Unless you’ve been living under a rock, chances are you’ve already heard of ChatGPT. In this article, we’ll teach you how to use ChatGPT to summarize an article step by step.

After the launch of this high-tech AI chatbot in 2022, people have found creative ways to leverage its power. And one of those is summarizing long passages of text!

Whether it’s a 3,000-word article, research study, or book, ChatGPT can effectively condense thousands of words into digestible chunks of information within seconds.

Let’s begin.

How Does ChatGPT Work? 

ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot developed by OpenAI. It’s powered by a natural language processing model (NLP) that can understand a variety of commands and generate human-like answers.

At the backend, the tool uses a Generative Pre-trained Transformer that scours through 1 trillion parameters (or chunks of data) and returns with a relevant, human-like response to your questions.

In March 2023, OpenAI launched GPT-4 with even more capabilities than GPT-3.5, such as understanding multiple languages and passing the US Bar Exam with a 90% score!

So how is this all relevant to summarizing articles? For starters, ChatGPT is insanely quick. While a human would need 4 to 5 hours to summarize around 10,000 words, ChatGPT will do it in seconds.

Moreover, the latest GPT-4 model (currently reserved for Plus members) can understand up to 25,000 words in one go. This means you can effectively extract important points from lengthy research papers and even short novels!

You can also use ChatGPT to summarize and translate articles from Chinese, Spanish, French, Russian, and German to English or vice versa — something a professional would charge several hundred bucks for.

The possibilities are endless, and people are finding many cool and creative ways to use ChatGPT, but for now, let’s focus on how it can be used to summarize articles.

Ways To Summarise Articles With ChatGPT

There are multiple methods you can use to summarize long passages of text with ChatGPT. For converting basic documents, all you need is a computer/smartphone and an internet connection.

However, for generating complex summaries, you’ll need to add a bit of creativity to your prompts.

Here is a step-by-step guide on how to use ChatGPT to summarize articles within minutes.

1. Using TLDR

TLDR (Too long; didn’t read) is an acronym used amongst the writing community to signify lengthy text.

Let’s see how we can use TLDR to summarise articles with ChatGPT: 

1. Open your internet browser and go to https://chat.openai.com/chat.

2. Log in to an existing account or sign up from the ChatGPT webpage.

3. In the chat window below, type “TLDR” followed by a link to your article/research paper.

4. Press Enter and wait for ChatGPT to summarize your article.

If you’re summarizing content that isn’t available on the internet or gives an error message, use this method instead:

1. Go to https://chat.openai.com/chat and log in to your account.

2. Type “TLDR” in the chat box and paste the passage you want to summarize.

3. Hit Enter and wait until your summary is generated.

2. Using A Custom Prompt

Summarizing text is not only limited to the TLDR technique. You can also write a command with specific instructions (also known as a prompt) to produce a more accurate summary of your article.

The possibilities with this method are endless, but to give you a headstart, here are some great examples of prompts you can use to summarize articles with ChatGPT:

• Please summarize the following article in 200 words.
• Can you summarise the main points of this article in a concise manner?
• Create a summary of this article within 2 to 3 sentences.

Custom prompts are extremely useful and can be used with ChatGPT through the following steps:

1. Open ChatGPT from https://chat.openai.com/chat and log in to your account.

2. In the chat box, give brief instructions on how you want to summarize your article.

3. Paste a link to your article or copy+paste the content you want to summarize.

4. Add extra instructions if needed and hit the Enter key.

5. The summary will be generated in a few seconds.

Writing and testing prompts can be a time-consuming process. If you want to skip the learning process and boost content production, Jasper can become the perfect writing sidekick for you!

It’s built on the same language model as ChatGPT but is fine-tuned for marketers and content creators. Jasper also comes with a bunch of pre-loaded tools, including a text summarizer that can convert over 12,000 characters into short sentences in over 25 languages.

Read our full review of Jasper AI here.

How To Summarize An Article With Bing Chat

BingAI is the latest addition to OpenAI’s range of artificial intelligence tools. It’s built on the same neural architecture as ChatGPT but is more powerful and accurate as it uses GPT-4 instead of GPT-3.5.

Like ChatGPT, we can also use Bing Chat to summarize an article with the following steps: 

1. Open Bing homepage from https://www.bing.com/?/ai.

(Note: You have to install Microsoft Edge to use Bing Chat)

2. Click on the Chat icon in the top menu bar.

3. Tap on the Start Chatting button and log in or sign up to your Microsoft account to continue.

4. Click on the Chat Now button to continue to the Bing Chat.

5. In the chat box, write TLDR and attach the link of your article or copy+paste the content you want to summarize.

6. Hit Enter and wait for Bing AI to summarize your text. 

Tips For Using ChatGPT To Generate Summaries

Using ChatGPT to summarize an article can save you loads of time if done correctly. Unfortunately, it’s difficult for the average person to understand the vast potential hidden within the AI tool.

That’s why we’ve created a list of the best tips and tricks you can use to generate summaries using ChatGPT while increasing the accuracy of your responses:

• Include a word range in your prompts to adjust the length of your summary and reduce reading time.
• Customize the tone of your summary using keywords like casual, conversational, witty, informative, etc. in your prompts.
• For lengthy documents, break the text into smaller chunks to generate more accurate summaries.
• You can instruct ChatGPT to summarize books in the tone of Ernest Hemingway or Shakespeare by adding their name to the prompt.
• Try mentioning the age, occupation, and location of your audience in your prompts to generate a tailor-fitted summary.

If you want to learn other cool prompts to accelerate your workflow, check out this list of 100 great ChatGPT prompts for marketers, content creators, and general users.

How To Use ChatGPT To Summarize An Article: Final Remarks

Summarizing long-form content into a few paragraphs is one of the many superpowers of ChatGPT. With some curiosity and a bit of experimentation, writers and creators can significantly increase their productivity by taking advantage of artificial intelligence.

If you want to write full-length articles with the AI tool, check out our step-by-step guide on How To Use ChatGPT To Write A Blog Post.

Or, if you want to explore other AI-powered chatbots in the market, read our full comparison between ChatGPT vs. ChatGPT Plus vs. Alternatives.