them and provide supporting evidence for its claims.
• Writing: an essay should be structured well. So, present your arguments logically, vary sentence structure, state a thesis, and avoid grammar/spelling mistakes.

Summed together from two graders, your SAT essay score can range between 2 and 8 for each criterion.

In 2018, the average SAT essay score was 5 out of 8 for Reading, 4 out of 8 for Analysis, and 5 out of 8 for Writing. ( Source )

As you see, the analysis was the most challenging part for students. That’s because it differs from what you do in standard essays:

In high school, you mostly write persuasive essays to give your personal opinion on the topic. In the SAT essay, they ask you to analyze the author’s opinion. It’s more like writing an expository essay . And although the structure of SAT essays doesn’t differ from that of a standard essay, it may be difficult for you to logically link the arguments and evidence of another person in a new paper.

SAT Dates in 2022-2023

As a rule, the SAT takes place on the first Saturday of November, December, May, and June. Other dates include late January, March or April, and late August or October.

In other words, you can take the exam almost every month. Just make sure you are ready and don’t miss a registration deadline for your chosen data.

Here are the SAT dates for 2022-2023:

The SAT Essay: to Take or Not to Take?

As you’ve read already, an SAT essay is optional now. However, there are many colleges and universities in the USA that still require it from applicants. So, if you decide not to write the SAT essay, you won’t be able to apply to these schools.

Later in this article, you’ll find the list of colleges that require the SAT essay. Make sure yours is not there; otherwise, you’ll have to write an essay. If you are still unsure of what college to apply, writing the essay would come in handy anyway.

The SAT with essay costs $57 as opposed to the $45 for the SAT without an essay section.

Pros and cons of taking the SAT essay:

How to Decide When to Take the SAT

Think strategically when choosing the date for taking your SAT:

• How much time do you need to prepare? Map it out, set goals, visualize your plan – and you’ll know what SAT date fits you best.
• How busy are you with other tasks at the moment? With tons of other assignments and commitments to complete, you’ll hardly find enough time for preparation. So, choose the season when your schedule is not that crazy.
• What is your college application timeline? You’ll need the SAT completed before you submit the application, so time accordingly.

How to Register for the SAT

First of all, choose the date, based on the tips above. Try to complete your SAT registration as soon as possible, because the late registration usually needs an extra fee.

Also, decide if you take the SAT essay. For that, find out if your chosen colleges require such essays. Also, check if they ask applicants to take SAT Subject Tests (they are given by College Board on individual subjects).

You can complete the registration on the College Board website , or fill in the Student Registration Booklet and send it by email. ( Ask your school counselor for this booklet .)

You’ll need to upload a picture of yourself and provide all your personal data. Make sure the photo and info match with those in your ID. Also, pay a registration fee.

Once your registration is complete, print out the Admission Ticket: you’ll need it when come to take your test.

Top Changes to SAT Essays in 2022

In case you don’t know, the SAT has changed since 2016. Many educational blogs and websites wrote about it because it was the year of the biggest change to this test, and it impacted students greatly.

Time, format, scores, sections… Everything is different now!

Here go the most significant changes to SAT essays in 2020 and later:

• The SAT essay is optional now.
• Students have 50 minutes for writing it. (The old SAT gave them only 25 minutes.)
• This essay is argumentative now, and it asks you to analyze another essay. (The old SAT required to answer a theoretical prompt in your essay.)
• The SAT essay is scored separately now. (The old SAT had an essay as a part of the Writing section, and the score range for it was 200-800.)

More changes to the overall SAT test are gathered and turned into the infographic by Student Tutor. Check here for details.

Or, let’s turn to SAT essay examples!

That’s what an SAT essay task looked back in 2016:

As you see, it’s focused on a more theoretical response. Graders didn’t estimate any analytical skills.

And that’s the example of a new SAT essay task:

It requires a more argumentative and analytical approach from students. Graders can see your critical thinking skills, not just your personal opinion on a given theoretical prompt.

Both examples are taken from Allen Cheng’s article at PrepScholar. He shared the complete guide to the SAT new rules and its most meaningful changes for students.

How to Write SAT Essay?

Below, you’ll find SAT essay tips that can help to improve your scores. But now let’s turn to an essay structure and your step by step tutorial on how to write SAT essays.

Lucky you are, the SAT essay structure is similar to any standard academic paper teachers asked you to write in class. Known as a 5-paragraph essay , its basic parts are:

• Introduction: 2-3 sentences with a hook and a thesis statement.
• Thesis statement: a central argument of your essay, so take your time to craft it.
• Supporting paragraphs (two or three, if time) : each of them should include a topic sentence, evidence, and a concluding sentence to demonstrate how it refers to your thesis statement.
• Conclusion: 3-4 sentences, summarizing your arguments in a concise manner.

Given that you have 50 minutes for writing the SAT essay, make sure to allocate this time like a boss:

• Read the prompt: 1 minute .
• Read the passage, annotating the core info: 15 minutes .
• Outline the essay: 5 minutes .
• Write an essay: 25 minutes .
• Check an essay: 4 minutes .

Don’t hurry up to read the passage: pay attention to the task (prompt) itself, as it will help you understand what information and evidence to concentrate. So, here we have the first step to writing a good SAT essay: read the prompt before the passage .

After that, read the sample passage carefully . Underline the evidence and examples you can use to answer the prompt in your essay. Remember, that your SAT essay will be scored for Reading , so you’ll need to demonstrate that you understand the text’s main points.

To get a high score for Analysis , you’ll need to explain and evaluate the author’s arguments. So, when reading the passage, identify his central claim and instruments he uses to support it (reasoning, evidence, stylistic elements). Focus on the most relevant and persuasive ones.

State your thesis . It should sum up your assessment of the author’s argument. Make it concise and clear, but don’t add any personal attitudes. Remember: you analyze the author’s view rather than share your own. Stay objective when reading the passage and then creating your central claim.

Now it’s time for outlining your essay. Map out it briefly in the introduction, then specify topic sentences and evidence for each paragraph of your essay’s body. Write the draft , with an essay conclusion restating your thesis and summarizing the whole paper.

Check your SAT essay: make sure to use effective language and word choice. Use a variety of sentence structures but stay clear and informative. Your essay gets scores for Writing too, and high scores go to works that are “cohesive and demonstrate highly effective use and command of language.” ( Source )

Source: Giphy

So, avoid low-level vocabulary, correct all spelling and grammar mistakes, and check if you use the right transitional phrases to describe relationships between the arguments in your essay.

SAT Essay Tips

Everyone loves tips, especially if they help to achieve goals and conquer new peaks. And when your goal is a high score for an SAT essay, you need tips more than ever. No wonder:

Who doesn’t want to get a magic bullet to hit the target at one stroke, right?

We asked our team of professional academic writers to give readers their recommendations on essay writing, and here go the essay tips they’ve shared:

What you can do to earn high scores for the SAT essay:

• Understand the scoring system.
• Study essay samples; analyze their structure.
• Practice a lot: take sample prompts and spend 50 minutes on writing essays based on them.
• Learn to analyze texts and see central claims and evidence in them.
• During the SAT, read the prompt before the passage. Always.
• Use accurate facts: support your points with evidence from the passage.
• Be objective: answer the prompt but don’t add any personal opinion or points.
• Take your time to organize the SAT essay, and don’t forget to revise it.
• Make your essay longer than one page: though they say length doesn’t matter, your short response might be not enough for graders to see your writing skills — and you score for the Writing criterion will suffer.
• Follow standard tips for essay writing: use straightforward language, give a clear thesis, structure your essay logically.
• Use a timer when practicing your SAT essay: remember that you’ll have 50 minutes only, so make time for analyzing, planning, writing, and revising it.

Colleges That Require SAT Essay

Your decision to take the optional SAT essay might heavily depend on which college you are going to apply.

So, let’s check what colleges require SAT essays. If yours isn’t in the list, feel free to catch a break: you won’t have to prepare for this writing test and spend money on taking it. However, we would recommend you to double-check with each school at their official websites. (Rules change, you know, and the information tends to go out of date in time.)

We took the most popular colleges among US students only. If your school isn’t on the list, check SAT essay policies of all educational institutes at the official College Board website.

SAT Essay Examples

As mentioned, you need to practice a lot to write the SAT essay worth a high score. That’s true. But what else you can do is pre-plan the examples and evidence you’ll use in the essay! For that, analyze SAT essay examples available online.

Yes, the specifics of your prompt will differ; but they can help choose the types of examples you’ll use to explain the author’s argument.

College Board shares many SAT essay examples with detailed analysis and explanations of why they gave these or those scores to students. They’ll help you understand what to expect from your essay and what writing weaknesses of yours to improve.

This is the SAT essay example that has got 2/1/1 from graders.

(Oops, you better don’t write like that!)

And this work has got 4/4/4 points! See the difference:

(c) College Board

Additional Resources to Check:

• The SAT Student Guide 2022, College Board
• SAT Essay Practice on Khan Academy
• Practice With a Redesigned SAT Essay Prompts
• Best Books to Prepare for SAT
• SAT Essay Prompts: The Complete List

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How to Get Registered for the SAT

The SAT is a standardized test that colleges and universities use for admission to determine a student's academic skills. Registration for the SAT needs to be completed by the student, not by a parent or guidance counselor. To register, you'll need to do the following:

• Pick your test date, and try to get your SAT registration finished as soon as possible. Late registration accrues additional fees, and there's also a cutoff.
• Registration can be completed online on the College Board website or by filling out the form provided in the Student Registration Booklet for the SAT and mailing it in. This booklet can be obtained from your school counselor.
• Be sure all your personal data matches the exact information on your photo ID.
• For identification purposes, upload a picture of yourself.
• Decide if you want to use the College Board’s Student Search Service, which is free but requires you to provide additional information about yourself. Based on the information you give, scholarship organizations and colleges can find you to give information on their programs.
• Remember that you'll be responsible for paying a registration fee, which is $55 for the SAT. Fee waivers are available for those in low-income households.
• Once your registration is complete, be sure to print out your Admission Ticket, as you'll need it on the day of your test.

When to Take the SAT

The SAT can be taken any time starting your freshman year. However, most students take the test in the spring of their junior year. Doing so will give you enough time to take the test twice, which is highly recommended, as 67 percent of students improve their score the second time around.

Once you receive your initial test results in your junior year, you'll know your weak points and can prepare to retake the test if you so choose. If you're not satisfied with your initial score, you can take the test for the second time in the fall of your senior year.

When to Start Preparing for the SAT

For those serious about getting a superior score on the SAT, it's never too soon to start preparing. However, most students begin preparing for the SAT in the spring or summer before their junior year, as it gives them enough time to take the test, find their weak point from the first go-around and then take the SAT again in the fall of their senior year.

How to Prep for the SAT

The best way to prep for your SAT is through classroom learning and by taking courses that challenge you and help you build the knowledge you need to be successful on the test, in college and in your future career.

If you take a free practice test with The Princeton Review , we can provide you with a personalized score report that includes the areas where you're strong as well as areas that need improvement. We pride ourselves on providing you with problem sets with questions that most closely resemble what you'll find on the SAT. However, the best way to prep for the SAT is to enroll in our SAT Prep course , which has both online and in-person options.

What to Do on Test Day

The day of your test, try not to worry about studying. Enjoy a hearty breakfast, and make sure you arrive at the test site early. In most cases, doors open at 7:45 a.m. and close at 8 a.m., and you won't be admitted once the test has begun.

It's best to leave your cell phone, tablet, and other devices at home, as the test administrator can deny you admission if you're found in possession of these prohibited electronic devices. You do, however, want to make sure you bring the following:

• Admission Ticket and photo ID
• Two number 2 pencils with erasers
• An approved calculator and extra batteries
• A watch with all alarms silenced
• A drink and snack for the break

The test administrator will read all the instructions verbatim before you begin. They'll also tell you when you can start or stop working on each section. You must work on each section during the allotted time, and once it's complete, you cannot go back. You'll likely receive both a 10-minute and a five-minute break sometime during your test, which are the only times for eating and drinking.

Once the test is complete, the administrator will collect and count all test booklets to ensure everything has been turned in before students are released.

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What Colleges Require the SAT Essay?

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If you’re going to be applying to college soon, there’s a good chance that you’re already thinking about the SAT. Most colleges still require standardized test scores, and millions of students across the country tackle this exam each year. 

As you begin your college search, it’s important to understand the exact standardized test requirements of the colleges on your list. Some will be test-optional . Others require scores from the SAT or ACT. In addition, some will require that you submit scores from the optional essay portions of these tests. There may also be schools that require or recommend SAT Subject Tests. Knowing the exact testing policy at each school you’re considering will help you plan your test taking strategy, and begin test prep well in advance. 

If you’re planning to take the SAT, you won’t want to miss this complete overview of what colleges require the SAT essay. 

What is the SAT Essay? How is it Scored?

Before we dive into which schools require it, let’s take a closer look at what exactly the SAT essay is, and how it is scored. 

On the SAT Essay, students are provided with a written argument that they must read and analyze. Students have 50 minutes to read the passage, plan the essay, and write their response. Most successful responses stick to the standard five-paragraph essay format. To see an example prompt and scoring rubric, check out the Essay Sample Questions on the College Board website. 

It’s important to note here that the SAT Essay score is separate from your overall composite SAT score. It does not impact the score ranging from 400-1600 as reported on your score report. Instead of being included in your composite score, it is provided in addition to it. 

The Essay is scored on a scale from 2-8 in three areas of evaluation—Reading, Analysis, and Writing. Each essay is reviewed by two scorers, and scores between 1-4 are awarded in each dimension. These scores are then added together so that you’ll receive three scores for the SAT Essay—one for each dimension—ranging from 2–8 points. A perfect score on the essay would be 8/8/8, but the mean score on the essay is a 5 for Reading and Writing, and 3 for Analysis. This means if you can achieve any score over 5/3/5, you have scored above average on the essay. For a more complete look at how the test is scored, don’t miss our post What is a Good SAT Essay Score?

Should I Take the SAT Essay?

First of all, the SAT essay is technically an optional section, so no, you are not required to take it. That being said, some colleges do require applicants to take the SAT with Essay. If you choose not to take the essay portion of the test, you will not be an eligible applicant for any of these schools. 

The SAT Essay used to be required at many top colleges, but it has become optional at many schools. Now, among elite schools, only the University of California schools require the Essay. Other selective colleges like Duke University, Amherst College, and Colby College recommend the Essay, but it’s not required. 

Take a look at the colleges on these lists, and see if there are any you plan to apply to. Also be sure to double-check on your schools’ webpages, as these policies can change. 

If you think you might change your mind about which schools you want to apply to, you should take the SAT Essay to leave those doors open. This is why we generally recommend taking the essay, regardless of whether or not it’s required. After all, you can’t go back and just take the SAT Essay if you decide to change your mind and apply to a school that requires it—you’d have to retake the entire SAT.

Some colleges don’t require the essay, but do recommend it. In these cases, we always direct students to do what the college recommends. 

That being said, there is currently no option to withhold your essay score if you do terribly on it. Your essay scores will always be reported with your other test scores from that day, even to colleges that don’t require them. 

What Colleges Require the SAT with Essay?

There colleges request scores from the SAT with Essay in order to apply.

