ChatGPT examples: 282 real use cases with prompts

Turn a struggling reader's story idea into a written story with MagicSchool AI

Heather Gauck, a special education teacher in Grand Rapids Public Schools with three decades in the classroom, uses ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot and MagicSchool AI to adapt lessons, such as asking ChatGPT for a kindergarten-level version of a text. One fourth grader who struggled with literacy came up with a story idea, including characters, conflict and setting. Gauck typed those details into MagicSchool AI, which wrote the narrative so the student could see the idea become a real story. Gauck says the time saved adds up to 'an entire planning day that I get back.'

Make sense of a parent's medical records before a doctor visit with ChatGPT

After Heather Lambert-Shemo's dad spent time in the ICU, the family faced dozens of pages of records and a dozen medications. Lambert-Shemo photographed the pages, blacked out identifying details and asked ChatGPT to translate them into plain language, find trends and list questions for the primary care doctor. It gave the family a clearer picture of what led to the hospital stay and turned up a significant diagnosis the dad had misunderstood. Lambert-Shemo later shared the exact prompt in the post's comments.

Plan a five-country family trip with Gemini, despite some wrong tips (partial)

Manish Kurse planned a family trip through France, Germany, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands with little kids and several families, testing Gemini and ChatGPT along the way. A detailed prompt in Gemini Canvas, covering needs like vegetarian food and kids in strollers, produced a day-by-day itinerary that saved hours and was updated as plans changed. On the road, the AI helped with a lost parking ticket at an Amsterdam P+R, Brussels metro tickets and questions at the Louvre. But a highly recommended Paris creperie was closed, a pizza tip 'didn't sell pizza', and a chairlift in Cochem was shut. Google Maps mostly had it right; 'even Gemini gave the wrong answers.'

Break a six-year family history brick wall with help from ChatGPT

Two cousins spent six years trying to prove a family story that the Jacksons descended from the Reade family of colonial Virginia. ChatGPT couldn't hand them the answer, but it helped them spot patterns in their documents, surfaced lesser-known resources and suggested they might be 'chasing the wrong Francis'. A ChatGPT-assisted search led them to Library of Virginia records on a Captain Francis Read whose ship was captured by privateers, and a Reade family Bible at the library listed the children of Gwyn and Dorothy Reade. The next morning, cousin Kelly had pieced it together: 'I've been up since 4 a.m. I figured it out.'

Pay off $12,000 of credit card debt with a 30-day ChatGPT money challenge

Realtor and content creator Jennifer Allan asked ChatGPT every day for one task to make money toward $23,000 of credit card debt. Over a month, Allan says, the challenge brought in over $11,000 and paid off $12,078.93. Some ideas were quirky: Allan wrote '$23,000' on a watermelon as 'debt art' and auctioned a photo of it for $51. Others paid off: an idea to search phone apps for forgotten money turned up $100.80 on Venmo, and Allan's husband remembered a brokerage account holding $10,200. Credit counselor Noelle Carter warns that AI can help with ideas but is no substitute for human expertise.

Knit doll socks from a ChatGPT pattern, then find one that works

Knitter Ciara of The Fairythorn asked ChatGPT to write a sock pattern for an 18-inch doll. Ciara managed to knit a sock from it, but only by turning the heel from experience, as that section had a fundamental error, and the sock came out far too small for the doll to ever wear. Asked instead to point to a free pattern on Ravelry, ChatGPT offered three suggestions in under a second. The first, 'Basic Doll Socks' by Jacquelyn Fitzgerald, knitted up quickly and easily and fit the doll, with just one small error.

Write a life story book with aphasia after a stroke, using ChatGPT to edit

A 75-year-old patient with aphasia from a stroke eight years earlier had trouble finding words and forming sentences, and wanted to write an autobiography. In speech therapy sessions, the patient wrote their own content and used ChatGPT to edit it, guided by a visual flow chart and set prompts. With ChatGPT, the patient produced more sentences with fewer errors. In three out of 10 sessions the patient noted ChatGPT sometimes wrote long, complicated sentences, and preferred the 'edit the following' prompt. It took clinician prompting and modeling at first. By semester's end there was enough for a printed life story book, shared with friends and family.

