Iftikhar Alam
ChatGPT is truly the hype these days. It grabbed around 1 million users within five days of its launch and today the monthly user base has swelled to almost 180 million.
Out of its many useful features, ChatGPT can also help you summarize an article. All you have to do is find an article, copy-paste it on the chatbot, and then request it to summarize the content based on different preferences.
New to using ChatGPT? Don’t sweat; this step-by-step guide on how to use ChatGPT to summarize and article will take you through the entire process. Let’s get started!
Steps To Summarize an Article with ChatGPT
Here’s how to use ChatGPT to summarize an article in a few minutes using the right prompts.
Step 1: Find the Article to Copy/Paste on ChatGPT
Start with finding the article you wish to summarize. Open a separate tab for it. Log in to OpenAI on another tab. If you don’t have an account, you can set up one within minutes.
If you’re using ChatGPT-3.5 or ChatGPT-4, you must provide the chatbot with the article’s raw material to create a summary. Copy the article from the webpage and paste it on the message bar of the tool’s homepage.
Now, here is an interesting thing. If you have an account on ChatGPT Plus or 4o, you don’t have to go through the copy-and-paste hassle because these models can browse the internet. Just shift to the Web Browsing model and paste your article’s URL. That’s about it!
Step 2: Ask ChatGPT to Summarize
Now, this is the tricky part. You need to create your prompt correctly to ensure that you get your desired summary.
A prompt as general as ‘summarize the article above’ will leave some room for error, and you won’t get the desired results. So, how should you start?
Option 1: A Summary With a Word Limit
Suppose you want to summarize this article: The New Marketer’s Guide To Writing High-Quality ChatGPT Prompts. To do that, you should copy/paste the article’s body on ChatGPT and add a prompt similar to:
“I want you to summarize this article in detail. Please write a summary of 200 to 300 words.”
At times, giving a word range works. But sometimes, the additional requests backfire. Here is what you may get from ChatGPT after you have given the word limit criteria.
Your prompt must be specific, accurate, and clear.
Option 2: Summarize a Marketing Article for a Magazine
If you want a summary of a marketing article but for a magazine, here is what you can ask ChatGPT to do.
“Imagine that you are a content writer for a magazine and have to summarize the article, What is Global Marketing? See 13 Businesses with Brilliant Strategies, incorporating a few bullet points. Please write a summary that grabs the attention of the reader.”
For this prompt, ChatGPT may give you the following reply:
Option 3: Summarize a Marketing Report
Suppose you have a long marketing report article on hand that you want to review in a few minutes. In that case, you wouldn’t want to miss out on any facts or statistics from the document.
Let’s take HubSpot’s 2024 State of Marketing & Trends Report as an example. Your ChatGPT prompt should be something like this:
“Summarize this marketing report in 200 words. I need the tone to be formal. Also, don’t miss out on any crucial facts.”
ChatGPT may answer you back with the following:
If you aren’t satisfied with the summary but don’t want to change your initial prompt, you can select the Regenerate Response option for a better summary.
Is ChatGPT an Ideal Tool To Summarize an Article?
Crafting effective prompts can help ChatGPT understand your request better. It is all about focusing on your questions and breaking down your requests to get those perfectly AI-curated summaries of your articles.
However, even if your prompt hits the right spot, ChatGPT could still present its limitations. Here are a few hurdles that you may face when summarizing your article with this AI tool.
Token Limits with Free ChatGPT Models
The free ChatGPT models have tokens limited to 4,096 tokens, which makes around 3,000 words. If your article is long or can’t be summarized within this limit, you may have issues using the tool correctly for the job.
Don’t Trust the Facts Blindly
You may trust ChatGPT for its great features. However, the chatbot is prone to mistakes and hallucinations, meaning it makes things up on its own. Many users have reported that ChatGPT provides false information, and it does that so confidently that it sounds true.
According to Vectara’s research, ChatGPT technology fabricates things about 3% of the time when summarizing facts.
So, to be on the safe side, check the facts before believing the summary word by word.
ChatGPT Can’t Summarize PDF Articles
If your article is in a PDF, unfortunately, the free version of ChatGPT won’t be able to summarize it. However, ChatGPT Plus subscribers can overcome this limitation easily.
Paid versions have a “PDF summarization” feature that easily summarizes PDF files. All you have to do is upload the PDF on ChatGPT and get its summary in a few seconds.
ChatGPT Believes in Oversimplification
This limitation is great for anyone who requires a simple, basic summary. But if you need an article’s summary without crucial facts missing, you may have to read the article to ensure that its summarized version briefly mentions everything.
Conclusion
ChatGPT has all the features to summarize your marketing materials in minutes. You just need to enter the right prompts to allow the chatbot to generate an outstanding summary. This means you must be precise with your requirements, such as the summary’s word count, tone, style, etc.
However, it’s best not to rely solely on ChatGPT’s summary. The chatbot is prone to making mistakes and fabricating facts. So, always double-check the generated summary before sending it to other channels.
