Using ChatGPT to Improve Reading Habits

Artificial intelligence seems to be an amazingly trending topic these days, with tools like ChatGPT making a huge splash and claiming to be able to change the world as we know it. While it’s obvious that AI tools will reshape our future, it’s hard to predict exactly how they can help today and what we can do to take full advantage of their capabilities. As readers, we often wonder how a tool like ChatGPT can help us become better readers and what we can do to use it to our advantage.

Can ChatGPT summarize books? Can it make book recommendations? Can it reshape our habits?

Here at Basmo, we are entirely dedicated to providing you with every possible tool you can need in your efforts to become a better, more efficient, and happier reader. That is why we decided to take this opportunity to check what ChatGPT can do for us.

We actually went one step further with our fascination for artificial intelligence and the ways it can help us throughout our journeys as readers. We integrated an AI chatbot within the Basmo app. Our AI ChatBook can assist you with many of your endeavors as a reader, from providing you with essential information about the books you are reading, to actually summarizing novels and a lot of other amazing things we will explain further below. So, if you want to try our awesome AI feature, get Basmo now and check it out. 

Alternatively, keep reading to find out what we discovered ChatGPT can do for us while we were integrating it into our very own reading-tracking app.

What Is ChatGPT?

In case by some miracle, you haven’t heard about ChatGPT until now, you should know a thing or two about it before we move any further.  While there is quite a lot to discuss about it, ChatGPT is, in short, an “artificial intelligence”-powered chatbot developed by OpenAI.

It is a natural language processing tool that uses AI (artificial intelligence) to generate conversations that feel surprisingly human-like. It can answer pretty much any question with decent accuracy, it can basically summarize all the information on the internet on certain topics, it can generate code, and write texts. 

Without a shred of a doubt, it is an amazingly useful tool that is going to change the way we do things. But as a reader, how can you take advantage of it?

How Can ChatGPT Improve Your Reading Habits?

Luckily for you, we sat down and did some research on this topic. We experimented with different prompts and figured out a couple of ways readers can truly benefit from the huge advances technology has made in terms of artificial intelligence.

1. Ask for Book Recommendations Based on Personal Preferences

One of the things readers struggle with the most is finding new books to read. We all have very different preferences when it comes to reading and we sometimes spend more time looking for the right novel than we do reading it. 

While there are several other good options out there to receive book recommendations, ChatGPT can prove to be quite useful. Simply asking the bot to provide some recommendations based on a book you enjoyed reading can yield some pretty good results.

Use prompts like:

• If I enjoyed reading <insert book name>, what other books would I enjoy? 
• My favorite book is <insert book name>, what other similar books should I read?

As you can see, ChatGPT uses information already available online to provide you with accurate answers to your questions. Granted, it sometimes makes rather inaccurate assumptions, but given how new the technology is (it was launched just a couple of months ago), we feel like the algorithm will only improve over time. 

It’s definitely worth a shot whenever you are unsure what you should read next. 

2. Ask to Summarize a Book

In case you were wondering “Can ChatGPT summarize books?”, the answer is a resounding yes. ChatGPT, being a generator of human-like content, is capable of answering queries regarding pretty much anything you can think of. 

ChatGPT’s capabilities exceeded our expectations in terms of its ability to create book summaries. Simple prompts like “Please summarize <book title>” yielded amazing results, as you can see below.

Using ChatGPTs ability to summarize books can come in handy more often than you think. You can find out what certain books are about before buying them, you can use the summaries in case you ever find yourself in a situation where you didn’t have enough time to read an entire book before a book club meeting, or simply just for fun. 

One important thing to remember is that ChatGPT is quite likely to give you some spoilers. So, you should always keep that in mind whenever you ask it to write a book summary if you want to later buy and read it. 