Schools that Require the SAT Essay:

• All of the University of California schools
• Benedictine University
• City University London
• Delaware State University
• DeSales University
• Dominican University of California
• Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University
• Howard University
• John Wesley University
• Kentucky State University
• Martin Luther College
• Molloy College
• Schreiner University
• Soka University of America
• Southern California Institute of Architecture
• Texas A&M University—Galveston
• United States Military Academy (West Point)
• University of North Texas
• West Virginia University Institute of Technology
• Western Carolina University

Discover your chances at hundreds of schools

Our free chancing engine takes into account your history, background, test scores, and extracurricular activities to show you your real chances of admission—and how to improve them.

These schools do not require the SAT Essay, but do recommend that students submit it. At CollegeVine, our best advice is to always follow a college’s recommendations. 

Schools that Recommend the SAT Essay:

• Abilene Christian University
• Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
• Allegheny College
• Amherst College
• Art Institute of Houston
• Augsburg University
• Austin College
• Caldwell University
• California State University, Northridge
• Central Connecticut State University
• Central Michigan University
• Cheyney University of Pennsylvania
• Coastal Carolina University
• Colby College
• College of Wooster
• Colorado School of Mines
• Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Corban University
• Cornerstone University
• Dallas Christian College
• Duke University
• Eastern Illinois University
• Eastern Nazarene College
• Easternn University
• Endicott College
• Five Towns College
• Gallaudet University
• George Washington University
• Georgia Highlands College
• Greenville University
• Gwynedd Mercy University
• High Point University
• Hofstra University
• Holy Family University
• Husson University
• Indiana University South Bend
• Indiana University Southeast
• Indiana Wesleyan University
• Inter American University of Puerto Rico: Barranquitas Campus
• Juilliard School
• Keiser University (West Palm Beach)
• Lehigh University
• Madonna University
• Manhattan College
• Marymount California University
• Massachusetts Maritime Academy
• McMurry University
• Mercy College
• Modern College of Design
• Montana Tech of the University of Montana
• Morehouse College
• Mount Saint Mary College
• Mount St. Joseph University
• National-Louis University
• New Jersey City University
• Nichols College
• North Park University
• Occidental College
• Ohio University
• Oregon State University
• Purdue University Northwest
• Randall University
• Randolph-Macon College
• Reading Area Community College
• Rowan University
• Rutgers University—Camden Campus
• Rutgers University—Newark Campus
• Saint Michael’s College
• Sciences Po
• Seton Hill University
• Shiloh University
• Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania
• Silver Lake College of the Holy Family
• Southern Illinois University of Carbondale
• Southern Oregon University
• Spring Hill College
• Sul Ross State University
• SUNY Farmingdale State College
• SUNY University at Stony Brook
• Tarleton State University
• Texas A&M International University
• Texas A&M University
• Texas State University
• The King’s College
• United States Air Force Academy
• University of Evansville
• University of La Verne
• University of Mary Hardin—Baylor
• University of Massachusetts Amherst
• University of Minnesota: Twin Cities
• University of New England
• University of Northwestern—St. Paul
• University of the Virgin Islands
• University of Toledo
• University of Washington Bothell
• VanderCook College of Music
• Virginia Union University
• Wabash College
• Webb Institute
• Webber International University
• Wesleyan College
• William Jewell College

If any of the schools you are considering appear on either of the lists above, we recommend taking the SAT with Essay. In fact, we recommend that most, if not all, students take the SAT essay since it leaves more doors open in your college search. However, if you’re absolutely sure you won’t be applying to colleges that require or recommend the SAT with Essay, you can skip it.

Regardless, as you consider which colleges to add to your list, you’ll want to be certain you know what colleges require the SAT essay so that you can plan ahead for this part of your test. 

For help figuring out which schools might be a great fit for you, don’t miss our customized and innovative Chancing Engine and School List Generator . Here, we use a proprietary algorithm backed by over 100,000 data points to develop a school list based on your real admissions chances and preferences.

Want to know how your SAT score impacts your chances of acceptance to your dream schools? Our free Chancing Engine will not only help you predict your odds, but also let you know how you stack up against other applicants, and which aspects of your profile to improve. Sign up for your free CollegeVine account today to gain access to our Chancing Engine and get a jumpstart on your college strategy!

Related CollegeVine Blog Posts

On January 19th, College Board announced a few significant updates in regards to its SAT Suite of Assessments, including the elimination of the optional essay portion of the SAT and the discontinuance of the SAT Subject Tests (SAT II tests). Let’s take a look at these changes and how they might affect students’ plans for the spring of 2021 and beyond.

In the release, College Board announced that the optional essay will be discontinued from the SAT following the June 2021 test date, with the exception of school day administrations in states which require the essay for evaluative purposes. Students currently registered to take the exam with essay between now and June will have the option to cancel the essay portion via their online account with no change fees up until the test’s registration deadline. In their statement, College Board observed: “This decision recognizes that there are other ways for students to demonstrate their mastery of essay writing. At the same time, writing remains essential to college readiness, and the SAT will continue to measure writing and editing skills.”

Although the vast majority of colleges no longer require (or even recommend, in many cases) students to submit SAT Essay scores, it is somewhat unclear what effect College Board’s announcement will have on the few schools that still utilize the essay portion of the exam in the admission process. Ultimately, the best advice for students and families is likely to check with any colleges they are interested in to see what they recommend, but it seems likely that the SAT essay will not play any role in college admissions for any students in the class of 2022 and beyond.

As a tutor aware of the pressures facing students preparing for the test, I see the announcement as a welcome change. The removal of the optional essay, which was only valued by a small number of schools and did not contribute to students’ overall composite score out of 1600, does offer many benefits to students preparing for the SAT. In addition to reducing the cost of the exam by $15, it shortens the already lengthy test by nearly an hour, which may allow students to devote more energy and focus to the four primary sections (Reading, Writing and Language, No-Calculator Math, and Calculator Math) which contribute to their overall score. Additionally, it allows students to allocate more study time towards other endeavors, whether those be further test prep, academic coursework, extracurricular activities, or even developing a stronger college admissions essay.

College Board Will No Longer Offer SAT Subject Tests

College Board also announced its discontinuation of the SAT Subject Tests, also known as SAT II tests, effective immediately in the U.S. and beginning June 2021 internationally. U.S students registered to take SAT Subject tests in this spring will have their registrations cancelled automatically and their registration fees refunded. Because the SAT Subject Tests are often used for a wider variety of purposes internationally, College Board will offer two final administrations of the exam to international students in May and June of 2021. As to how this might affect the applications of students who already took any SAT Subject Tests, College Board states:

We’ve reached out to our member colleges, and they’ll decide whether and how to consider students’ Subject Test scores. Students should check colleges’ websites for the most up-to-date information on their application policies.

Ultimately, this probably will not have a large role on the college admissions process for most schools . As of the time of the announcement, very few schools recommended students submit SAT Subject Test scores, and while each college is free to decide how to handle scores from previous administrations of the test and what effect this may have on its admission policies, it is rare for a college to alter its admissions policy in a way which penalizes a student for events that are beyond their control. 

College Board attributes its decision to discontinue the tests to the widespread availability of its AP testing, which they consider to render SAT Subject Tests as unnecessary in demonstrating students’ academic knowledge. Both AP exams and SAT Subject Tests are designed as content specific, supplemental exams which allow students to demonstrate their proficiency and interest in specific subjects, and both differ significantly from the standard SAT in their reliance on students’ prior knowledge and comprehension rather than on critical analysis and general problem solving ability. However, there are also some key differences students may wish to be aware of when deciding how to alter their test prep in absence of the SAT Subject Tests . Firstly, because AP exams offer students opportunities to earn valuable college credits, the level of rigor on the exams is closer to that of a first-year college course than to the high school curriculum covered on the SAT Subject Tests . Additionally, there are several key differences in the structure and scoring of the exams:

While the long term effects that these changes might have on students currently preparing for the exams of spring 2021 and beyond remain to be seen, understanding their immediate effects can help students develop effective plans and ease concerns. Additionally, the cancellation of the SAT Subject tests will likely allow schools to offer a greater number of seats to students seeking to register for the SAT this spring.

 I would encourage any students or families with questions or concerns to reach out to their guidance counselor or a test prep professional to discuss how this impacts their current plans.

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THE REDESIGNED SAT

Is the SAT Still Needed?

• Posted May 17, 2024
• By Elizabeth Christopher
• College Access and Success
• Counseling and Mental Health
• Education Reform
• Higher Education Leadership
• Inequality and Education Gaps

Sam Noel, a senior at Melrose High School in Massachusetts, didn’t sleep well the night before his SAT last spring. “I was nervous,” he says, not just about taking the college entrance exam but also about making it to the test center on time. When he searched online for a spot to take the test at his high school, or at any of the high schools in neighboring cities, the closest one he found was a 45-minute drive away.

Difficulty accessing test centers, a problem that reached its peak during the pandemic, is just one of the reasons colleges and universities have adopted test-optional admission policies. Another, and perhaps bigger reason, is the belief that making submissions of SAT or ACT scores optional is fairer and more equitable for students that come from less-advantaged backgrounds. Data shows that students from high-income families on average score higher than those who come from lower-income families. Recent research from Opportunity Insights, a team of Harvard-based researchers and policy analysts, which set out to examine if highly selective colleges perpetuate privilege across generations, reveals how wide the score gap is. 

“One-third of the children of the very richest families scored a 1300 or higher on the SAT, while less than 5% of middle-class students did,” out of a possible 1600, according to the study. “Relatively few children in the poorest families scored that high; just one in ­five took the test at all,” The New York Times reported, citing the study. 

This is where it gets complicated. 

Some researchers say that, despite that sobering data, dismissing the SAT and tests like it is shortsighted. Harvard Professor Raj Chetty, part of the Opportunity Insights team, told The New York Times the disparities in SAT scores by class and race are a “symptom, not a cause,” of educational inequality in the United States. Moreover, researchers like Chetty say SAT scores can do a good job of identifying students who are better prepared to complete the rigorous course work of Ivy Plus institutions — the eight ivy league schools, plus others like MIT and Duke. This is true regardless of the income level of students’ families, Chetty says. This is, in part, the reason schools like Harvard, Brown, Yale, and Dartmouth College are returning to requiring standardized tests for undergraduate admissions. Dartmouth did its own study on the role of testing in its admissions process and concluded that, as its website reads, “a standardized testing requirement will improve — not detract from — our ability to bring the most promising and diverse students to our campus.”

Yet many people, including college admissions officers and high school counselors, say the benefi­ts of making test scores optional in college admissions are too great to ignore. They feel that college admissions should be based on other aspects of a student’s application — the transcript, essay, letters of recommendation, and extracurricular activities. Today, more than 80% of colleges do not require applicants to submit standardized test scores as part of their college applications, according to Inside Higher Ed . 

And, so, the question being asked is, is the SAT still needed?

______________

Students’ scores from the SAT, ACT, and standardized tests like them are “just not the main thing a lot of colleges are paying attention to,” says Jamiere Abney, Ed.M.’17, director of admissions at Western Oregon University. He feels that concerns about grade inflation are overblown and that a student’s transcript, GPA, essay, and letters of recommendations do a better job of helping admissions officers understand who the student is and what their potential for success is. Taken together, these components of a student’s record “give us a three- to four-year story of who you are academically and intellectually, not just at one moment in time,” Abney says.

If a student sees a test requirement or if they see that their score falls below the average scores of students attending that school, they may wonder, “is this a school that I can even have a chance at?” says Abney, who favors his school’s test-optional policy because it “gives students one less thing to worry about.” Encouraging lower-income students to apply is important, he says, because earning a college degree is still one of the surest paths to upward social mobility. Forty-seven percent of students at Western Oregon, the oldest public university in the state, are first-generation college students; some of them might have opted out of applying to college if it weren’t for its test-optional policy. “If testing is what’s turning people away, then we have to ask ourselves, ‘Is it really worth it?’” 

In general, Clara Yom, Ed.M.’15, a high school counselor in Chicago, advises her students not to submit scores if that’s an option. “I usually tell them there should be a good reason you’re sending your SAT scores in with your application.” It’s rare for her to see an SAT score above 1200 and those scores just don’t reflect her students’ potential, she says. 

Between 75% and 80% of the students at the high school where Yom works now are eligible to receive free and reduced lunch, and a large percentage of students identify as Black and Latino. The vast majority of students at her school aspire to go to college. “Personally, I think it’s impossible to get an SAT score above 1200 without ‘studying’ the SAT,” she says. “It’s not like you get straight A’s in your high school classes and you take AP English and then you’re guaranteed a high score on the SAT.” Rather, it’s about learning how to take the test well and that often depends on having parents who can pay for tutoring. Before becoming a high school counselor, Yom worked as an SAT tutor. Most of the students she tutored came from affluent families and were able to raise their scores 200 to 300 points after weeks of drills.

Others who welcome test-optional policies do so because it represents a shift away from what they feel is an overemphasis on personal achievement. It says, “loud and clear, that who you are as a person and the choices you have made are more important than one test,” says Brennan Barnard, the college admissions program adviser for Making Caring Common, an Ed School project that seeks to help schools develop empathy in students. Colleges and universities should be looking at alternative ways to assess students’ readiness for college, says Barnard, who is also director of college counseling at the Khan Lab School, a mastery-based school in California, and author of The Truth About College Admission . “If a student shows they can master calculus and tutor other students, doesn’t that say a lot more about who they are as a student and their potential to be successful than a test score?” he says. 

But proponents of standardized testing say eliminating the SAT­ and ACT­, at least for admissions to Ivy Plus schools, would be a mistake because research shows that the tests uncover students who are more academically prepared for rigorous coursework, including those who come from less-advantaged backgrounds. 

“The SAT ­is a real lifeline for people who don’t go to elite high schools,” and who wouldn’t get noticed by admissions officers without those scores, says David Deming, a professor at the Ed School and the Harvard Kennedy School, as well as one of the authors of the Opportunity Insights study. This matters because attending an Ivy Plus school can have a significant impact on a student’s social mobility. “Attending an Ivy Plus instead of a flagship public college,” notes the study, “triples students’ chances of obtaining jobs at prestigious firms and substantially increases their chances of earning in the top 1%.” 

However, the researchers also found that Ivy Plus institutions currently rely “too much” on non-academic attributes of a student’s application in their admissions practices and “are more than twice as likely to admit a student from a high-income family as compared to a low- or middle-income family with comparable SAT­/ACT scores” because of their preferences for legacy applicants as well as for applicants with impressive extracurricular and athletic resumes. If these schools changed their admissions policies, the researchers say (to rely more heavily on SAT ­and ACT scores), then “Ivy Plus colleges could significantly diversify the socioeconomic backgrounds of America’s highest earners and leaders.” 

As Deming says, “No one is suggesting only the highest-scoring students be admitted to Ivy League colleges,” as diversity also needs to be a priority. But that goal can sit alongside another priority, he says, which is to admit students who are ready to succeed and who can benefit the most from a challenging academic environment. To get there, Deming supports a system that includes the SAT ­in student assessment but that also makes some allowances for students who come from lower-income families and are first-generation college students. “I think we do have that system in a lot of ways,” he says. “Colleges do tend to put a thumb on the scale positively for low-income students who do well on the SAT. That’s just empirically true.” 

The SAT is not perfect, says Deming, who believes test-taking practices that give the advantage to higher-income families should be eliminated. For example, he disagrees with “superscoring,” a practice which allows students who can afford to take the SAT or ACT multiple times to submit their highest scores without colleges knowing the number of times they took the test. But he maintains that “we should have some close-to-universally accepted standard of judging whether somebody is prepared to do rigorous college level work.” 

