What is ChatGPT? A plain English explanation
ChatGPT is probably the most talked-about piece of software since the iPhone. Which means there’s a lot of noise around it and not much plain English.
Here’s what it actually is.
What is ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is an AI assistant made by a company called OpenAI. It’s available at chat.openai.com and as a mobile app.
You type something — a question, a request, a task — and it responds in plain English. That’s all there is to it mechanically. The sophistication is in what it can respond to, which turns out to be quite a lot.
Who made it?
OpenAI, an American AI research company. It was founded in 2015 and released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022. Within two months it had 100 million users — the fastest any consumer product had ever reached that number.
It was the moment most people first paid attention to AI. Including me.
What can it do?
Quite a lot that’s genuinely useful for working professionals.
Writing: Give it a brief and it produces a first draft. Not perfect — you’ll always need to edit — but infinitely better than staring at a blank page.
Research: Ask it to explain a topic, summarise an article, or give you the key arguments on both sides of a debate. It does this well.
Preparation: Ask it to help you prepare for a meeting, anticipate questions, or think through a decision. This is where I use it most.
Analysis: Paste in a document and ask it to pull out the key points, identify the weaknesses, or suggest what’s missing.
What are its limitations?
It gets things wrong. Sometimes confidently. This is called hallucination — the AI produces something plausible-sounding that isn’t accurate.
It doesn’t search the internet in real time (unless you use a specific browsing feature). Its knowledge has a cut-off date.
Always check anything important. Use it for first drafts and thinking, not as a source of verified facts.
Is it free?
The free version is genuinely capable. You can do a lot with it without paying anything.
ChatGPT Plus costs around $20 a month and gives you access to more powerful features. Worth it if you’re using it heavily — not necessary to start.
How is it different from Microsoft Copilot?
Copilot is Microsoft’s AI — it lives inside Outlook, Teams, Word and Excel. ChatGPT is a standalone tool you go to separately.
If you use Microsoft 365 at work, Copilot is often the better starting point because it’s already in your tools. ChatGPT is more flexible for things outside the Microsoft environment.
That Clicked covers both. Module 1 starts with Copilot. Module 2 covers ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity — and helps you decide which to use when. See also: Copilot vs ChatGPT.
— Anna