ChatGPT Gets “Custom Instructions” To Personalize The Generative AI Chatbot And Avoid Repeating Information

Updated: Friday, July 21, 2023, 20:17 [IST]

Microsoft-funded OpenAI’s ChatGPT has a new feature that can significantly reduce the information that needs to be stated as a foundation for the conversation. The “Custom Instructions” feature allows users to inform ChatGPT about the essential precursory knowledge which could help both the Generative AI chatbot and the user.

The Custom Instructions feature is available as a beta and opt-in feature only to ChatGPT Plus subscribers in select regions. Let’s look at the new feature for ChatGPT users and how to benefit from the same without compromising privacy and safety.

ChatGPT Plus Subscribers Get The “Custom Instructions” Feature To Personalize Chatbot

Be it OpenAI ChatGPT or Google Bard, the Generative AI chatbots can offer information or answers that can be tailored to match the users’ preferences, backgrounds, proficiency, or expertise. Until today, users had to feed in their preferences before asking questions if they needed such customizations in their answers.

Moving forward, ChatGPT Plus users can mention and store this information within the ChatGPT dashboard. This allows the platform to have the relevant information on record and can use the same to offer customized answers.

Speaking about the new feature, reserved for ChatGPT Plus subscribers, Joanne Jang, who works on model behaviors and products at OpenAI said:

“Right now, if you open up ChatGPT, it doesn’t know much about you. If you start a new thread, it forgets everything you’ve talked about in the past. But there are things that might apply across all conversations.”

Some of the common examples would be the professional or career information users can feed to the Generative AI chatbot. This will allow ChatGPT to respond in a manner that’s better suited to the person. Users can also mention their family size, cooking, and eating preferences. ChatGPT can then answer related questions with this information as the base.

Starting today, you can set custom instructions in ChatGPT that will persist from conversation to conversation. 👀 📌

You can enable custom instructions in the beta panel from the settings. pic.twitter.com/ljYy3HDaHt

— Logan.GPT (@OfficialLoganK) July 20, 2023

Think about Custom Instructions as “a sort of permanent preamble to your queries”. “Instead of posing a long question to ChatGPT with all the context and information required, just add that context and information to your custom instructions, and it’ll be there every time,” Jang stated.

How Well Does ChatGPT Answer Queries With Custom Instructions Filled?

Jang assures Custom Instructions are intended to make it easier for ChatGPT to get to know its users. Armed with this information, the chatbot can be a much quicker and more helpful virtual assistant. A big part of any good assistant’s job is knowing what you need, what matters, and when, quipped Jang.

Custom instructions can be dynamic as well as interactive. Ideally, users should be telling ChatGPT about themselves such as background, language proficiencies, domain expertise, interests, and other aspects.

Essentially, ChatGPT should be learning about the user, while all the provided information should be easy to access and tweak to the user’s preference and comfort level.

OpenAI is trying to ensure Custom Instructions cannot override the system’s core safety tools, which means offensive language, violence, and other negative or harmful aspects are ignored completely. Additionally, OpenAI has assured that it will try to remove any personally identifying information from users’ Custom Instructions and their queries. However, as a safety precaution, users should not ever divulge any information they consider sensitive or confidential.

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