This new ChatGPT feature means better responses with less work

Getting your ideal answer from ChatGPT is a difficult skill to perfect. Usually, you have to carefully craft your initial response and then follow up with a couple more prompts to get the end result you envisioned. This new update will speed up that process. 

On Thursday, ChatGPT announced “custom instructions” that will allow users to set preferences that tailor how ChatGPT generates its responses. 

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The instructions will be kept under consideration by ChatGPT when producing responses for every conversation after so you don't have to put the same preferences in over and over. 

The release includes a demo that shows the two fields that users will be able to fill in for the custom instructions: “What would you like ChatGPT to know about you to provide better responses?” and “How would you like ChatGPT to respond?”.

OpenAI uses the examples of a third-grade teacher developing a lesson plan, a developer wanting code in a language other than Python, and a family of six dinner planning to show how custom instructions can help workflow. 

In all three cases, the users would be able to set the conditions once in the beginning and then get the results they want for their specific tasks over and over without having to do any tweaking or unnecessary repeating. 

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For example, the developer would only have to delineate once that they are a software developer only using golang, want all of their responses to be in the language, want code with no explanations and bias towards the most efficient solution. 

This feature essentially eliminates some of the challenges of prompt writing and makes it easier to get intended results faster, increasing chatbot assistance. 

The feature is still in beta and only available for ChatGPT Plus users starting today. However, OpenAI says it will be expanding to all users in the upcoming weeks.