5 ways ChatGPT can help you write essays

Now that you know exactly what you want to write, it’s time to find reputable sources for your information. If you don’t know where to start, you can ask ChatGPT.

All you need to do is ask the AI to find sources for your essay topic. The biggest thing to remember is to include the type of source you want, whether web pages, books, PDFs, research papers, or something else. 

Also: How to make ChatGPT provide sources and citations

These details are necessary because when you specify web pages, ChatGPT will activate the web-browsing feature and include web links in its article. If you use a very general prompt, however, it will likely default to generating its answer from its database, which isn’t up to date. 

For example, I asked the following: 

“Can you help me find web links that I could use as sources for a paper, “Examining the Leadership Style of Abraham Lincoln through Blake and Mouton’s Managerial Leadership Grid?”

If you are signed in but have a free account, the chatbot outputs links, accessible right at the top of the answer under the dropdown that says “Searched # of sites”. Then, within the response, it will answer your prompt conversationally, including sources with site names and links in parathesis. 

If you are signed in to a ChatGPT Plus account, the chatbot will automatically activate ChatGPT Search. This feature lets users search the web directly within ChatGPT for timely, up-to-date information, complete with citations linked to sources. 

The answers include in-line citations, a “sources” button, which, when clicked, populates a long list of links on the right-hand bar, and, in some cases, a few relevant web links beneath the answer, as seen in the photo below.