Of course, given ChatGPT’s level of “intelligence”, you can always mention that the summary should not contain any spoilers and it will generally avoid mentioning important twists and other important details that make the action exciting. While it worked well when we tried, we’ve been told that its accuracy is not exactly great when it comes to understanding what a spoiler means and how to avoid sharing important information from a book’s plot. 

Always take into account the fact that regardless of the level of accuracy ChatGPT seems to provide, it can never replace a human-written review and you should always second-guess its answers and accept the fact that it is not entirely foolproof. 

3. Get Information About Certain Books

As you can imagine, ChatGPT is a valuable resource for those who are looking for information. Whether it’s information about books or something else, ChatGPT comes with the benefit of saving you some time compared to a Google search.

If you are looking for certain details about a book, especially if you want to find specific details, ChatGPT can be of great help. You can even be as creative with your questions as you want. If you need a compilation of random information, ChatGPT can help.

As you can see, ChatGPT can provide you with valuable information in just a couple of seconds. The advantage it has over search engines is the fact that you can get all the information you need in just a single “search”, without having to look for separate keywords and visit several websites. ChatGPT does all that for you.

4. Ask for Explanations on Things You Don’t Understand

Another great way to use ChatGPT for a better reading experience is to simply ask whatever is unclear. Whether you need an explanation for an unfamiliar word or a more complex answer regarding the plot of the book you’re reading, all you have to do is ask the right question and the answer is going to be just a couple of seconds away.

Alternatively, let’s assume you’ve been reading a book with a rather complex plot you don’t quite understand the first time you read it. Now, you can start reading again, or you can look for clarifications. 

Here’s an example of what ChatGPT will answer if you ask it to explain the plot of David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.

As you can see, ChatGPT does an amazing job bringing out the important information and clarifying book plots for those who were unable to completely grasp the meaning behind the things they read. 

5. Ask For Specific, Personalized Reading Strategies

Because of the human-like approach, ChatGPT can turn into your trusted buddy when it comes to choosing the right strategies to improve your reading habits. You can easily explain what your current habits are and the specific goals you want to achieve and it will collect data available online to provide you with a personalized strategy to help. 

Using the right prompts will generate good enough responses that can shed some light on how to choose the right reading strategy for your goals. 

You can be as creative and specific as you want with your prompts. ChatGPT will do the research for you and will provide you with valuable information. OF course, there will be moments when the answers it will provide won’t be as good as you would have hoped.

All you need to do is some fine-tuning on your prompts, and eventually, you will get it right and the bot will provide you with the answers you were looking for. 

6. Create Lists of Books on Specific Themes

The one thing ChatGPT is amazing at is making lists in a matter of seconds. Whether you want to learn what the best books written by a certain author are, or different compilations of titles, ChatGPT will create them for you.

Here are some examples. Let’s say you are planning to read the best books about wizards. Here’s how ChatGPT can help you find them:

Or, perhaps you’re looking to learn a little something about owning and running a business.

Of course, there are many other things you can ask ChatGPT about and you can be as creative as you want. If you’re interested in reading books about any specific topic you can think of, ChatGPT will reasonably recommend the best titles.

One thing you always need to keep in mind is that artificial intelligence is, well… artificial. It cannot replace the human touch and won’t be able to take into account your personal preferences and taste as well as a friend would. At least for now, every piece of information provided by ChatGPT should be taken with a grain of salt. 

How Can Basmo’s ChatBook Help?

Since we are always working hard to stay up to speed with all the most recent developments in terms of technology, we couldn’t have missed the opportunity to integrate AI into our reading-tracking app.

You have the opportunity to chat with your own personal AI-powered chatbot within our app. Here’s how our ChatBook feature works.

Here’s how you can take advantage of AI’s capabilities within the Basmo app.

Final Thoughts

Artificial intelligence is bound to change life as we know it, but it is up to us to keep up and use it to our advantage. If you want to benefit from AI’s capabilities to become a better and more efficient reader, now you know how to do it and the right tools to put everything in motion.

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