And that works best when everybody takes the test, according to Professor Andrew Ho, president of the National Council on Measurement in Education. He’s a proponent of requiring the tests in college applications, but only if everyone were required to take it. He points out that in states that require public high school students to take the SAT or ACT to graduate, the pool of college applicants is more balanced demographically. The problem when the test is not required is that some students talk themselves out of taking the test and potentially out of the running for some schools and “the people who have the money and the time … get over-represented in the population” of college applicants, he says. 

In 2007, Michigan began requiring its public high school students to take the ACT during their junior year, which the state offers for free during the school day. (Eleventh-graders in Michigan are now required to take the SAT. They are one of nearly a dozen states that have made the test mandatory.) As a result, the state saw small increases in college attendance, particularly among disadvantaged students. By mandating the test, wrote Professor Susan Dynarski in The New York Times in 2017, a significant number of low-income students who scored high enough to attend a selective college were discovered. “For every 1,000 students who scored well on the optional test, an additional 480 did so on the mandatory test,” she wrote.

As educators, researchers, parents, and students consider the question about whether the SAT is still needed, Ho says it’s important to remember that test scores are just one part of a five-legged stool that college admissions officers draw upon to make their decisions and believing the other legs of the stool — the personal essay, recommendation letters, student records, and extracurriculars — are fairer is wrong because there is more and more evidence that the wealthy have an advantage in those other areas. These advantages reflect deep-seated educational inequalities that begin to take hold long before a student takes the SAT, “including differences in school quality, neighborhood exposure, and many other environmental conditions,” according to Opportunity Insights. As Ho says, “Disparities in test scores reveal deep inequalities in educational opportunity, but removing the test does not remove the disparity.” 

Regardless of whether SAT and ACT are required as part of undergraduate college admissions, the educational inequality the test reveals is something we want to fix, says Deming. And how to do that comes down to an established formula, which, he says, includes more resources, more time in school, early childhood education, smaller classes, highly qualified teachers, attention to the core curriculum, and not letting students fall behind, which requires testing. “We can’t fix a problem unless we can diagnose it,” says Deming. He would also like to see more testing to identify learning gaps at the state, district, school, and even grade and classroom level. 

Part of the solution starts with changing how the public thinks about testing, says Ho. Tests like the SAT can be a tool for educational equity if we can break three fallacies, he says: “that test scores are more meaningful, more precise, and more permanent than they are.” Getting a low score doesn’t mean you can’t learn and thinking it does is damaging. Ho believes that educators are getting better about talking about how to interpret test scores in terms of asset frames versus deficit frames. In other words, “it’s not what you lack; it’s what you have and what you can do if we help. It takes good teachers, good educational systems, to remind people of this.” 

Melrose student Sam Noel made it to his test on time and was relieved when it was over, he says. It turned out that none of the schools he applied to required him to submit his scores and he was happy to have the option to share his scores only with the schools where he thought they’d make a difference in his application. 

Elizabeth Christopher is a writer based in Massachusetts. Her last story in Ed. focused on community college transfer challenges

Ed. Magazine

The magazine of the Harvard Graduate School of Education

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Powerball winning numbers for Saturday, May 25, 2024 lottery drawing. Jackpot $120 million

A fter there was no grand prize winner from  Wednesday's drawing , the jackpot for Saturday rose to  $120 million  with cash value of  $56.4 million .

Ready to try your luck with Powerball? Here's everything you need to know.

Powerball winning numbers 5/25/24

The  winning numbers from the Saturday, May 25 drawing  were  6-33-35-36-64  and the Powerball was  24 . The Power Play was  3X .

Did anyone win Powerball drawing, Saturday, May 25, 2024?

There was no grand prize winner, but there was a Match 5 winner worth $1 million in Texas.

The jackpot rose to $131 million  with cash value of  $61.2 million .

Powerball winning numbers 5/22/24

The  winning numbers from the Wednesday, May 22 drawing  were  5-16-18-26-67  and the Powerball was  4 . The Power Play was  3X .

Did anyone win Powerball drawing, Wednesday, May 22, 2024?

There was no grand prize winner, but there was a Match 5 winner worth $1 million in California.

Powerball: Winning numbers for Wednesday, May 22, 2024 lottery drawing worth $100M

Mega Millions: Winning numbers for Friday, May 24, 2024 lottery drawing worth $453 million

When is the next Powerball drawing?

The next drawing will be Monday, May 27, at 10:59 p.m. ET.

What times does Powerball close?

In Delaware, tickets may be purchased until 9:45 p.m. ET on the day of the drawing.

In New Jersey and Pennsylvania, you can purchase tickets until 9:59 p.m.

What days are the Powerball drawings? What time does Powerball go off?

Powerball drawings are held three times a week, every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET.

How much are Powerball tickets?

The Powerball costs $2 per play.

In Pennsylvania, you can buy tickets online:  www.pailottery.com/games/draw-games/ .

Tickets can be bought online as well in New Jersey:  njlotto.com .

To play, select five numbers from 1 to 69 for the white balls, then select one number from 1 to 26 for the red Powerball.

You can choose your lucky numbers on a play slip or let the lottery terminal randomly pick your numbers. 

To win, match one of the nine ways to win:

• 5 white balls + 1 red Powerball = Grand prize.
• 5 white balls = $1 million.
• 4 white balls + 1 red Powerball = $50,000.
• 4 white balls = $100.
• 3 white balls + 1 red Powerball = $100.
• 3 white balls = $7.
• 2 white balls + 1 red Powerball = $7.
• 1 white ball + 1 red Powerball = $4.
• 1 red Powerball = $4.

There's a chance to have your winnings increased two, three, four, five and 10 times through the Power Play for an additional $1 per play. Players can multiply non-jackpot wins up to 10 times when the jackpot is $150 million or less.

All prizes are set cash amounts, except for the grand prize. In California, prize payout amounts are pari-mutuel, meaning it's determined by the sales and the number of winners.

What are the odds of winning the Powerball?

The odds of winning the Powerball grand prize are 1 in 292,201,338. The odds for the lowest prize, $4 for one red Powerball, are 1 in 38.32.

According to Powerball, the overall odds of winning a prize are 1 in 24.87, based on a $2 play and rounded to two decimal places.

What is the  largest Powerball jackpot ?

• $2.04 billion – Nov. 7, 2022 – CA
• $1.765 billion – Oct. 11, 2023 – CA
• $1.586 billion – Jan. 13, 2016 – CA, FL, TN
• $1.3 billion – April 6, 2024 – OR
• $1.08 billion – July 19, 2023 – CA
• $842 million – Jan. 1, 2024 – MI
• $768.4 million – March 27, 2019 – WI
• $758.7 million – Aug. 23, 2017 – MA
• $754.6 million – Feb. 6, 2023 - WA
• $731.1 million – Jan. 20, 2021 – MD

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Powerball winning numbers for Saturday, May 25, 2024 lottery drawing. Jackpot $120 million

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Home — News Archive — Reynolds Wins Prize for 2023 Essay

Reynolds Wins Prize for 2023 Essay

May 23, 2024.

In the essay, Reynolds delves into the often-overlooked histories of clergy abuse within marginalized communities, highlighting the intersection of practical theology and social justice issues. Praising her work as “compelling and insightful,” prize judges noted the essay’s innovative approach, creative argument, and strong research base, as well as Reynolds’ ability to navigate the boundaries between theology and religious history.

Reynolds was honored for the same essay in June 2023 as the winner of the Catholic Theological Society of America’s New Scholar Prize.

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ChatGPT: the latest news, controversies, and tips you need to know

ChatGPT has continued to dazzle the internet with AI-generated content, morphing from a novel chatbot into a piece of technology that is driving the next era of innovation. No tech product in recent memory has sparked as much interest, controversy, fear, and excitement.

How to use ChatGPT

How to use the chatgpt iphone and android apps, is chatgpt free to use, who created chatgpt, what do the chatgpt errors mean, latest chatgpt controversies, can chatgpt be detected, common uses for chatgpt, what are chatgpt plugins, is there a chatgpt api.

• What’s the future of ChatGPT and GPT-5?

ChatGPT alternatives worth trying

Other things to know about chatgpt.

If you’re just now catching on, it’d be fair to wonder what the fuss is all about. You can try it out for yourself for free (or use the official free iOS app ), but here’s the detailed guide you’ve been looking for — whether you’re worried about an AI apocalypse or are just looking for an intro guide to the app.

ChatGPT is a natural language AI chatbot . At its most basic level, that means you can ask it any question, and it will generate an answer.

Using the ChatGPT chatbot itself is fairly simple, as all you have to do is type in your text and receive information. The key here is to be creative and see how your ChatGPT responds to different prompts. If you don’t get the intended result, try tweaking your prompt or giving ChatGPT further instructions. ChatGPT knows the context of previous questions you ask, so you can refine from there rather than starting over fresh every time.

For example, starting with “Explain how the solar system was made” will give a more detailed result with more paragraphs than “How was the solar system made,” even though both inquiries will give fairly detailed results. Take it a step further by giving ChatGPT more guidance about style or tone, saying “Explain how the solar system was made as a middle school teacher.”

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You also have the option for more specific inputting requests for an essay with a specific number of paragraphs or a Wikipedia page. We got an extremely detailed result with the request “write a four-paragraph essay explaining Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.” And remember, ChatGPT is great at making tweaks to previous answers, so you can always ask for more detail, ask it to rewrite something, or ask it further questions.

To see what it can do, try using ChatGPT in daily life or work activities to see how it can help. Ask it to write emails, craft business proposals, fun date night ideas, or even a best man’s speech. So long as it doesn’t break some of the explicit or illegal content rules, the generator will do its best to fulfill the commands. It’s certainly is potential for ChatGPT to begin filling in gaps with incorrect data. As OpenAI notes, these instances are rare, but AI “hallucinations” certainly do happen . The company also notes that ChatGPT, which uses the GPT-3.5 LLM (large language model), currently has “limited knowledge of world events after 2021.” For more recent knowledge of the world, consider using another tool like Bing Chat .

However, OpenAI recently announced that ChatGPT Plus subscriber, who have access to the GPT-4 model, will be able to search the web for up-to-date information .

Even so, you have the option to input queries continuously until you close your browser or reset the thread to clear your previous requests. These chats are then saved in conversations in the sidebar, even automatically naming the chat. From there, you can manage these chats, renaming or deleting them as needed. You can even “hide” specific chats if needed .

You also have the option to use ChatGPT in dark mode or light mode.

Unlike Bing Chat , which can now generate images with Bing Image Creator and receive images as prompts for questions, ChatGPT only provides text outputs. In September 2023, however, OpenAI added the ability for you to use an image or voice as an input for your prompt. It’s currently only available to ChatGPT Plus subscribers.

As opposed to a simple voice assistant like Siri or Google Assistant , ChatGPT is built on what is called an LLM (Large Language Model). These neural networks are trained on huge quantities of information from the internet for deep learning — meaning they generate altogether new responses, rather than just regurgitating specific canned responses. They’re not built for a specific purpose like chatbots of the past — and they’re a whole lot smarter.

This is implied in the name of ChatGPT, which stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer. In the case of the current version of ChatGPT, it’s based on the GPT-3.5 LLM. The model behind ChatGPT was trained on all sorts of web content including websites, books, social media, news articles, and more — all fine-tuned in the language model by both supervised learning and RLHF (Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback). OpenAI says this use of human AI trainers is really what makes ChatGPT stand out.

First, go to chat.openai.com . If it’s your first time, you’ll need to set up a free account with OpenAI before getting started. You have the option of choosing an easy login with a Google or Microsoft account, or just entering your email address. You’ll be asked next to enter a phone number ; however, keep in mind that you cannot use a virtual phone number (VoIP) to register for OpenAI. You will then receive a confirmation number, which you will enter on the registration page to complete the setup.

You’ll see some basic rules about ChatGPT, including potential errors in data, how OpenAI collects data, and how users can submit feedback — all of which have some wondering about whether or not ChatGPT is safe to use . Once you’re through that, you know you have successfully registered. You’re in!

After many months of anticipation, OpenAI has finally launched an official iOS app that you can go and download today . The app quickly topped half a million downloads in less than a week and is becoming available in an increasing number of countries .

Instructions for using it aren’t dissimilar to the ChatGPT web application. You do get an extra option for signing in using your Apple ID account, but it otherwise functions nearly identically to the web app — just type in your question and let the conversation begin.

The clean interface shows your conversation with GPT in a straightforward manner, hiding the chat history and settings behind the menu in the top right.

For those who are paying for ChatGPT Plus, the app lets you toggle between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 too. You can even use the microphone to chat with ChatGPT over voice.

As our mobile editor noted in his experience with the app, it still doesn’t provide a connection to the internet like chatbots like Bing Chat and Perplexity .

Users have been asking for Android support for months, and now, a ChatGPT Android app is finally available . You can find it in the Google Play Store, but it’s limited to certain countries at the moment, including the U.S., India, and Brazil.

Some devices go beyond just the app, too. For instance, the Infinix Folax is an Android phone that integrated ChatGPT throughout the device. Instead of just an app, the phone replaces the typical smart assistant (Google Assistant) with ChatGPT.

Yes, the basic version of ChatGPT is completely free to use. There’s no limit to how much you can use ChatGPT in a day, though there is a word and character limit for responses .

It’s not free for OpenAI to continue running it, of course. Initial estimates are currently that OpenAI spends around $3 million per month to continue running ChatGPT, which is around $100,000 per day. A report from April indicated that the price of operation is closer to $700,000 per day .

Beyond the cost of the servers themselves, some egregious information has recently come out about what else has been done to train the language model against producing offensive content.

OpenAI also has a premium version of its chatbot, called ChatGPT Plus . It costs $20 a month but provides access even during peak times, faster responses, and first access to new features like GPT-4 .

ChatGPT was created by an organization called OpenAI, a San Francisco-based AI research lab. The organization started as a non-profit meant for collaboration with other institutions and researchers, funded by high-profile figures like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

OpenAI later became a for-profit company in 2019 and is now led by its CEO, Sam Altman. It runs on Microsoft’s Azure system infrastructure and is powered by Nvidia’s GPUs, including the new supercomputers just announced this year . Microsoft has invested heavily in OpenAI too, starting in 2019.

Many people attempting to use ChatGPT have been getting an “at capacity” notice when trying to access the site . It’s likely behind the move to try and use unofficial paid apps, which have already flooded app stores  and scammed thousands into paying for a free service.

Because of how much ChatGPT costs to run, it seems as if OpenAI has been limiting access when its servers are “at capacity.” It can take as long as a few hours to wait out, but if you’re patient, you’ll get through eventually. Of all the problems facing ChatGPT right now, this had been the biggest hurdle for keeping people from using it more. In some cases, demand has been so high that ChatGPT has gone down for several hours for maintenance multiple times over the past few months.

This seems to be less of a problem recently, though, as demand has normalized and OpenAI has learned to manage the traffic better, but in the middle of the day, it still makes an appearance from time to time.

Although ChatGPT is a very useful tool, it isn’t free of problems. It’s known for making mistakes or “hallucinations,” where it makes up an answer to something it doesn’t know. A simple example of how unreliable it can sometimes be involved misidentifying the prime minister of Japan .

Beyond just making mistakes, many people are concerned about what this human-like generative AI could mean for the future of the internet, so much so that thousands of tech leaders and prominent public figures have signed a petition to slow down the development. It was even banned in Italy due to privacy concerns, alongside complaints from the FTC — although that’s now been reversed. Since then, the FTC has reopened investigations against OpenAI on questions of personal consumer data is being handled.

