A reader asked me what ChatGPT actually is. Here's my answer.

A reader wrote in recently with a question that I suspect many people have but don't always feel comfortable asking:

"I keep hearing about ChatGPT. My grandchildren talk about it. I see it in the news constantly. But I'm genuinely not sure what it actually is. Can you explain it simply?"

I can. Here goes.

ChatGPT is a computer program you can have a conversation with. You type a question or a request — in plain, ordinary English, exactly the way you'd write a text message — and it writes back. Not with a list of links to other websites, the way a search engine does. With an actual answer, in plain sentences, the way a knowledgeable person would respond.

That's the thing that makes it genuinely new. For decades, getting information from a computer meant searching, clicking, reading, and piecing things together yourself. ChatGPT — and tools like it, including Claude, which helped write our books — does the piecing together for you. You ask; it answers.

What can you ask it? Almost anything. Explain a medical term your doctor used. Help me write a letter to my insurance company. What should I see if I visit Savannah in the spring? What's a good recipe for someone who can't eat gluten? Why does my knee hurt more in cold weather?

It won't always be right — no source of information is, and it's worth keeping that in mind for anything important. But for the everyday questions that most of us carry around without a good answer, it's remarkably useful.

Who made it? ChatGPT was created by a company called OpenAI, founded in 2015. It became available to the public in late 2022 and caused quite a sensation — many people described it as the moment AI stopped feeling like science fiction and started feeling like something real. Similar tools now exist from other companies: Claude from Anthropic, Gemini from Google, among others.

They're all slightly different. But they all do the same basic thing: they talk back.

And once you've tried one, most people find themselves wondering what took them so long.

Our book 2, Talking to AI, walks you through your first conversation, step by step, at your own pace.