The marathon event at the 1904 Summer Olympics was an absolute clustermess.

One runner almost died from eating rat poison, another finished the race in dress clothes, multiple runners were hospitalized due to the dusty conditions, and the race organizer purposefully withheld water to test the effects of dehydration.

Perhaps the most cartoonish story of the whole event however, was from winner Frederick Lorz. After suffering a severe cramp and exhaustion nine miles into the race, Lorz had his manager pick him up to drive him the final 11 miles of the race. Lorz got out of the car just before the finish line, raising his arms in victory, successfully attaining a first place finish.

While not all cutting is ethical or acceptable, when it comes to things like writing professional emails and direct messages, it’s easy to acknowledge that us audio professionals could often use editing assistance. While Frederick gives us a pretty unethical example, let’s look at three ways we can use ingenuity like his and use ChatGPT to edit in a way that will be helpful to our careers rather than confounding.

Here’s what we’re covering today:

1. Using ChatGPT as a standard grammar editor.
2. Using ChatGPT to cut when we’re long winded.
3. Using ChatGPT to help modify the tone of what we’re trying to say.

None of us audio folks are paid to write well…
But for some reason we have to do things like compose cover letters, emails, DMs, talks, presentations, etc. If you take a minute to think about it, you actually probably have to write significantly more per day or week than you think you do!

While there are numerous spell check and grammar tools available – lots of them built into the tools we use every day – I’ve started to use ChatGPT to edit a significant portion of my writing. You can prompt it to do so for your writing simply by telling it: “please edit the following for grammar, spelling, and punctuation:” followed by whatever you’ve written.

Personally, I’ve found this better than other tools like Microsoft Word’s built in grammar tool, or even Grammarly, because it rarely modifies my own tone unintentionally. Instead, the AI tool seems to look for specific punctuation to alter and phrases that be slightly altered to be more easily understood. Microsoft Word, however, will simply try and use grammar rules to reduce excessive language without considering context and an individual’s tone.

Sometimes, though, heavily editing ourselves is useful.
If you’re anything like me, then you’ve absolutely been in a situation where you catch yourself rambling and you have no idea how to stop. While you can definitely ramble verbally, what’s even worse is rambling in text and having no idea how to cut down and simplify what you’re trying to say.

This is a problem that ChatGPT is actually fantastic at solving, where I haven’t found another tool that can do the same. Instead of shaming yourself for being long-winded, just write exactly what’s in your head even if it’s jumbled. You can then prompt ChatGPT with something like “please edit the following and reduce it to no more than two paragraphs in length:”. ChatGPT will then take your core idea and truncate it to the most important phrases using your exact language.

Depending on how long your text is and how short you’re trying to get it, ChatGPT’s output could absolutely use some review once you’ve generated it. However, I bet you’ll be amazed at just how well it truncates what you have to say.

If nothing else, sometimes we don’t know how to say something
For example, some people find it difficult to communicate in a “professional” tone. For many audio designers, we’re so empathetic and warm that “overly professional” language sounds “businessy” or grating. But, occasionally, we need to be able to alter our tone to be formal, professional, or any number of ways.

Sometimes, we’re not even sure how to say what wer’re trying to say! So instead of feeling frustrated or guilty, I’ve started to spit out whatever is in my head and give ChatGPT a prompt like this: “Please edit the following and modify the tone of voice to be professional and courteous:”. What’s really cool with this is that you can modify the tone of your language to just about anything – fun, wild, crazy, funny, formal, managerial, etc.

Though I imagine you may not use this latter example extremely often – when you’re stuck as to what to say or how to say something specific, ChatGPT is a fantastic tool to help you get out of that bind.

“But Adam – I have more random tools stacked higher than a 10,000 year old redwood tree towering next to saplings! Why can’t I just keep using Word or Grammarly or the back of a napkin???”
Well, you absolutely can! The main difference I find in ChatGPT (or any other AI tool) versus something like Grammarly or Word is that the new AI tools are generative. They take a variety of input to generate a mimicked output.

What I mean is – if I don’t know what to say, how to say it, or how to cut myself down… if I’m all out of ideas – most other writing tools can’t help me generate new ones. ChatGPT’s replies to me usually are not useful without my additional input. However, they absolutely inspire my creativity in a way that other tools don’t!

So, I don’t advocate you changing your workflow just to use another tool because I said so. Use what works for you, and experiment if it’s helpful to you

So how can ChatGPT help you write, again?

1. ChatGPT can easily assist with our grammar.
2. ChatGPT help us when we’re long winded.
3. ChatGPT can help modify the tone of what we’re trying to say.

While the 1904 Marathon was an absolute mess…
The communication and writing part of our gigs doesn’t need to be anymore. You’ve got lots of tools out there, and the AI ones that exist (and more are coming in the future) are only going to help you become even better over time.