Speaking of bans, a number of high-profile companies have been disallowing the use of ChatGPT internally, including Samsung, Amazon, Verizon, and even the United States Congress . Apple is also on the list, though Tim Cook stated that he uses it, just weeks after having it banned .

There’s also the concern that generative AI like ChatGPT could result in the loss of many jobs — as many as 300 million worldwide, according to Goldman Sachs. In particular, it’s taken the spotlight in Hollywood’s writer’s strike , which wants to ensure that AI-written scripts don’t take the jobs of working screenwriters.

Beyond that, multiple controversies have also sprung up around people using ChatGPT to handle tasks that should probably be handled by an actual person. One of the worst cases of this is generating malware, which the FBI recently warned ChatGPT is being used for.

For example, Vanderbilt University’s Peabody School was recently under fire for generating an email about a mass shooting and the importance of community. In addition, JPMorgan Chase is restricting the use of the AI chatbot for workers, especially for generating emails, which companies like Apple have also prohibited internally.

There are also privacy concerns. A recent GDPR complaint says that ChatGPT violates user’s privacy by stealing data from users without their knowledge, and using that data to train the AI model.

Lastly, ChatGPT was even made able to generate Windows 11 keys for free , according to one user. Of course, this is not how ChatGPT was meant to be used, but it’s significant that it was even able to be “tricked” into generating the keys in the first place.

Teachers, school administrators, and developers are already finding different ways around this and banning the use of ChatGPT in schools . Others are more optimistic about how ChatGPT might be used for teaching, but plagiarism is undoubtedly going to continue being an issue in terms of education in the future. There are some ideas about how ChatGPT could “watermark” its text and fix this plagiarism problem, but as of now, detecting ChatGPT is still incredibly difficult to do.

ChatGPT recently launched a new version of its own plagiarism detection tool , with hopes that it will squelch some of the criticism around how people are using the text generation. It uses a new feature called “AI text classifier,” which operates in a way familiar to other plagiarism software. According to OpenAI, however, the tool is still a work in progress and is “imperfect.”

Other tools like GPTZero claim to help detect ChatGPT plagiarism, too. Although they work, some extra editing on AI responses can still trip up these tools.

Well, that’s the fun part. Since its launch, people have been experimenting to discover everything the chatbot can and can’t do — and some of the results have been mind-blowing .

Learning the kinds of prompts and follow-up prompts that ChatGPT responds well to requires some experimentation though. Much like we’ve learned to get the information we want from traditional search engines, it can take some time to get the best results from ChatGPT. If you want to get started, we have a roundup of the best ChatGPT tips .

It really all depends on what you want out of it. To start out, try using it to write a template blog post, for example, or even blocks of code if you’re a programmer.

Our writers experimented with ChatGPT too, attempting to see if it could handle holiday shopping or even properly interpret astrological makeup . In both cases, we found limitations to what it could do while still being thoroughly impressed by the results.

But the fun is in trying it out yourself. Whether you think ChatGPT is an amazing piece of tech or will lead to the destruction of the internet as we know it, it’s worth trying out for yourself to see just what it’s capable of.

Following an update on August 10, you can now use custom instructions with ChatGPT . This allows you to customize how the AI chatbot responds to your inputs so you can tailor it for your needs.

You can’t ask anything, though. OpenAI has safeguards in place in order to “build a safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence.” That means any questions that are hateful, sexist, racist, or discriminatory in any way are generally off-limits.

The announcement of ChatGPT plugins caused a great stir in the developer community, with some calling it “the most powerful developer platform ever created.” AI enthusiasts have compared it to the surge of interest in the iOS App Store when it first launched, greatly expanding the capabilities of the iPhone.

Essentially, developers will be able to build plugins directly for ChatGPT, to open it up to have access to the whole of the internet and connect directly to the APIs of specific applications. It’s ChatGPT out in the real world. Some of the examples provided by OpenAI include applications being able to perform actions on behalf of the user, retrieve real-time information, and access knowledge-based information.

It’s currently only available on a waitlist, but early applications to use plugins with ChatGPT include Expedia, Instacart, Slack, and OpenTable — and now there are lots to explore, including the ones we’ve seen as the best ChatGPT plugins to try out.

Outside of the ChatGPT app itself, many apps had been announced as partners with OpenAI using the ChatGPT API. Of the initial batch, the most prominent example is Snapchat’s MyAI .

Essentially, this is a way for developers to access ChatGPT and plug its natural language capabilities directly into apps and websites. We’ve seen it used in all sorts of different cases, ranging from suggesting parts in Newegg’s PC builder to building out a travel itinerary with just a few words. Recently, OpenAI made the ChatGPT API available to everyone, and we’ve seen a surge in tools leveraging the technology, such as Discord’s Clyde chatbot or Wix’s website builder .

What’s the future of ChatGPT and GPT-5?

There’s no doubt that the tech world has become obsessed with ChatGPT right now, and it’s not slowing down anytime soon. GPT-4, the next iteration of the model, has officially launched, though it’s currently only available for ChatGPT Plus. We do know, however, that Bing Chat is at least partially built on the GPT-4 language model, even if certain elements such as visual input aren’t available.

But the bigger development will be how ChatGPT continues to be integrated into other applications. Microsoft reportedly made a multibillion-dollar investment in ChatGPT , which is already starting to pay off. The first integration was in Teams Premium , with some of OpenAI’s features showing up to automate tasks and provide transcripts. Most prominently, Microsoft revealed 365 Copilot , which integrates ChatGPT natural language prompts directly into Office apps like Word, PowerPoint, Outlook, and more.

There were initial reports that GPT-5 is on the way and could finish training later this year, with some people claiming that it would achieve AGI (artificial general intelligence). That’s a big, controversial statement, but clearly, things are progressing at a rapid pace.

Since then, OpenAI has stated that GPT-5 is not on the timeline and is not currently planned. That being said, the next version, GPT-4.5, is currently training and may be available later this year. OpenAI indicated that it may be done planning as early as September or October.

All that to say, if you think AI is a big deal now, just wait until it’s built into the most common applications that are used for work and school.

ChatGPT remains the most popular AI chatbot at the moment, but it’s not completely without competition. Microsoft’s Bing Chat is the biggest rival, which uses OpenAI’s GPT-4 model as a basis for its answers. Although it requires downloading the Edge browser to use, Bing Chat is free and offers some added features such as different writing modes, image creation, and search links. It even got a significant update recently that introduced features like export, third-party plugins, and multimodal support. There’s also YouChat, which uses GPT-3, an older model from OpenAI, and Forefront AI , which gives you access to GPT-4 and beyond.

The biggest non-GPT competitor to ChatGPT is Google Bard . It’s based on Google’s own homegrown language model, LaMDA, and Google seems intent on competing directly with OpenAI with Google Bard. The most recent updates make it a far more compelling alternative to ChatGPT , even if it’s not quite there.

There are a number of other chatbots out there, some of which are based on Meta’s open-source language model, LLaMA, such as Vicuna and HuggingChat .

Reports suggest Apple has been working on a ChatGPT rival for years , as well, though we haven’t seen it yet. Some reporters say it is “significantly behind competitors” at the moment.

Are ChatGPT chats private?

It depends on what you mean by private. All chats with ChatGPT are used by OpenAI to further tune the models, which can actually involve the use of human trainers. No, that doesn’t mean a human is looking through every question you ask ChatGPT, but there’s a reason OpenAI warns against providing any personal information to ChatGPT.

It should be noted that if you don’t delete your chats, the conversations will appear in the left sidebar. Unlike with other chatbots, individual chats within a conversation cannot be deleted, though they can be edited using the pencil icon that appears when you hover over a chat. When you delete the conversations, however, it’s not that ChatGPT forgets they ever happened — it’s just that they disappear from the sidebar chat history.

Fortunately, OpenAI has recently announced a way to make your chats hidden from the sidebar . These “hidden” chats won’t be used to train AI models either.

When was ChatGPT released?

ChatGPT was originally launched to the public in November of 2022 by OpenAI. The chatbot is based on the GPT-3.5 LLM, which is a fine-tuned version of GPT-3, a model first launched on March 15, 2022. GPT-3 itself, though, has been around for a few years now. It was first released in June 2020, but only as an autoregressive language model.

The predecessors to GPT-3 had very limited public exposure. GPT-2 was announced in February 2019, and the first research paper on GPT was published on OpenAI’s website in 2018.

Will ChatGPT replace Google Search?

Rather than replace it, chatbots are likely to be integrated directly into search. Microsoft has already done this with Bing Chat and Bing, which puts a “chat” tab right into the menu of Bing search.

Even Google has begun experimenting with integrating the smarts of Google Bard into search through its Search Generative Experience . We’re in the early days where all these exist as different products, but it’s not hard to imagine a future where it’s a completely unified experience.

Is Bing Chat the same as ChatGPT?

Microsoft has officially brought ChatGPT to Bing in the form of Bing Chat . After a long beta period, it was officially available to try out. But unlike ChatGPT , Bing Chat does require downloading the latest version of Edge. So Safari or Chrome users are out of luck.

In the early days of its release, Bing Chat was capable of some unhinged responses , but Microsoft has been quick to tame things a bit. It was recently announced that Bing Chat is using the latest GPT-4 language model , meaning it’s more powerful and accurate than ChatGPT . The new Edge Copilot mode also provides a more user-friendly way to get started, offering suggested prompts, links to learn more, and ways to tweak the kinds of answers it gives you. And now with the Windows Copilot , Bing Chat will live right on your desktop.

Is Google Bard the same as ChatGPT?

Unlike Bing Chat, Google Bard  uses an entirely different LLM to power its natural language capabilities. Upon its release, Bard has been using LaMDA, the company’s own model, which stands for Language Model for Dialogue Applications. As has been demonstrated from early on, Bard didn’t have quite the precision in its answers.

Reports indicate, however, that Bard is getting a massive update soon, going from being trained on 30 billion parameters up to 600 billion parameters. That could make it closer to what is possible with GPT-4.

Can you write essays with ChatGPT?

The use of ChatGPT has been full of controversy, with many onlookers considering how the power of AI will change everything from search engines to novel writing. It’s even demonstrated the ability to earn students surprisingly good grades in essay writing.

Essay writing for students is one of the most obvious examples of where ChatGPT could become a problem. ChatGPT might not write this article all that well, but it feels particularly easy to use for essay writing. Some generative AI tools, such as Caktus AI , are built specifically for this purpose.

Can ChatGPT write and debug code?

Absolutely — it’s one of the most powerful features of ChatGPT. As with everything with AI, you’ll want to double-check everything it produces, because it won’t always get your code right. But it’s certainly powerful at both writing code from scratch and debugging code.

Developers have used it to create websites, applications, and games from scratch — all of which are made more powerful with GPT-4, of course. There’s even a plug-in called ChatGPT Code Interpreter that makes programming with AI even more accessible.

What is the ChatGPT character limit?

OpenAI doesn’t set an exact character limit, but it will cut off around its responses at about 500 words or 4,000 characters. If you happen to give the chatbot a request for a specific number of words above 500, you might find that it cuts off mid-sentence somewhere after 500 words.

One way to get around this is just to ask it to “go on” or “continue,” but it depends on the prompt and type of response. Sometimes ChatGPT will more or less repeat the previous answers in different words.

The best way to get access to responses with longer characters is to upgrade to ChatGPT Plus.

Is there a ChatGPT bug bounty program?

Yes. A bug bounty program for ChatGPT was recently announced . The program was unveiled officially on OpenAI’s website , which details the types of “cash awards” that are being offered. They range from $200 to up to $20,000 for what it calls “exceptional discoveries.”

While addressing security researchers interested in getting involved in the program, OpenAI said it recognized “the critical importance of security and view it as a collaborative effort. By sharing your findings, you will play a crucial role in making our technology safer for everyone.”

Do you need to download ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is available via a webpage , so no downloading is needed. However, OpenAI has finally released a free, official iOS app that needs to be downloaded from the iOS app store. For many months, the various app stores were full of fake versions. These are still out there, though, and should be installed and used with caution, as they are not official ChatGPT apps. There is no still no official Android app.

On desktop, there are a couple of ways to install ChatGPT, though. First, you can navigate to the ChatGPT website and save it as a Windows app through Edge. Go to the site, click the ellipsis menu, and hover over Apps.  Select  Install this site as an app  to load ChatGPT from your desktop.

Other tools like MacGPT also allow shortcuts to access the browser service from your desktop.

Can you use ChatGPT on iPhone or Android?

Now that there’s an official iOS app, you no longer have to rely solely on the web app to use ChatGPT on your phone . So, whether with the official app as downloaded through the app store or just the web version, you can certainly use ChatGPT on iPhones. In addition, there’s even a way to replace Siri with ChatGPT on your iPhone, as well as some useful mobile apps like Perplexity AI .

As for Android, you’ll need to rely on the web app. Just as on desktop, type in chat.openai.com to start using ChatGPT.

Can you get ChatGPT to answer any question?

Not exactly. ChatGPT has limitations in the kinds of questions it can answer. First of all, it can’t write about anything that requires internet knowledge after late 2021, which is when its training stopped.

Beyond that, ChatGPT is careful about answering questions that might imply illegal, explicit, or damaging activity. It’ll avoid swearing or political debates, and will (usually) avoid making malware. There is some amount of jailbreaking that can be done to get around these restrictions, but OpenAI is constantly tightening its content policies to restrict unwanted answers. One example of a common jailbreaking technique is the DAN (Do Anything Now) prompt , though OpenAI has worked hard to plug these holes over time.

What is Auto-GPT?

Built on GPT-4, Auto-GPT is the latest evolution of AI technology to cause a stir in the industry. It’s not directly related to ChatGPT or OpenAI — instead, it’s an open-source Python application that got into the hands of developers all over the internet when it was published on GitHub .

With ChatGPT or ChatGPT Plus, the capabilities of the AI are limited to a single chat window. Auto-GPT, at its simplest, is making AI autonomous. It can be given a set of goals, and then take the necessary steps towards accomplishing that goal across the internet, including connecting up with applications and software.

According to the official description on GitHub, Auto-GPT is an “experimental open-source application showcasing the capabilities of the GPT-4 language model. This program, driven by GPT-4, chains together LLM ‘thoughts’, to autonomously achieve whatever goal you set. As one of the first examples of GPT-4 running fully autonomously, Auto-GPT pushes the boundaries of what is possible with AI.”

The demo used on the GitHub page is simple — just create a recipe appropriate for Easter and save it to a file. What’s neat is how Auto-GPT breaks down the steps the AI is taking to accomplish the goal, including the “thoughts” and “reasoning” behind its actions. Auto-GPT is already being used in a variety of different applications, with some touting it as the beginning of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) due to its autonomous nature.

What is GPT-4 and how does it compare to GPT-3.5?

GPT-4 is a more advanced LLM — the most powerful that OpenAI currently offers. At the current moment, OpenAI only offers access to GPT-4 through ChatGPT Plus. GPT-3.5, on the other hand, is the LLM that powers the free ChatGPT tool. OpenAI no longer says exactly how many parameters these advanced models are trained on, but it’s rumored that GPT-4 boasts up to 1 trillion parameters.

Regardless, the results are a fairly dramatic difference between GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 in terms of quality. It offers much more precise answers, is significantly better at coding and creative collaboration, and can provide (and respond to) much longer selections of text. GPT-4 remains the best possible model available, while GPT-3.5 is more in line with some other models available.

Who owns the copyright to content created by ChatGPT?

