What Is ChatGPT? A Plain English Guide

Last updated: October 2026.

ChatGPT is an AI assistant made by OpenAI that holds a conversation and answers in ordinary language, rather than returning a list of links. It works by predicting the most likely next words based on patterns learned from huge amounts of text, which is why it reads naturally and why it sometimes states something confidently that is wrong.

If you would rather watch a short explanation, this DigiFix video covers what ChatGPT is and why it spread so quickly.

What is ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is software you talk to in writing, and it answers in writing, in the same thread, remembering what was said earlier in the conversation. You can ask it to draft, summarise, rewrite, explain, translate, plan or analyse, and it responds in seconds.

It is not a search engine and it is not a database. A search engine points you to pages other people wrote, while ChatGPT produces new text that did not previously exist, assembled from patterns it learned during training.

That difference explains both the appeal and the risk. It is fast and flexible, and it has no built-in way to know whether what it just told you is true.

Who made ChatGPT?

ChatGPT was built by OpenAI, the artificial intelligence research company behind the GPT family of language models. It was released to the public at the end of November 2022 and became the fastest spreading consumer software product of its kind, reaching an audience far beyond the technology industry within weeks.

The GPT models themselves are based on the transformer architecture, which was introduced in the 2017 research paper Attention Is All You Need by Vaswani and colleagues (arXiv, revised 2023). ChatGPT is the conversational interface layered on top of those models, which is why the underlying technology and the product you use are usually discussed as one thing.

OpenAI publishes a plain language explanation of the assistant at What is ChatGPT? in its help centre, and the product itself is at chatgpt.com.

Is ChatGPT free to use?

ChatGPT has a free tier that any business can use at no cost, and paid tiers that add more capable models, higher usage limits and additional tools. Most Australian small businesses start on the free tier, find one or two tasks it genuinely helps with, and only then consider paying.

Plan names, prices and model names change frequently, so check the current options in the product rather than trusting any guide with a figure in it. The question worth asking is not which tier is cheapest, but which tier gives you the data controls your business needs.

How does ChatGPT work?

ChatGPT works by predicting what words are most likely to come next, one small piece of text at a time, based on patterns it absorbed during training. It is not retrieving a stored answer or querying a fact database, which is the single most important thing to understand about it.

What is a large language model?

A large language model is a very large mathematical pattern matcher trained on an enormous volume of text, from which it learns how words, sentences and ideas tend to fit together. It breaks language into small units called tokens, and learns the statistical relationships between them.

Once trained, the model has no live memory of the pages it read. It has a compressed sense of how language works, which is why it can write about almost anything and cannot reliably tell you where a fact came from.

Why does ChatGPT sometimes get things wrong?

ChatGPT gets things wrong because its job is to produce plausible text rather than verified text. When it does not have a reliable pattern to draw on it will still generate a fluent answer, which is what people mean when they say a model hallucinated. Names, dates, figures, citations, legal references and anything about your own business are the highest risk areas.

Does ChatGPT learn from what I type?

Whether your conversations can be used to improve the models depends on your settings and the plan you are on, and the controls have changed over time. Rather than assume, open the data controls in your account and check the current setting before you paste anything sensitive. For business use, choose a plan with the administration controls your business needs and document the decision.

What can a business use ChatGPT for?

An Australian business can use ChatGPT for drafting, summarising, rewriting and planning, which covers most of the writing and organising work that fills a normal week. The tasks it suits best are the ones where a first draft in seconds is useful and a human edit was always going to happen anyway.

• Drafting quotes, proposals, job descriptions and staff emails from a template
• Turning rough notes into a follow up list, an agenda or a checklist
• Rewriting a page or an ad so it reads clearly for a local audience
• Summarising a long contract, report or email thread into the decisions and dates
• Generating first drafts of blog posts and service pages for a person to edit
• Preparing answers to the questions customers ask most often
• Translating and simplifying information for customers or staff

It suits customer facing work less well, which is why a conversational assistant on your own website and an AI phone answering service are usually built on their own systems rather than a general chat tool. The post on using AI for customer service covers where the boundary sits.

What are the benefits of ChatGPT for a business?

The main benefit is the collapse of the blank page, because a usable first draft in seconds removes the slowest part of most writing tasks. Around it sit four other gains that show up quickly in a small business.