Write a detailed renovation plan for a 1950s house loan with ChatGPT

Michaela Holmström bid on a house in Finland built in 1956, and the largest banks hesitated over its original condition. A first, modest plan got a discouraging response. A banker advised raising the budget and describing the workload and materials in great detail, a plan that would normally take Holmström over a week. Holmström uploaded the inspection report to ChatGPT for a summary, gave it the floor plan, materials and room sizes, and had it work out liters of paint from wall area and lengths of water pipe. Holmström cross-checked prices with real merchants and split costs into materials and labor. It still took several hours of Holmström's own work, and not every AI detail was flawless. A loan specialist at a major Nordic bank said it was the most thorough renovation plan the specialist had ever reviewed.

Write a crochet pattern from a photo with ChatGPT and Claude (gave up)

Melissa Warr wanted to crochet a Valentine's dog from an image found online, but couldn't find a pattern for it and had never written one. Basic prompts for a pattern from a picture didn't work, so Warr had ChatGPT help write a better prompt. The patterns kept coming out as numbered lists instead of bullet points, with arms and legs that weren't long enough. Warr ran the prompt in both ChatGPT and Claude; Claude's results were better but 'missed many of the parts (the tail, ears, etc.)', and both struggled with irregular shapes. Warr gave up on the AI pattern and bought a pattern on Etsy instead.

Research a Victorian-born grandfather's life with Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini deep research (partial)

Dan Taylor-Watt gave Claude, ChatGPT and Gemini the same brief, with deep research turned on, to research a paternal grandfather, Cecil, who died in 1960, starting from a Word document written by Taylor-Watt's father. Claude took about 6 minutes, used 340 sources and wrote an 11-page, 4,219-word report; it found no significant new information but flagged inaccurate dates, and it later made a 3-minute-30-second narrated video using code and an open-source voice model. ChatGPT took 9 minutes, ran 714 searches and wrote 14 pages (4,659 words); it caught an error about the year of the fire that destroyed service records, noted that the LNER railway wasn't created until 1923, found information on the first wife's family, and spotted a Lance-Corporal's chevron in a photo, but its video attempt fell short. Gemini wrote the longest and most visual report (5,347 words), but its maps were wrong (Osmotherley is east, not south, of Northallerton), it missed the date problems, and it said it couldn't make a video.

Cook a first mutton curry with a ChatGPT recipe adapted to an induction hob and no ginger

skcv cooked mutton curry for the first time and says it was really delicious. Not confident cooking it for the first time, skcv asked ChatGPT for a recipe and instructions, writing the prompt around the setup at hand: the ingredients available, an induction cooktop and no ginger. The photos show the finished curry on an induction cooktop.

Remove browser hijacker extensions that kept coming back in Chrome, in 5 minutes with ChatGPT

Arol Wright's Chrome search engine kept switching back to an unfamiliar one, new tabs opened pages Wright hadn't chosen and some searches went through redirects. Removing the obvious extension and resetting the search engine didn't hold. Wright described the symptoms to ChatGPT, which walked through the extensions page in Developer mode, then chrome://policy (the most useful step, since forced policies explained why removed items came back), then the Windows registry location for Chrome policies, Task Scheduler and installed programs, and warned to back up registry keys first. Wright pasted what each step showed and ChatGPT helped decide what didn't belong. After removing the rogue policy entries, a scheduled task, the unwanted program and the extensions, then resetting Chrome, the symptoms didn't return. The exchange took about five minutes.