This is a question open to debate. Much of the conversation around copyright and AI is ongoing, with some saying generative AI is “stealing” the work of the content it was trained on. This has become increasingly contentious in the world of AI art. Companies like Adobe are finding ways around this by only training models on stock image libraries that already have proper artist credit and legal boundaries.

According to OpenAI, however, you have the right to reprint, sell, and merchandise anything that was created with ChatGPT or ChatGPT Plus. So, you’re not going to get sued by OpenAI.

The larger topic of copyright law regarding generative AI is still to be determined by various lawmakers and interpreters of the law, especially since copyright law as it currently stands technically only protects content created by human beings.

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• Artificial Intelligence

ChatGPT, the AI-powered chatbot that went viral at the start of last year and kicked off a wave of interest in generative AI tools, no longer requires an account to use.

Its creator, OpenAI, launched a webpage on Monday that lets you begin a conversation with the chatbot without having to sign up or log in first.

In recent years, the listening time required by a piece of AI to clone someone’s voice has been getting shorter and shorter.

It used to be minutes, now it’s just seconds.

It looks like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Sora, among other projects, are about to get a lot more juice. According to a new report shared by The Information, Microsoft and OpenAI are working on a new data center project, one part of which will be a massive AI supercomputer dubbed "Stargate." Microsoft is said to be footing the bill, and the cost is astronomical as the name of the supercomputer suggests -- the whole project might cost over $100 billion.

Spending over $100 billion on anything is mind-blowing, but when put into perspective, the price truly shows just how big a venture this might be: The Information claims that the new Microsoft and OpenAI joint project might cost a whopping 100 times more than some of the largest data centers currently in operation.

ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about the AI-powered chatbot

ChatGPT, OpenAI’s text-generating AI chatbot, has taken the world by storm. What started as a tool to hyper-charge productivity through writing essays and code with short text prompts has evolved into a behemoth used by more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies for more wide-ranging needs. And that growth has propelled OpenAI itself into becoming one of the most-hyped companies in recent memory, even if CEO and co-founder Sam Altman’s firing and swift return  raised concerns about its direction and opened the door for competitors.

What does that mean for OpenAI, ChatGPT and its other ambitions? The fallout is still settling, but it might empower competitors like Meta and its LLaMA family of large language models , or help other AI startups get attention and funding as the industry watches OpenAI implode and put itself back together.

While there is a more… nefarious side to ChatGPT, it’s clear that AI tools are not going away anytime soon. Since its initial launch nearly a year ago, ChatGPT has hit 100 million weekly active users , and OpenAI is heavily investing in it.

Prior to the leadership chaos, on November 6, OpenAI held its first developer conference: OpenAI DevDay. During the conference, it announced a slew of updates coming to GPT, including GPT-4 Turbo (a super-charged version of GPT-4 , its latest language-writing model) and a multimodal API . OpenAI also unveiled the GPT store , where users could create and monetize their own custom versions of GPT. Though the launch was delayed in December , it officially launched in January.

GPT-4, which can write more naturally and fluently than previous models, remains largely exclusive to paying ChatGPT users. But you can access GPT-4 for free through Microsoft’s Bing Chat in Microsoft Edge, Google Chrome and Safari web browsers. Beyond GPT-4 and OpenAI DevDay announcements, OpenAI recently connected ChatGPT to the internet for all users. And with the integration of DALL-E 3, users are also able to generate both text prompts and images right in ChatGPT. 

Here’s a timeline of ChatGPT product updates and releases, starting with the latest, which we’ve been updating throughout the year. And if you have any other questions, check out our ChatGPT FAQ here .

Timeline of the most recent ChatGPT updates

February 2024, january 2024, december 2023.

• November 2023 

October 2023

September 2023, august 2023, february 2023, january 2023, december 2022, november 2022.

• ChatGPT FAQs

ChatGPT’s mobile app revenue saw biggest spike yet following GPT-4o launch

The launch of GPT-4o has driven the company’s biggest-ever spike in revenue on mobile , despite the model being freely available on the web. Mobile users are being pushed to upgrade to its $19.99 monthly subscription, ChatGPT Plus, if they want to experiment with OpenAI’s most recent launch.

OpenAI to remove ChatGPT’s Scarlett Johansson-like voice

After demoing its new GPT-4o model last week, OpenAI announced it is pausing one of its voices , Sky, after users found that it sounded similar to Scarlett Johansson in “Her.”

OpenAI explained in a blog post that Sky’s voice is “not an imitation” of the actress and that AI voices should not intentionally mimic the voice of a celebrity. The blog post went on to explain how the company chose its voices: Breeze, Cove, Ember, Juniper and Sky.

We’ve heard questions about how we chose the voices in ChatGPT, especially Sky. We are working to pause the use of Sky while we address them. Read more about how we chose these voices: https://t.co/R8wwZjU36L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 20, 2024

ChatGPT lets you add files from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive

OpenAI announced new updates for easier data analysis within ChatGPT . Users can now upload files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive, interact with tables and charts, and export customized charts for presentations. The company says these improvements will be added to GPT-4o in the coming weeks.

We're rolling out interactive tables and charts along with the ability to add files directly from Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive into ChatGPT. Available to ChatGPT Plus, Team, and Enterprise users over the coming weeks. https://t.co/Fu2bgMChXt pic.twitter.com/M9AHLx5BKr — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI inks deal to train AI on Reddit data

OpenAI announced a partnership with Reddit that will give the company access to “real-time, structured and unique content” from the social network. Content from Reddit will be incorporated into ChatGPT, and the companies will work together to bring new AI-powered features to Reddit users and moderators.

We’re partnering with Reddit to bring its content to ChatGPT and new products: https://t.co/xHgBZ8ptOE — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 16, 2024

OpenAI debuts GPT-4o “omni” model now powering ChatGPT

OpenAI’s spring update event saw the reveal of its new omni model, GPT-4o, which has a black hole-like interface , as well as voice and vision capabilities that feel eerily like something out of “Her.” GPT-4o is set to roll out “iteratively” across its developer and consumer-facing products over the next few weeks.

OpenAI demos real-time language translation with its latest GPT-4o model. pic.twitter.com/pXtHQ9mKGc — TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) May 13, 2024

OpenAI to build a tool that lets content creators opt out of AI training

The company announced it’s building a tool, Media Manager, that will allow creators to better control how their content is being used to train generative AI models — and give them an option to opt out. The goal is to have the new tool in place and ready to use by 2025.

OpenAI explores allowing AI porn

In a new peek behind the curtain of its AI’s secret instructions , OpenAI also released a new NSFW policy . Though it’s intended to start a conversation about how it might allow explicit images and text in its AI products, it raises questions about whether OpenAI — or any generative AI vendor — can be trusted to handle sensitive content ethically.

OpenAI and Stack Overflow announce partnership

In a new partnership, OpenAI will get access to developer platform Stack Overflow’s API and will get feedback from developers to improve the performance of their AI models. In return, OpenAI will include attributions to Stack Overflow in ChatGPT. However, the deal was not favorable to some Stack Overflow users — leading to some sabotaging their answer in protest .

U.S. newspapers file copyright lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft

Alden Global Capital-owned newspapers, including the New York Daily News, the Chicago Tribune, and the Denver Post, are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement. The lawsuit alleges that the companies stole millions of copyrighted articles “without permission and without payment” to bolster ChatGPT and Copilot.

OpenAI inks content licensing deal with Financial Times

OpenAI has partnered with another news publisher in Europe, London’s Financial Times , that the company will be paying for content access. “Through the partnership, ChatGPT users will be able to see select attributed summaries, quotes and rich links to FT journalism in response to relevant queries,” the FT wrote in a press release.

OpenAI opens Tokyo hub, adds GPT-4 model optimized for Japanese

OpenAI is opening a new office in Tokyo and has plans for a GPT-4 model optimized specifically for the Japanese language. The move underscores how OpenAI will likely need to localize its technology to different languages as it expands.

Sam Altman pitches ChatGPT Enterprise to Fortune 500 companies

According to Reuters, OpenAI’s Sam Altman hosted hundreds of executives from Fortune 500 companies across several cities in April, pitching versions of its AI services intended for corporate use.

OpenAI releases “more direct, less verbose” version of GPT-4 Turbo

Premium ChatGPT users — customers paying for ChatGPT Plus, Team or Enterprise — can now use an updated and enhanced version of GPT-4 Turbo . The new model brings with it improvements in writing, math, logical reasoning and coding, OpenAI claims, as well as a more up-to-date knowledge base.

Our new GPT-4 Turbo is now available to paid ChatGPT users. We’ve improved capabilities in writing, math, logical reasoning, and coding. Source: https://t.co/fjoXDCOnPr pic.twitter.com/I4fg4aDq1T — OpenAI (@OpenAI) April 12, 2024

ChatGPT no longer requires an account — but there’s a catch

You can now use ChatGPT without signing up for an account , but it won’t be quite the same experience. You won’t be able to save or share chats, use custom instructions, or other features associated with a persistent account. This version of ChatGPT will have “slightly more restrictive content policies,” according to OpenAI. When TechCrunch asked for more details, however, the response was unclear:

“The signed out experience will benefit from the existing safety mitigations that are already built into the model, such as refusing to generate harmful content. In addition to these existing mitigations, we are also implementing additional safeguards specifically designed to address other forms of content that may be inappropriate for a signed out experience,” a spokesperson said.

OpenAI’s chatbot store is filling up with spam

TechCrunch found that the OpenAI’s GPT Store is flooded with bizarre, potentially copyright-infringing GPTs . A cursory search pulls up GPTs that claim to generate art in the style of Disney and Marvel properties, but serve as little more than funnels to third-party paid services and advertise themselves as being able to bypass AI content detection tools.

The New York Times responds to OpenAI’s claims that it “hacked” ChatGPT for its copyright lawsuit

In a court filing opposing OpenAI’s motion to dismiss The New York Times’ lawsuit alleging copyright infringement, the newspaper asserted that “OpenAI’s attention-grabbing claim that The Times ‘hacked’ its products is as irrelevant as it is false.” The New York Times also claimed that some users of ChatGPT used the tool to bypass its paywalls.

OpenAI VP doesn’t say whether artists should be paid for training data

At a SXSW 2024 panel, Peter Deng, OpenAI’s VP of consumer product dodged a question on whether artists whose work was used to train generative AI models should be compensated . While OpenAI lets artists “opt out” of and remove their work from the datasets that the company uses to train its image-generating models, some artists have described the tool as onerous.

A new report estimates that ChatGPT uses more than half a million kilowatt-hours of electricity per day

ChatGPT’s environmental impact appears to be massive. According to a report from The New Yorker , ChatGPT uses an estimated 17,000 times the amount of electricity than the average U.S. household to respond to roughly 200 million requests each day.

ChatGPT can now read its answers aloud

OpenAI released a new Read Aloud feature for the web version of ChatGPT as well as the iOS and Android apps. The feature allows ChatGPT to read its responses to queries in one of five voice options and can speak 37 languages, according to the company. Read aloud is available on both GPT-4 and GPT-3.5 models.

ChatGPT can now read responses to you. On iOS or Android, tap and hold the message and then tap “Read Aloud”. We’ve also started rolling on web – click the "Read Aloud" button below the message. pic.twitter.com/KevIkgAFbG — OpenAI (@OpenAI) March 4, 2024

OpenAI partners with Dublin City Council to use GPT-4 for tourism

As part of a new partnership with OpenAI, the Dublin City Council will use GPT-4 to craft personalized itineraries for travelers, including recommendations of unique and cultural destinations, in an effort to support tourism across Europe.

A law firm used ChatGPT to justify a six-figure bill for legal services

New York-based law firm Cuddy Law was criticized by a judge for using ChatGPT to calculate their hourly billing rate . The firm submitted a $113,500 bill to the court, which was then halved by District Judge Paul Engelmayer, who called the figure “well above” reasonable demands.

ChatGPT experienced a bizarre bug for several hours

ChatGPT users found that ChatGPT was giving nonsensical answers for several hours , prompting OpenAI to investigate the issue. Incidents varied from repetitive phrases to confusing and incorrect answers to queries. The issue was resolved by OpenAI the following morning.

Match Group announced deal with OpenAI with a press release co-written by ChatGPT

The dating app giant home to Tinder, Match and OkCupid announced an enterprise agreement with OpenAI in an enthusiastic press release written with the help of ChatGPT . The AI tech will be used to help employees with work-related tasks and come as part of Match’s $20 million-plus bet on AI in 2024.

ChatGPT will now remember — and forget — things you tell it to

As part of a test, OpenAI began rolling out new “memory” controls for a small portion of ChatGPT free and paid users, with a broader rollout to follow. The controls let you tell ChatGPT explicitly to remember something, see what it remembers or turn off its memory altogether. Note that deleting a chat from chat history won’t erase ChatGPT’s or a custom GPT’s memories — you must delete the memory itself.

We’re testing ChatGPT's ability to remember things you discuss to make future chats more helpful. This feature is being rolled out to a small portion of Free and Plus users, and it's easy to turn on or off. https://t.co/1Tv355oa7V pic.twitter.com/BsFinBSTbs — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

OpenAI begins rolling out “Temporary Chat” feature

Initially limited to a small subset of free and subscription users, Temporary Chat lets you have a dialogue with a blank slate. With Temporary Chat, ChatGPT won’t be aware of previous conversations or access memories but will follow custom instructions if they’re enabled.

But, OpenAI says it may keep a copy of Temporary Chat conversations for up to 30 days for “safety reasons.”

Use temporary chat for conversations in which you don’t want to use memory or appear in history. pic.twitter.com/H1U82zoXyC — OpenAI (@OpenAI) February 13, 2024

ChatGPT users can now invoke GPTs directly in chats

Paid users of ChatGPT can now bring GPTs into a conversation by typing “@” and selecting a GPT from the list. The chosen GPT will have an understanding of the full conversation, and different GPTs can be “tagged in” for different use cases and needs.

You can now bring GPTs into any conversation in ChatGPT – simply type @ and select the GPT. This allows you to add relevant GPTs with the full context of the conversation. pic.twitter.com/Pjn5uIy9NF — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 30, 2024

ChatGPT is reportedly leaking usernames and passwords from users’ private conversations

Screenshots provided to Ars Technica found that ChatGPT is potentially leaking unpublished research papers, login credentials and private information from its users. An OpenAI representative told Ars Technica that the company was investigating the report.

ChatGPT is violating Europe’s privacy laws, Italian DPA tells OpenAI

OpenAI has been told it’s suspected of violating European Union privacy , following a multi-month investigation of ChatGPT by Italy’s data protection authority. Details of the draft findings haven’t been disclosed, but in a response, OpenAI said: “We want our AI to learn about the world, not about private individuals.”

OpenAI partners with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines

In an effort to win the trust of parents and policymakers, OpenAI announced it’s partnering with Common Sense Media to collaborate on AI guidelines and education materials for parents, educators and young adults. The organization works to identify and minimize tech harms to young people and previously flagged ChatGPT as lacking in transparency and privacy .

OpenAI responds to Congressional Black Caucus about lack of diversity on its board

After a letter from the Congressional Black Caucus questioned the lack of diversity in OpenAI’s board, the company responded . The response, signed by CEO Sam Altman and Chairman of the Board Bret Taylor, said building a complete and diverse board was one of the company’s top priorities and that it was working with an executive search firm to assist it in finding talent. 