Adoption is still early enough for this to be an advantage. The ABS Business Characteristics Survey for 2024-25 found around 12 per cent of Australian businesses were using AI, with small and micro businesses at about 11 per cent against 35 per cent for large businesses (ABS, released 25 June 2026).

What are the privacy rules for using ChatGPT in Australia?

Australian privacy law applies to AI use that involves personal information, and the regulator has been direct about the risk. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner recommends that organisations do not enter personal information, and particularly sensitive information, into publicly available generative AI tools, because of the significant and complex privacy risks involved (OAIC guidance on commercially available AI products).

In practice that gives a small business a simple rule to start from, and one that is easy to train staff on.

Two habits make this practical. Use a business plan with administrator controls where real work is involved, and keep a one page internal rule that says what may and may not be entered. A written rule is what allows staff to use the tool confidently instead of avoiding it or misusing it.

How do you write a good prompt for ChatGPT?

A good prompt states the role, the task, the audience, the format and any constraint, because a vague question produces a vague answer. The prompt is the brief, and a brief that would not work with a new staff member will not work with the model either.

Once a prompt works, save it. A short library of proven prompts is worth more than any list of clever ones, because it makes the output consistent across whoever uses the tool.

What does this look like for an Australian business?

The starting point

A Melbourne accounting practice wants to publish a fortnightly newsletter and answer client questions faster. The principal tried ChatGPT once, was impressed, then stopped after a colleague pasted a client’s tax file number into it.

What DigiFix would do, in order

1. Write a one page internal rule listing what may never be entered, based on the OAIC guidance, in week one
2. Move the practice onto a plan with administrator controls so the rule can be enforced, in week one
3. Build a small prompt library for the newsletter, client emails and internal summaries, in week two
4. Set the review step so a qualified person checks every tax related sentence before it is sent, in week two
5. Test the newsletter process for one month and count the hours saved against the subscription cost, in month two
6. Publish a clear statement of how the practice uses AI, for client confidence, in month two

What it costs to wait

The cost is usually not a fine, it is the loss of the tool. A practice that bans AI after one incident keeps writing everything by hand while competitors send the same newsletter faster. With about 11 per cent of small and micro businesses using AI, the practices that set a clear rule early get the benefit without the risk.

What other ChatGPT questions do owners ask?

Is ChatGPT the same as Google?

ChatGPT is not the same as Google, and the two do different jobs. Google indexes pages that already exist and returns links, while ChatGPT generates new text from patterns it learned in training. Google answers with sources you can check, and ChatGPT answers with text you have to verify yourself. Many people now use both, one to find and one to draft.

Can ChatGPT search the internet?

ChatGPT can search the internet when browsing or search features are switched on, which lets it cite current pages rather than rely on training data. Even then, check the links it gives you, because a fluent answer with a citation can still be wrong. If a claim will end up in front of a customer or a regulator, open the source and read it.

Is ChatGPT safe to use for my business?

ChatGPT is safe for business use when the rules are set before people start using it. Keep personal and sensitive information out of public tools, choose a plan with administrator controls for real work, and require a human review of anything customer facing. Most problems come from an unmanaged rollout rather than from the tool itself.

Will ChatGPT replace writers or staff?

ChatGPT replaces drafting time rather than whole roles in most small businesses, because the output still needs judgement, context and a person prepared to put their name to it. What changes is the mix of work, with less time on the blank page and more on editing, client contact and the parts that need experience. Content that ranks still needs real expertise behind it.

Does using ChatGPT content hurt SEO?

Using ChatGPT content does not hurt SEO by itself, but thin, repetitive or unreviewed content does, whatever produced it. Google’s guidance rewards helpful content created for people, and it assesses the page rather than the tool used to draft it. The pages that perform are the ones where a person has added real experience, examples and data on top of the draft.

What is the difference between ChatGPT and Gemini?

ChatGPT is OpenAI’s assistant and Gemini is Google’s, and both are conversational AI products built on large language models from their respective companies. They differ in the tools they connect to, the plans available and how they handle data, and the differences shift with every release. For a small business the practical approach is to standardise on one, document the rule for using it, and revisit only if it fails at a task you need.

ChatGPT is genuinely useful, and it is not magic. Treat it as a fast first drafter with no accountability of its own, set one clear rule about what never gets pasted into it, and review everything before a customer sees it. More practical guides are on the DigiFix blog, the guide to optimising website content covers putting the output to work, and the wider range sits under digital marketing services. You can also read about the team behind the work.