ChatGPT Ted

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A fintech consultant in London created a custom version of ChatGPT to write social media posts like me. 

He called it “Write it Like Ted” and it’s available in OpenAI’s public library for paying subscribers. 

Steve Cheng, a consultant and former Reuters product manager who follows me on LinkedIn, said he liked the tone and cadence of how I write.  

He said GPT Ted would help him write faster and better. 

I didn’t know Steve before he cloned me. He messaged and we jumped on Zoom.

Steve’s a data guy who is road testing all the large language models from OpenAI to Claude to determine which works best for various scenarios. 

He walked me through the process. 

Steve cut and pasted a bunch of my articles he found on the web into ChatGPT. (Note, you have to pay $20 a month to access that feature.)

Then, he wrote a prompt to describe my style.

The prompt is 273 words long, so I won’t include it all, but it begins like this:

Your role is to write LinkedIn posts in the style of Ted Merz, a former Bloomberg News journalist, focusing on clarity, insight, and the efficient communication of ideas, especially within the finance and business sectors. Write each paragraph with a single sentence. Separate sentences with a blank line. Your posts should mirror Ted’s ability to distill complex concepts into engaging, reader-friendly content, prioritizing accuracy, brevity, and the inclusion of relevant data or trends. Emulate Ted’s professional tone and journalistic integrity, avoiding financial advice or predictions.

It goes on to include specific advice such as keep sentences short, use lists sparingly and don’t say: “In conclusion.”

Next, Steve wrote a command to create a blog about Presto Automation and “fauxtomation.” 

Here is the lead paragraph of Write it Like Ted’s first draft:

In the shadow of true Al capabilities, companies often champion a blend of automation and human oversight-a phenomenon termed fauxtomation. Presto Automation’s recent pivot underscores this trend, highlighting human involvement as a virtue, not a flaw, in their automation solutions. CEO Xavier Casanova’s assertion last year-that “human agents will always play a role in ensuring order accuracy”-candidly acknowledges the enduring need for human intervention.

Steve asked the model for a dozen iterations before ending with a draft that starts: 

The phenomenon of fauxtomation, which merges human intervention with automated processes, is increasingly visible in today’s technological landscape.

Presto Automation exemplifies this trend by emphasizing the importance of human oversight as a strength rather than a deficiency in their systems.

Last year, CEO Xavier Casanova explicitly stated, “human agents will always play a role in ensuring order accuracy,” acknowledging the indispensable role of human labor in the efficacy and reliability of automated systems.

Anyone who has written a lot online could be fodder for a custom ChatGPT model. Not just Hemingway, but your boss or neighbor.

Based on the output, expectations AI can effortlessly adopt my writing style are (at this point) a stretch.

And yet, there is clearly a benefit to using the model to pre-game. 

As Steve explained, it may still require a human touch, but you can write drafts in a fraction of the time.

I’ve never used Generative AI to write posts. 

But I never had an AI model that writes like me. 

BRIEF OBSERVATIONS

DECENTRALIZED EVENTS: Conferences in New York tend to be lavish and heavy on the details and planning. Tech Week, slated for the first week of June, is the opposite: a decentralized series of events put on by and for startups in tech. The events are compiled by Katia Ameri, a partner at A16Z. Expect to see a lot more decentralized events because they are easier, cheaper and faster to pull together.

GENDER BIAS: Example of gender bias revealed through data analysis.

CULTURAL TUTOR: The Cultural Tutor is one of my favorite social media follows.

SAGE ADVICE FROM SEAMUS: Seamus Blackley is a video game designer turned baker of ancient Egyptian bread (seriously!) and dispenser of sage advice.

COACHELLA: The common media narrative around Coachella this year was that it failed to attract big name performers and attendance declined. These are the kind of stories I find silly. Coachella is part of the global circuit of events from Davos to Burning Man. Taylor Swift didn’t perform this year, but she attended. It’s going to stay relevant for the foreseeable future.