OpenAI drops prices and fixes ‘lazy’ GPT-4 that refused to work

In a blog post , OpenAI announced price drops for GPT-3.5’s API, with input prices dropping to 50% and output by 25%, to $0.0005 per thousand tokens in, and $0.0015 per thousand tokens out. GPT-4 Turbo also got a new preview model for API use, which includes an interesting fix that aims to reduce “laziness” that users have experienced.

Expanding the platform for @OpenAIDevs : new generation of embedding models, updated GPT-4 Turbo, and lower pricing on GPT-3.5 Turbo. https://t.co/7wzCLwB1ax — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 25, 2024

OpenAI bans developer of a bot impersonating a presidential candidate

OpenAI has suspended AI startup Delphi, which developed a bot impersonating Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) to help bolster his presidential campaign. The ban comes just weeks after OpenAI published a plan to combat election misinformation, which listed “chatbots impersonating candidates” as against its policy.

OpenAI announces partnership with Arizona State University

Beginning in February, Arizona State University will have full access to ChatGPT’s Enterprise tier , which the university plans to use to build a personalized AI tutor, develop AI avatars, bolster their prompt engineering course and more. It marks OpenAI’s first partnership with a higher education institution.

Winner of a literary prize reveals around 5% her novel was written by ChatGPT

After receiving the prestigious Akutagawa Prize for her novel The Tokyo Tower of Sympathy, author Rie Kudan admitted that around 5% of the book quoted ChatGPT-generated sentences “verbatim.” Interestingly enough, the novel revolves around a futuristic world with a pervasive presence of AI.

Sam Altman teases video capabilities for ChatGPT and the release of GPT-5

In a conversation with Bill Gates on the Unconfuse Me podcast, Sam Altman confirmed an upcoming release of GPT-5 that will be “fully multimodal with speech, image, code, and video support.” Altman said users can expect to see GPT-5 drop sometime in 2024.

OpenAI announces team to build ‘crowdsourced’ governance ideas into its models

OpenAI is forming a Collective Alignment team of researchers and engineers to create a system for collecting and “encoding” public input on its models’ behaviors into OpenAI products and services. This comes as a part of OpenAI’s public program to award grants to fund experiments in setting up a “democratic process” for determining the rules AI systems follow.

OpenAI unveils plan to combat election misinformation

In a blog post, OpenAI announced users will not be allowed to build applications for political campaigning and lobbying until the company works out how effective their tools are for “personalized persuasion.”

Users will also be banned from creating chatbots that impersonate candidates or government institutions, and from using OpenAI tools to misrepresent the voting process or otherwise discourage voting.

The company is also testing out a tool that detects DALL-E generated images and will incorporate access to real-time news, with attribution, in ChatGPT.

Snapshot of how we’re preparing for 2024’s worldwide elections: • Working to prevent abuse, including misleading deepfakes • Providing transparency on AI-generated content • Improving access to authoritative voting information https://t.co/qsysYy5l0L — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 15, 2024

OpenAI changes policy to allow military applications

In an unannounced update to its usage policy , OpenAI removed language previously prohibiting the use of its products for the purposes of “military and warfare.” In an additional statement, OpenAI confirmed that the language was changed in order to accommodate military customers and projects that do not violate their ban on efforts to use their tools to “harm people, develop weapons, for communications surveillance, or to injure others or destroy property.”

ChatGPT subscription aimed at small teams debuts

Aptly called ChatGPT Team , the new plan provides a dedicated workspace for teams of up to 149 people using ChatGPT as well as admin tools for team management. In addition to gaining access to GPT-4, GPT-4 with Vision and DALL-E3, ChatGPT Team lets teams build and share GPTs for their business needs.

OpenAI’s GPT store officially launches

After some back and forth over the last few months, OpenAI’s GPT Store is finally here . The feature lives in a new tab in the ChatGPT web client, and includes a range of GPTs developed both by OpenAI’s partners and the wider dev community.

To access the GPT Store, users must be subscribed to one of OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans — ChatGPT Plus, ChatGPT Enterprise or the newly launched ChatGPT Team.

the GPT store is live! https://t.co/AKg1mjlvo2 fun speculation last night about which GPTs will be doing the best by the end of today. — Sam Altman (@sama) January 10, 2024

Developing AI models would be “impossible” without copyrighted materials, OpenAI claims

Following a proposed ban on using news publications and books to train AI chatbots in the U.K., OpenAI submitted a plea to the House of Lords communications and digital committee. OpenAI argued that it would be “impossible” to train AI models without using copyrighted materials, and that they believe copyright law “does not forbid training.”

OpenAI claims The New York Times’ copyright lawsuit is without merit

OpenAI published a public response to The New York Times’s lawsuit against them and Microsoft for allegedly violating copyright law, claiming that the case is without merit.

In the response , OpenAI reiterates its view that training AI models using publicly available data from the web is fair use. It also makes the case that regurgitation is less likely to occur with training data from a single source and places the onus on users to “act responsibly.”

We build AI to empower people, including journalists. Our position on the @nytimes lawsuit: • Training is fair use, but we provide an opt-out • "Regurgitation" is a rare bug we're driving to zero • The New York Times is not telling the full story https://t.co/S6fSaDsfKb — OpenAI (@OpenAI) January 8, 2024

OpenAI’s app store for GPTs planned to launch next week

After being delayed in December , OpenAI plans to launch its GPT Store sometime in the coming week, according to an email viewed by TechCrunch. OpenAI says developers building GPTs will have to review the company’s updated usage policies and GPT brand guidelines to ensure their GPTs are compliant before they’re eligible for listing in the GPT Store. OpenAI’s update notably didn’t include any information on the expected monetization opportunities for developers listing their apps on the storefront.

GPT Store launching next week – OpenAI pic.twitter.com/I6mkZKtgZG — Manish Singh (@refsrc) January 4, 2024

OpenAI moves to shrink regulatory risk in EU around data privacy

In an email, OpenAI detailed an incoming update to its terms, including changing the OpenAI entity providing services to EEA and Swiss residents to OpenAI Ireland Limited. The move appears to be intended to shrink its regulatory risk in the European Union, where the company has been under scrutiny over ChatGPT’s impact on people’s privacy.

Study finds white-collar workers are uneasy about using ChatGPT

A study conducted by professors from Harvard and MIT , which is still under review, looked at how ChatGPT could affect the productivity of more than 750 white-collar workers, as well as their complicated feelings about using the tool. The study found that while ChatGPT was helpful with creative tasks, workers were led to more mistakes with analytical work.

The New York Times sues OpenAI and Microsoft over alleged copyright infringement

In a lawsuit filed in the Federal District Court in Manhattan , The Times argues that millions of its articles were used to train AI models without its consent. The Times is asking for OpenAI and Microsoft to “destroy” models and training data containing offending material and to be held responsible for “billions of dollars in statutory and actual damages.”

OpenAI re-opens ChatGPT Plus subscriptions

After pausing ChatGPT Plus subscriptions in November due to a “surge of usage,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced they have once again enabled sign-ups. The Plus subscription includes access to GPT-4 and GPT-4 Turbo .

we have re-enabled chatgpt plus subscriptions! 🎄 thanks for your patience while we found more gpus. — Sam Altman (@sama) December 13, 2023

OpenAI and Axel Springer partner up for a “real-time” ChatGPT news deal

OpenAI has struck a new deal with Berlin-based news publisher Axel Springer , which owns Business Insider and Politico, to “help provide people with new ways to access quality, real-time news content through our AI tools.” OpenAI will train its generative AI models on the publisher’s content and add recent Axel Springer-published articles to ChatGPT.

Stanford researchers say ChatGPT didn’t cause an influx in cheating in high schools

New research from Stanford University shows that the popularization of chatbots like ChatGPT has not caused an increase in cheating across U.S. high schools. In a survey of more than 40 U.S. high schools, researchers found that cheating rates are similar across the board this year.

ChatGPT users worry the chatbot is experiencing seasonal depression

Starting in November, ChatGPT users have noticed that the chatbot feels “lazier” than normal, citing instances of simpler answers and refusing to complete requested tasks. OpenAI has confirmed that they are aware of this issue , but aren’t sure why it’s happening.

Some users think it plays into the “winter break hypothesis,” which argues that AI is worse in December because it “learned” to do less work over the holidays , while others wonder if the chatbot is simulating seasonal depression .

we've heard all your feedback about GPT4 getting lazier! we haven't updated the model since Nov 11th, and this certainly isn't intentional. model behavior can be unpredictable, and we're looking into fixing it 🫡 — ChatGPT (@ChatGPTapp) December 8, 2023

Judges in the U.K. are now allowed to use ChatGPT in legal rulings

The U.K. Judicial Office issued guidance that permits judges to use ChatGPT, along with other AI tools, to write legal rulings and perform court duties. The guidance lays out ways to responsibly use AI in the courts, including being aware of potential bias and upholding privacy.

OpenAI makes repeating words “forever” a violation of its terms of service after Google DeepMind test

Following an experiment by Google DeepMind researchers that led ChatGPT to repeat portions of its training data, OpenAI has flagged asking ChatGPT to repeat specific words “forever” as a violation of its terms of service .

Lawmakers in Brazil enact an ordinance written by ChatGPT

City lawmakers in Brazil enacted a piece of legislation written entirely by ChatGPT without even knowing. Weeks after the bill was passed, Porto Alegre councilman Ramiro Rosário admitted that he used ChatGPT to write the proposal, and did not tell fellow council members until after the fact.

OpenAI reportedly delays the launch of its GPT store to 2024

According to a memo seen by Axios , OpenAI plans to delay the launch of its highly anticipated GPT store to early 2024. Custom GPTs and the accompanying store was a major announcement at OpenAI’s DevDay conference , with the store expected to open last month.

November 2023

Chatgpts mobile apps top 110m installs and nearly $30m in revenue.

After launching for iOS and Androidin May and July, ChatGPT’s have topped 110 million combined installs and have reached nearly $30 million in consumer spending, according to a market analysis by data.ai.

ChatGPT celebrates one-year anniversary

OpenAI hit a major milestone: one year of ChatGPT . What began as a “low-key research preview” evolved into a powerhouse that changed the AI industry forever. In a post on X , CEO Sam Altman looked back on the night before its launch: “what a year it’s been…”

a year ago tonight we were probably just sitting around the office putting the finishing touches on chatgpt before the next morning’s launch. what a year it’s been… — Sam Altman (@sama) November 30, 2023

Apple and Google avoid naming ChatGPT as their ‘app of the year’

Neither Apple nor Google chose an AI app as its app of the year for 2023, despite the success of ChatGPT’s mobile app, which became the fastest-growing consumer application in history before the record was broken by Meta’s Threads .

An attack from researchers prompts ChatGPT to reveal training data

A test led by researchers at Google DeepMind found that there is a significant amount of privately identifiable information in OpenAI’s LLMs. The test involved asking ChatGPT to repeat the word “poem” forever, among other words, which over time led the chatbot to churn out private information like email addresses and phone numbers.

ChatGPT and other AI chatbots are fueling an increase in phishing emails

According to a new report by SlashNext , there’s been a 1,265% increase in malicious phishing emails since Q4 of 2022. The report alleges that AI tools like ChatGPT are being prominently used by cybercriminals to write compelling and sophisticated phishing emails .

South Africa officials investigate if President Cyril Ramaphosa used ChatGPT to write a speech

Following speculation, social media users fed portions of Ramaphosa’s November 21 speech in Johannesburg through AI detectors , alleging parts of it may have been written with ChatGPT. South African presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya refuted the claims, and local officials are investigating.

ChatGPT Voice can be used to replace Siri

Now that OpenAI’s ChatGPT Voice feature is available to all free users, it can be used to replace Siri on an iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max by configuring the new Action Button. The new feature lets you ask ChatGPT questions and listen to its responses — like a much smarter version of Siri.

Sam Altman returns as CEO

Altman’s return came swiftly , with an “agreement in principle” announced between him and OpenAI’s board that will reinstate him as CEO and restructure the board to include new members, including former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers . The biggest takeaway for ChatGPT is that the members of the board more focused on the nonprofit side of OpenAI, with the most concerns over the commercialization of its tools, have been pushed to the side .

ChatGPT Voice rolls out to all free users

Even if its leadership is in flux, OpenAI is still releasing updates to ChatGPT . First announced in September and granted to paid users on a rolling basis, the text-to-speech model can create a voice from text prompts and a few seconds of speech samples. OpenAI worked with voice actors to create the five voice options, and you can give it a shot by heading to the settings in your mobile ChatGPT apps and tapping the “headphones” icon.

Sam Altman might return, but it’s complicated

The only constant within OpenAI right now is change, and in a series of interviews, Nadella hedged on earlier reporting that Altman and Brockman were headed to Microsoft .

“Obviously, we want Sam and Greg to have a fantastic home if they’re not going to be in OpenAI,” Nadella said in an interview with CNBC, saying that we was “open” to them settling at Microsoft or returning to OpenAI should the board and employees support the move.

Confirmation Sam Altman will not return as OpenAI’s CEO

A number of investors and OpenAI employees tried to bring back Altman after his sudden firing by the company’s board, but following a weekend of negotiations, it was confirmed that Altman would not return to OpenAI and new leadership would take hold. What this means for ChatGPT’s future, and for the OpenAI Dev Day announcements , remains to be seen.

Sam Altman ousted as OpenAI’s CEO

Sam Altman has been fired from OpenAI . He will leave the company’s board and step down as CEO, with OpenAI’s chief technology officer Mira Murati stepping in as interim CEO. In a blog post from OpenAI, the company writes that the board “no longer has confidence in [Altman’s] ability to continue leading OpenAI.”

In a statement on X , Altman said working at OpenAI “was transformative” for him and “hopefully the world.”

OpenAI explores how ChatGPT can be used in the classroom

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap revealed at a San Francisco conference that the company will likely create a team to identify ways AI and ChatGPT can be used in education . This announcement comes at a time when ChatGPT is being criticized by educators for encouraging cheating , resulting in bans in certain school districts .

OpenAI pauses new ChatGPT Plus subscriptions due to a “surge of usage”

Following OpenAI’s Dev Day conference , Sam Altman announced the company is putting a pause on new subscriptions for its premium ChatGPT Plus offering. The temporary hold on sign-ups, as well as the demand for ChatGPT Plus’ new features like making custom GPTS , has led to a slew of resellers on eBay .

ChatGPT gets flagged as potentially unsafe for kids

An independent review from Common Sense Media, a nonprofit advocacy group, found that  ChatGPT could potentially be harmful for younger users. ChatGPT got an overall three-star rating in the report, with its lowest ratings relating to transparency, privacy, trust and safety. 

OpenAI blames DDoS attack for ChatGPT outage

OpenAI confirmed that a DDoS attack was behind outages affecting ChatGPT and its developer tools. ChatGPT experienced sporadic outages for about 24 hours, resulting in users being unable to log into or use the service.

OpenAI debuts GPT-4 Turbo

OpenAI unveiled GPT-4 Turbo at its first-ever OpenAI DevDay conference. GPT-4 Turbo comes in two versions: one that’s strictly text-analyzing and another that understands the context of both text and images.

GPT-4 gets a fine-tuning

As opposed to the fine-tuning program for GPT-3.5, the GPT-4 program will involve more oversight and guidance from OpenAI teams, the company says — largely due to technical hurdles.

OpenAI’s GPT Store lets you build (and monetize) your own GPT

Users and developers will soon be able to make their own GPT , with no coding experience required. Anyone building their own GPT will also be able to list it on OpenAI’s marketplace and monetize it in the future.

ChatGPT has 100 million weekly active users

After being released nearly a year ago, ChatGPT has 100 million weekly active users . OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also revealed that over two million developers use the platform, including more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies.

OpenAI launches DALL-E 3 API, new text-to-speech models

DALL-E 3, OpenAI’s text-to-image model , is now available via an API after first coming to ChatGPT-4 and Bing Chat. OpenAI’s newly released text-to-speech API, Audio API, offers six preset voices to choose from and two generative AI model variants.

OpenAI promises to defend business customers against copyright claims

Bowing to peer pressure, OpenAI it will pay legal costs incurred by customers who face lawsuits over IP claims against work generated by an OpenAI tool. The protections seemingly don’t extend to all OpenAI products, like the free and Plus tiers of ChatGPT.

As OpenAI’s multimodal API launches broadly, research shows it’s still flawed

OpenAI announced that GPT-4 with vision will become available alongside the upcoming launch of GPT-4 Turbo API. But some researchers found that the model remains flawed in several significant and problematic ways.

OpenAI launches API, letting developers build ‘assistants’ into their apps

At its OpenAI DevDay, OpenAI announced the Assistants API to help developers build “agent-like experiences” within their apps. Use cases range from a natural language-based data analysis app to a coding assistant or even an AI-powered vacation planner.

ChatGPT app revenue shows no signs of slowing, but it’s not #1

OpenAI’s chatbot app far outpaces all others on mobile devices in terms of downloads, but it’s surprisingly not the top AI app by revenue . Several other AI chatbots, like  “Chat & Ask AI” and “ChatOn — AI Chat Bot Assistant”, are actually making more money than ChatGPT.

ChatGPT tests the ability to upload and analyze files for Plus users

Subscribers to ChatGPT’s Enterprise Plan have reported new beta features, including the ability to upload PDFs to analyze and and ask questions about them directly. The new rollout also makes it so users no longer have to manually select a mode like DALL-E and browsing when using ChatGPT. Instead, users will automatically be switched to models based on the prompt.

ChatGPT officially gets web search

OpenAI has formally launched its internet-browsing feature to ChatGPT, some three weeks after re-introducing the feature in beta after several months in hiatus. The AI chatbot that has historically been limited to data up to September, 2021.

OpenAI integrates DALL-E 3 into ChatGPT

The integration means users don’t have to think so carefully about their text-prompts when asking DALL-E to create an image. Users will also now be able to receive images as part of their text-based queries without having to switch between apps.

Microsoft-affiliated research finds flaws in GPT-4

A Microsoft-affiliated scientific paper looked at the “trustworthiness” — and toxicity — of LLMs, including GPT-4. Because GPT-4 is more likely to follow the instructions of “jailbreaking” prompts, the co-authors claim that GPT-4 can be more easily prompted than other LLMs to spout toxic, biased text .

ChatGPT’s mobile app hits record $4.58M in revenue in September

OpenAI amassed 15.6 million downloads and nearly $4.6 million in gross revenue across its iOS and Android apps worldwide in September. But revenue growth has now begun to slow , according to new data from market intelligence firm Appfigures — dropping from 30% to 20% in September.

ChatGPT can now browse the internet (again)

OpenAI posted on Twitter/X that ChatGPT can now browse the internet and is no longer limited to data before September 2021. The chatbot had a web browsing capability for Plus subscribers back in July , but the feature was taken away after users exploited it to get around paywalls.

ChatGPT can now browse the internet to provide you with current and authoritative information, complete with direct links to sources. It is no longer limited to data before September 2021. pic.twitter.com/pyj8a9HWkB — OpenAI (@OpenAI) September 27, 2023

ChatGPT now has a voice

OpenAI announced that it’s adding a new voice for verbal conversations and image-based smarts to the AI-powered chatbot.

Poland opens an investigation against OpenAI

The Polish authority publically announced it has opened an investigation regarding ChatGPT — accusing the company of a string of breaches of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

OpenAI unveils DALL-E 3

The upgraded text-to-image tool, DALL-E 3, uses ChatGPT to help fill in prompts. Subscribers to OpenAI’s premium ChatGPT plans, ChatGPT Plus  and  ChatGPT Enterprise , can type in a request for an image and hone it through conversations with the chatbot — receiving the results directly within the chat app.

Opera GX integrates ChatGPT-powered AI

Powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT, the AI browser Aria  launched on Opera in May to give users an easier way to search, ask questions and write code. Today, the company announced it is bringing Aria to Opera GX , a version of the flagship Opera browser that is built for gamers.

The new feature allows Opera GX users to interact directly with a browser AI to find the latest gaming news and tips.

OpenAI releases a guide for teachers using ChatGPT in the classroom

OpenAI wants to rehabilitate the system’s image a bit when it comes to education, as ChatGPT has been controversial in the classroom due to plagiarism. OpenAI has offered up a selection of ways to put the chatbot to work in the classroom.

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Enterprise

ChatGPT Enterprise can perform the same tasks as ChatGPT, such as writing emails, drafting essays and debugging computer code. However, the new offering also adds “enterprise-grade” privacy and data analysis capabilities on top of the vanilla ChatGPT, as well as enhanced performance and customization options.

Survey finds relatively few American use ChatGPT

Recent Pew polling suggests the language model isn’t quite as popular or threatening as some would have you think. Ongoing polling by Pew Research shows that although ChatGPT is gaining mindshare, only about 18% of Americans have ever actually used it .

OpenAI brings fine-tuning to GPT-3.5 Turbo

With fine-tuning, companies using GPT-3.5 Turbo through the company’s API can make the model better follow specific instructions. For example, having the model always respond in a given language. Or improving the model’s ability to consistently format responses, as well as hone the “feel” of the model’s output, like its tone, so that it better fits a brand or voice. Most notably, fine-tuning enables OpenAI customers to shorten text prompts to speed up API calls and cut costs.

OpenAI is partnering with Scale AI to allow companies to fine-tune GPT-3.5 . However, it is unclear whether OpenAI is developing an in-house tuning tool that is meant to complement platforms like Scale AI or serve a different purpose altogether.

Fine-tuning costs:

• Training: $0.008 / 1K tokens
• Usage input: $0.012 / 1K tokens
• Usage output: $0.016 / 1K tokens

OpenAI acquires Global Illumination

In OpenAI’s first public acquisition in its seven-year history, the company announced it has acquired Global Illumination, a New York-based startup leveraging AI to build creative tools, infrastructure and digital experiences.

“We’re very excited for the impact they’ll have here at OpenAI,” OpenAI wrote in a brief  post published to its official blog. “The entire team has joined OpenAI to work on our core products including ChatGPT.”

The ‘custom instructions’ feature is extended to free ChatGPT users

OpenAI announced that it’s expanding custom instructions to all users, including those on the free tier of service. The feature allows users to add various preferences and requirements that they want the AI chatbot to consider when responding.

China requires AI apps to obtain an administrative license

Multiple generative AI apps have been removed from Apple’s China App Store ahead of the country’s latest generative AI regulations that are set to take effect August 15.

“As you may know, the government has been tightening regulations associated with deep synthesis technologies (DST) and generative AI services, including ChatGPT. DST must fulfill permitting requirements to operate in China, including securing a license from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT),” Apple said in a letter to OpenCat, a native ChatGPT client. “Based on our review, your app is associated with ChatGPT, which does not have requisite permits to operate in China.”

ChatGPT for Android is now available in the US, India, Bangladesh and Brazil

A few days after putting up a preorder page on Google Play, OpenAI has flipped the switch and  released ChatGPT for Android . The app is now live in a handful of countries.

ChatGPT is coming to Android

ChatGPT is available to “pre-order” for Android users.

The ChatGPT app on Android  looks to be more or less identical to the iOS one in functionality, meaning it gets most if not all of the web-based version’s features. You should be able to sync your conversations and preferences across devices, too — so if you’re iPhone at home and Android at work, no worries.

OpenAI launches customized instructions for ChatGPT

OpenAI launched custom instructions for ChatGPT users , so they don’t have to write the same instruction prompts to the chatbot every time they interact with it.

The company said this feature lets you “share anything you’d like ChatGPT to consider in its response.” For example, a teacher can say they are teaching fourth-grade math or a developer can specify the code language they prefer when asking for suggestions. A person can also specify their family size, so the text-generating AI can give responses about meals, grocery and vacation planning accordingly.

The FTC is reportedly investigating OpenAI

The FTC is reportedly in at least the exploratory phase of investigation over whether OpenAI’s flagship ChatGPT conversational AI made “false, misleading, disparaging or harmful” statements about people.

TechCrunch Reporter Devin Coldewey reports:

This kind of investigation doesn’t just appear out of thin air — the FTC doesn’t look around and say “That looks suspicious.” Generally a lawsuit or formal complaint is brought to their attention and the practices described by it imply that regulations are being ignored. For example, a person may sue a supplement company because the pills made them sick, and the FTC will launch an investigation on the back of that because there’s evidence the company lied about the side effects.

OpenAI announced the general availability of GPT-4

Starting July 6, all existing OpenAI developers “with a history of successful payments” can access GPT-4 . OpenAI plans to open up access to new developers by the end of July.

In the future, OpenAI says that it’ll allow developers to fine-tune GPT-4 and  GPT-3.5 Turbo , one of the original models powering ChatGPT, with their own data, as has long been possible with several of OpenAI’s other text-generating models. That capability should arrive later this year, according to OpenAI.

ChatGPT app can now search the web only on Bing

OpenAI announced that subscribers to ChatGPT Plus can now use a new feature on the app called Browsing , which allows ChatGPT to search Bing for answers to questions.

The Browsing feature can be enabled by heading to the New Features section of the app settings, selecting “GPT-4” in the model switcher and choosing “Browse with Bing” from the drop-down list. Browsing is available on both the iOS and Android ChatGPT apps.

Mercedes is adding ChatGPT to its infotainment system

U.S. owners of Mercedes models that use MBUX will be able to opt into a beta program starting June 16 activating the ChatGPT functionality . This will enable the highly versatile large language model to augment the car’s conversation skills. You can join up simply by telling your car “Hey Mercedes, I want to join the beta program.”

It’s not really clear what for, though.

ChatGPT app is now available on iPad, adds support for Siri and Shortcuts

The new ChatGPT app version brings native iPad support to the app , as well as support for using the chatbot with Siri and Shortcuts. Drag and drop is also now available, allowing users to drag individual messages from ChatGPT into other apps.

On iPad, ChatGPT now runs in full-screen mode, optimized for the tablet’s interface.

Texas judge orders all AI-generated content must be declared and checked

The Texas federal judge has added a requirement that any attorney appearing in his court must attest that “no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence,” or if it was, that it was checked “by a human being.”

ChatGPT app expanded to more than 30 countries

The list of new countries includes Algeria, Argentina, Azerbaijan, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Estonia, Ghana, India, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lithuania, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Nauru, Oman, Pakistan, Peru, Poland, Qatar, Slovenia, Tunisia and the United Arab Emirates.

ChatGPT app is now available in 11 more countries

OpenAI announced in a tweet that the ChatGPT mobile app is now available on iOS in the U.S., Europe, South Korea and New Zealand, and soon more will be able to download the app from the app store. In just six days, the app topped 500,000 downloads .

The ChatGPT app for iOS is now available to users in 11 more countries — Albania, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Jamaica, Korea, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, and the UK. More to come soon! — OpenAI (@OpenAI) May 24, 2023

OpenAI launches a ChatGPT app for iOS

ChatGPT is officially going mobile . The new ChatGPT app will be free to use, free from ads and will allow for voice input, the company says, but will initially be limited to U.S. users at launch.

When using the mobile version of ChatGPT, the app will sync your history across devices — meaning it will know what you’ve previously searched for via its web interface, and make that accessible to you. The app is also integrated with  Whisper , OpenAI’s open source speech recognition system, to allow for voice input.

Hackers are using ChatGPT lures to spread malware on Facebook

Meta said in a report on May 3 that malware posing as ChatGPT was on the rise across its platforms . The company said that since March 2023, its security teams have uncovered 10 malware families using ChatGPT (and similar themes) to deliver malicious software to users’ devices.

“In one case, we’ve seen threat actors create malicious browser extensions available in official web stores that claim to offer ChatGPT-based tools,” said Meta security engineers Duc H. Nguyen and Ryan Victory in  a blog post . “They would then promote these malicious extensions on social media and through sponsored search results to trick people into downloading malware.”

ChatGPT parent company OpenAI closes $300M share sale at $27B-29B valuation

VC firms including Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive and K2 Global are picking up new shares, according to documents seen by TechCrunch. A source tells us Founders Fund is also investing. Altogether the VCs have put in just over $300 million at a valuation of $27 billion to $29 billion . This is separate to a big investment from Microsoft announced earlier this year , a person familiar with the development told TechCrunch, which closed in January. The size of Microsoft’s investment is believed to be around $10 billion, a figure we confirmed with our source.

OpenAI previews new subscription tier, ChatGPT Business

Called ChatGPT Business, OpenAI describes the forthcoming offering as “for professionals who need more control over their data as well as enterprises seeking to manage their end users.”

“ChatGPT Business will follow our API’s data usage policies, which means that end users’ data won’t be used to train our models by default,” OpenAI  wrote in a blog post. “We plan to make ChatGPT Business available in the coming months.”

OpenAI wants to trademark “GPT”

OpenAI applied for a trademark for “GPT,” which stands for “Generative Pre-trained Transformer,” last December. Last month, the company petitioned the USPTO to speed up the process, citing the “myriad infringements and counterfeit apps” beginning to spring into existence.

Unfortunately for OpenAI, its petition was  dismissed  last week. According to the agency, OpenAI’s attorneys neglected to pay an associated fee as well as provide “appropriate documentary evidence supporting the justification of special action.”

That means a decision could take up to five more months.

Auto-GPT is Silicon Valley’s latest quest to automate everything

Auto-GPT is an open-source app created by game developer Toran Bruce Richards that uses OpenAI’s latest text-generating models, GPT-3.5 and GPT-4, to interact with software and services online, allowing it to “autonomously” perform tasks.

Depending on what objective the tool’s provided, Auto-GPT can behave in very… unexpected ways. One Reddit  user  claims that, given a budget of $100 to spend within a server instance, Auto-GPT made a wiki page on cats, exploited a flaw in the instance to gain admin-level access and took over the Python environment in which it was running — and then “killed” itself.

FTC warns that AI technology like ChatGPT could ‘turbocharge’ fraud

FTC chair Lina Khan and fellow commissioners warned House representatives of the potential for modern AI technologies, like ChatGPT, to be used to “turbocharge” fraud in a congressional hearing .

“AI presents a whole set of opportunities, but also presents a whole set of risks,” Khan told the House representatives. “And I think we’ve already seen ways in which it could be used to turbocharge fraud and scams. We’ve been putting market participants on notice that instances in which AI tools are effectively being designed to deceive people can place them on the hook for FTC action,” she stated.

Superchat’s new AI chatbot lets you message historical and fictional characters via ChatGPT

The company behind the popular iPhone customization app  Brass , sticker maker  StickerHub  and  others  is out today with a new AI chat app called  SuperChat , which allows iOS users to chat with virtual characters powered by OpenAI’s ChatGPT . However, what makes the app different from the default experience or the dozens of generic AI chat apps now available are the characters offered which you can use to engage with SuperChat’s AI features.

Italy gives OpenAI to-do list for lifting ChatGPT suspension order

Italy’s data protection watchdog has laid out what OpenAI needs to do for it to lift an order against ChatGPT issued at the  end of last month — when it said it suspected the AI chatbot service was in breach of the EU’s GSPR and ordered the U.S.-based company to stop processing locals’ data.

The DPA has given OpenAI a deadline — of April 30 — to get the regulator’s compliance demands done. (The local radio, TV and internet awareness campaign has a slightly more generous timeline of May 15 to be actioned.)

Researchers discover a way to make ChatGPT consistently toxic

A study co-authored by scientists at the Allen Institute for AI shows that assigning ChatGPT a “persona” — for example, “a bad person,” “a horrible person” or “a nasty person” — through the ChatGPT API increases its toxicity sixfold. Even more concerning, the co-authors found having the conversational AI chatbot pose as certain historical figures, gendered people and members of political parties also increased its toxicity — with journalists, men and Republicans in particular causing the machine learning model to say more offensive things than it normally would.

The research was conducted using the latest version, but not the model currently in preview based on OpenAI’s GPT-4 .

Y Combinator-backed startups are trying to build ‘ChatGPT for X’

YC Demo Day’s Winter 2023 batch features no fewer than four startups that claim to be building “ChatGPT for X.” They’re all chasing after a customer service software market that’ll be worth $58.1 billion by 2023, assuming the rather optimistic prediction from Acumen Research comes true.

Here are the YC-backed startups that caught our eye:

• Yuma , whose customer demographic is primarily Shopify merchants, provides ChatGPT-like AI systems that integrate with help desk software, suggesting drafts of replies to customer tickets.
• Baselit , which uses one of OpenAI’s text-understanding models to allow businesses to embed chatbot-style analytics for their customers.
• Lasso customers send descriptions or videos of the processes they’d like to automate and the company combines ChatGPT-like interface with robotic process automation (RPA) and a Chrome extension to build out those automations.
• BerriAI , whose platform is designed to help developers spin up ChatGPT apps for their organization data through various data connectors.

Italy orders ChatGPT to be blocked

OpenAI has started geoblocking access to its generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in Italy .

Italy’s data protection authority has just put out a timely reminder that some countries do have laws that already apply to cutting edge AI: it has  ordered OpenAI to stop processing people’s data locally with immediate effect. The Italian DPA said it’s concerned that the ChatGPT maker is breaching the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and is opening an investigation.

1,100+ signatories signed an open letter asking all ‘AI labs to immediately pause for 6 months’

The letter’s signatories include Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Tristan Harris of the Center for Humane Technology, among others. The letter calls on “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.”

The letter reads:

Contemporary AI systems are now becoming human-competitive at general tasks,[3] and we must ask ourselves: Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders. Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable.

OpenAI connects ChatGPT to the internet

OpenAI launched plugins for ChatGPT, extending the bot’s functionality by granting it access to third-party knowledge sources and databases, including the web. Available in alpha to ChatGPT users and developers on the waitlist , OpenAI says that it’ll initially prioritize a small number of developers and subscribers to its premium ChatGPT Plus plan before rolling out larger-scale and  API  access.

OpenAI launches GPT-4, available through ChatGPT Plus

GPT-4 is a powerful image- and text-understanding AI model from OpenAI. Released March 14, GPT-4 is available for paying ChatGPT Plus users and through a public API. Developers can sign up on a waitlist to access the API.

ChatGPT is available in Azure OpenAI service

ChatGPT is generally available through the Azure OpenAI Service , Microsoft’s fully managed, corporate-focused offering. Customers, who must already be “Microsoft managed customers and partners,” can apply here for special access .

OpenAI launches an API for ChatGPT

OpenAI makes another move toward monetization by launching a paid API for ChatGPT . Instacart, Snap (Snapchat’s parent company) and Quizlet are among its initial customers.

Microsoft launches the new Bing, with ChatGPT built in

At a press event in Redmond, Washington, Microsoft announced its long-rumored integration of OpenAI’s GPT-4 model into Bing , providing a ChatGPT-like experience within the search engine. The announcement spurred a 10x increase in new downloads for Bing globally, indicating a sizable consumer demand for new AI experiences.

Other companies beyond Microsoft joined in on the AI craze by implementing ChatGPT, including OkCupid , Kaito , Snapchat and Discord — putting the pressure on Big Tech’s AI initiatives, like Google .

OpenAI launches ChatGPT Plus, starting at $20 per month

After ChatGPT took the internet by storm, OpenAI launched a new pilot subscription plan for ChatGPT called ChatGPT Plus , aiming to monetize the technology starting at $20 per month. A month prior, OpenAI posted a waitlist for “ChatGPT Professional” as the company began to think about monetizing the chatbot.

OpenAI teases ChatGPT Professional

OpenAI said that it’s “starting to think about how to monetize ChatGPT” in an announcement on the company’s official Discord server. According to a waitlist link OpenAI posted in Discord, the monetized version will be called ChatGPT Professional . The waitlist document includes the benefits of this new paid version of the chatbot which include no “blackout” windows, no throttling and an unlimited number of messages with ChatGPT — “at least 2x the regular daily limit.”

ShareGPT lets you easily share your ChatGPT conversations

A week after ChatGPT was released into the wild , two developers — Steven Tey and Dom Eccleston — made a Chrome extension called ShareGPT to make it easier to capture and share the AI’s answers with the world.

ChatGPT first launched to the public as OpenAI quietly released GPT-3.5

GPT-3.5 broke cover with ChatGPT , a fine-tuned version of GPT-3.5 that’s essentially a general-purpose chatbot. ChatGPT can engage with a range of topics, including programming, TV scripts and scientific concepts. Writers everywhere rolled their eyes at the new technology, much like artists did with OpenAI’s DALL-E model , but the latest chat-style iteration seemingly broadened its appeal and audience.

What is ChatGPT? How does it work?

ChatGPT is a general-purpose chatbot that uses artificial intelligence to generate text after a user enters a prompt, developed by tech startup OpenAI . The chatbot uses GPT-4, a large language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.

When did ChatGPT get released?

November 30, 2022 is when ChatGPT was released for public use.

What is the latest version of ChatGPT?

Both the free version of ChatGPT and the paid ChatGPT Plus are regularly updated with new GPT models. The most recent model is GPT-4 .

Can I use ChatGPT for free?

There is a free version of ChatGPT that only requires a sign-in in addition to the paid version, ChatGPT Plus .

Who uses ChatGPT?

Anyone can use ChatGPT! More and more tech companies and search engines are utilizing the chatbot to automate text or quickly answer user questions/concerns.

What companies use ChatGPT?

Multiple enterprises utilize ChatGPT, although others may limit the use of the AI-powered tool .

Most recently, Microsoft announced at it’s 2023 Build conference that it is integrating it ChatGPT-based Bing experience into Windows 11. A Brooklyn-based 3D display startup Looking Glass utilizes ChatGPT to produce holograms you can communicate with by using ChatGPT.  And nonprofit organization Solana officially integrated the chatbot into its network with a ChatGPT plug-in geared toward end users to help onboard into the web3 space.

What does GPT mean in ChatGPT?

GPT stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer.

What’s the difference between ChatGPT and Bard?

Much like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Bard is a chatbot that will answer questions in natural language. Google announced at its 2023 I/O event that it will soon be adding multimodal content to Bard, meaning that it can deliver answers in more than just text, responses can give you rich visuals as well. Rich visuals mean pictures for now, but later can include maps, charts and other items.

ChatGPT’s generative AI has had a longer lifespan and thus has been “learning” for a longer period of time than Bard.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and a chatbot?

A chatbot can be any software/system that holds dialogue with you/a person but doesn’t necessarily have to be AI-powered. For example, there are chatbots that are rules-based in the sense that they’ll give canned responses to questions.

ChatGPT is AI-powered and utilizes LLM technology to generate text after a prompt.

Can ChatGPT write essays?

Can chatgpt commit libel.

Due to the nature of how these models work , they don’t know or care whether something is true, only that it looks true. That’s a problem when you’re using it to do your homework, sure, but when it accuses you of a crime you didn’t commit, that may well at this point be libel.

We will see how handling troubling statements produced by ChatGPT will play out over the next few months as tech and legal experts attempt to tackle the fastest moving target in the industry.

Does ChatGPT have an app?

Yes, there is now a free ChatGPT app that is currently limited to U.S. iOS users at launch. OpenAi says an android version is “coming soon.”

What is the ChatGPT character limit?

It’s not documented anywhere that ChatGPT has a character limit. However, users have noted that there are some character limitations after around 500 words.

Does ChatGPT have an API?

Yes, it was released March 1, 2023.

What are some sample everyday uses for ChatGPT?

Everyday examples include programing, scripts, email replies, listicles, blog ideas, summarization, etc.

What are some advanced uses for ChatGPT?

Advanced use examples include debugging code, programming languages, scientific concepts, complex problem solving, etc.

How good is ChatGPT at writing code?

It depends on the nature of the program. While ChatGPT can write workable Python code, it can’t necessarily program an entire app’s worth of code. That’s because ChatGPT lacks context awareness — in other words, the generated code isn’t always appropriate for the specific context in which it’s being used.

Can you save a ChatGPT chat?

Yes. OpenAI allows users to save chats in the ChatGPT interface, stored in the sidebar of the screen. There are no built-in sharing features yet.

Are there alternatives to ChatGPT?

Yes. There are multiple AI-powered chatbot competitors such as Together , Google’s Bard and Anthropic’s Claude , and developers are creating open source alternatives . But the latter are harder — if not impossible — to run today.

The Google-owned research lab DeepMind claimed that its next LLM, will rival, or even best, OpenAI’s ChatGPT . DeepMind is using techniques from AlphaGo, DeepMind’s AI system that was the first to defeat a professional human player at the board game Go, to make a ChatGPT-rivaling chatbot called Gemini.

Apple is developing AI tools to challenge OpenAI, Google and others. The tech giant created a chatbot that some engineers are internally referring to as “Apple GPT,” but Apple has yet to determine a strategy for releasing the AI to consumers.

How does ChatGPT handle data privacy?

OpenAI has said that individuals in “certain jurisdictions” (such as the EU) can object to the processing of their personal information by its AI models by filling out  this form . This includes the ability to make requests for deletion of AI-generated references about you. Although OpenAI notes it may not grant every request since it must balance privacy requests against freedom of expression “in accordance with applicable laws”.

The web form for making a deletion of data about you request is entitled “ OpenAI Personal Data Removal Request ”.

In its privacy policy, the ChatGPT maker makes a passing acknowledgement of the objection requirements attached to relying on “legitimate interest” (LI), pointing users towards more information about requesting an opt out — when it writes: “See here  for instructions on how you can opt out of our use of your information to train our models.”

What controversies have surrounded ChatGPT?

Recently, Discord announced that it had integrated OpenAI’s technology into its bot named Clyde where two users tricked Clyde into providing them with instructions for making the illegal drug methamphetamine (meth) and the incendiary mixture napalm.

An Australian mayor has publicly announced he may sue OpenAI for defamation due to ChatGPT’s false claims that he had served time in prison for bribery. This would be the first defamation lawsuit against the text-generating service.

CNET found itself in the midst of controversy after Futurism reported the publication was publishing articles under a mysterious byline completely generated by AI. The private equity company that owns CNET, Red Ventures, was accused of using ChatGPT for SEO farming, even if the information was incorrect.

Several major school systems and colleges, including New York City Public Schools , have banned ChatGPT from their networks and devices. They claim that the AI impedes the learning process by promoting plagiarism and misinformation, a claim that not every educator agrees with .

There have also been cases of ChatGPT accusing individuals of false crimes .

Where can I find examples of ChatGPT prompts?

Several marketplaces host and provide ChatGPT prompts, either for free or for a nominal fee. One is PromptBase . Another is ChatX . More launch every day.

Can ChatGPT be detected?

Poorly. Several tools claim to detect ChatGPT-generated text, but in our tests , they’re inconsistent at best.

Are ChatGPT chats public?

No. But OpenAI recently disclosed a bug, since fixed, that exposed the titles of some users’ conversations to other people on the service.

Who owns the copyright on ChatGPT-created content or media?

The user who requested the input from ChatGPT is the copyright owner.

What lawsuits are there surrounding ChatGPT?

None specifically targeting ChatGPT. But OpenAI is involved in at least one lawsuit that has implications for AI systems trained on publicly available data, which would touch on ChatGPT.

Are there issues regarding plagiarism with ChatGPT?

Yes. Text-generating AI models like ChatGPT have a tendency to regurgitate content from their training data.

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• May 24, 2024   •   25:18 Whales Have an Alphabet
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I.C.C. Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Israeli and Hamas Leaders

The move sets up a possible showdown between the international court and israel with its biggest ally, the united states..

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Featuring Patrick Kingsley

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Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

This week, Karim Khan, the top prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, requested arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the country’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

Patrick Kingsley, the Times’s bureau chief in Jerusalem, explains why this may set up a possible showdown between the court and Israel with its biggest ally, the United States.

On today’s episode

Patrick Kingsley , the Jerusalem bureau chief for The New York Times.

Background reading

Why did a prosecutor go public with the arrest warrant requests ?

The warrant request appeared to shore up domestic support for Mr. Netanyahu.

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We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

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Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley

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Who's hosting 'SNL' Season 49 finale? Cast, musical guest, how to watch May 18 episode

Season 49 of " Saturday Night Live " comes to a close this weekend with actor Jake Gyllenhaal serving as the host for the finale.

This will be Gyllenhaal's third time hosting the show, according to NBC. The Academy Award-nominated actor stars in " Road House " and makes his series debut as star and executive producer on "Presumed Innocent" on June 12 on Apple TV+, adds NBC.

Last week's episode was hosted by "SNL" alumna Maya Rudolph , who returned to host the show for the third time. Rudolph joined the show in 2001 and left in 2007, and has made appearances periodically since leaving. Vampire Weekend served as the musical guest on the episode.

Here's what to know about the May 18 season finale of "SNL," including information about the cast and how to watch it.

'Road House' revisited: How Jake Gyllenhaal remake compares to Patrick Swayze cult classic

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Who is hosting 'SNL' on May 18?

Jake Gyllenhaal is scheduled to host the episode. He starred in the movie "Road House," which came out on Amazon Prime Video in March, and is set to start in "Presumed Innocent," a TV series that will premiere on Apple TV+ in June.

Who is the 'SNL' musical guest on May 18?

Sabrina Carpenter will make her musical guest debut on "SNL" on Saturday, according to NBC. Carpenter recently earned her first Billboard top 10 hit with her newest single, "Espresso."

How to watch 'SNL' Season 49 finale on May 18

The May 18 "SNL" episode will be available to watch live on NBC at 11:30 p.m. ET/8:30 p.m. PT. Viewers can also stream it on  Peacock .

Watch 'SNL':   Subscribe to Peacock

'SNL' Season 49 cast

Cast members for Season 49 of "Saturday Night Live" include:

• Michael Che
• Andrew Dismukes
• Chloe Fineman
• Heidi Gardner
• Marcello Hernández
• Punkie Johnson
• James Austin Johnson
• Molly Kearney
• Michael Longfellow
• Sarah Sherman
• Kenan Thompson
• Chloe Troast
• Devon Walker

We occasionally recommend interesting products and services. If you make a purchase by clicking one of the links, we may earn an affiliate fee. USA TODAY Network newsrooms operate independently, and this doesn’t influence our coverage.

Gabe Hauari is a national trending news reporter at USA TODAY. You can follow him on X  @GabeHauari  or email him at [email protected].