Fix a crashing Windows PC by talking it through with ChatGPT voice: bad RAM, then a repair reinstall

David Gewirtz's PC had games crashing, Windows Update failing and a RAM error. Writing for ZDNET, Gewirtz talked it through with ChatGPT by voice on a phone, sending photos of BIOS screens and memory error dumps. ChatGPT walked through resetting the BIOS to defaults, clearing CMOS via the CLRTC pins and turning off overclocking (running the memory at 2,133 MHz), checked voltages, and advised against reflashing the BIOS. MemTest86 found errors on both 16GB sticks, so Gewirtz replaced the RAM (a Timetec 32GB kit for $190; the G.SKILL kit had cost $75 in 2023 and is $265 now), and MemTest86 then passed. DISM still failed at 28.1% and SFC didn't fix it, so ChatGPT suggested Windows' "Fix problems using Windows Update" reinstall, which took about 90 minutes and kept apps and files. Afterwards DISM completed, SFC found nothing, and updates and games worked. Gewirtz says it "may have saved me a few hundred bucks and many hours" and could have been done alone, but messier.

Get a lower Verizon internet bill by having ChatGPT negotiate in live chat

AJ Stuyvenberg, an engineer at Datadog, was offered faster fiber internet by Comcast for $50 a month and asked ChatGPT to negotiate with Verizon. After a little over an hour in Verizon's live chat, the agent got the plan down to $69.99 a month from $94.99, plus a $47.50 loyalty credit, which Stuyvenberg said saves $347.50 over a year.

Check how long you can stay in a country visa-free, after ChatGPT gave the wrong limit (failure)

Samantha Miasnik, a Kazakhstan citizen living in Armenia, asked ChatGPT how long they could stay. ChatGPT said six months; the limit was three, which Miasnik found out too late. By then they had overstayed by three months and had to plan a visa run to Georgia and back, with a risk of being refused re-entry because of the overstay.

Build a website for a parent's cleaning business in an evening with ChatGPT

Sergio's dad had run a cleaning business for years without a website. One night Sergio asked ChatGPT to build one: a first version took about three minutes, then Sergio refined the design, added a carousel of the two services, expanded the contact form and had ChatGPT make a logo. ChatGPT suggested FormSubmit for the form, with submissions forwarded to a new business Gmail. The site is hosted on ChatGPT Sites, and Sergio pointed a domain bought for $12.99 a year at it. The whole job took about 30 minutes.

Track down an out-of-stock gel by calling a list of local pharmacies compiled by ChatGPT

Blessing Apostle was struggling to find Reparil Gel in Uyo. Apostle asked ChatGPT to compile a list of pharmacies in the city with their phone numbers, then called them one after another until Quenthall Pharmacy on Oron Road said it had the gel in stock.

Train for a first half marathon on a day-by-day plan built by ChatGPT

With no coach and a few 5Ks and 10Ks behind them, the runner behind Everyday Ai + Autonomy gave ChatGPT their weekly mileage, usual distance, pace and the days they could run. It built a day-by-day, week-by-week plan with tempo runs and long runs. The runner printed it, read it through, wrote every run on a calendar and ticked each off, then ran a first Berkeley Half Marathon on that plan. About a year later they ran Berkeley again and set a personal record.

Make replica country stamps for a child's printable social studies passport with ChatGPT

Jo Thomas's 9-year-old is studying geography and cultures this year, and the curriculum included a printable blank passport to fill in. Thomas asked ChatGPT for a replica stamp of that week's country with the day's date, scaled it in Word to about the size of a real passport stamp, and printed it for the child to cut out and paste in. It looked so good the child was very excited to have a real stamp, and they plan to do the same for each country.

Plan a week of family meals and fill an HEB curbside cart with ChatGPT

Chris Spitzenberger wanted to eat healthier without being much of a cook. ChatGPT drew up a week of family meals, then added every ingredient to an HEB cart for curbside pickup using Computer Use. It also made a PDF of the weekly plan and emailed it to Spitzenberger's spouse. That evening Spitzenberger cooked the first meal from the plan.

Talk a New York rent increase down from 9% to 1.2% with comps and a reply drafted by ChatGPT

When Andrew Wilkinson's New York building emailed a 9% rent increase at lease renewal, Wilkinson asked ChatGPT to pull current listings for comparable units in the building and within 5 blocks, with asking rents, time on the market and concessions, then draft a polite reply backed by those comps. It returned a table and a draft. Wilkinson checked the listings personally, fixed a few things and sent it. The increase came down to 1.2%.

Troubleshoot a dishwasher and an oven with ChatGPT using photos and voice

Austin Wilson spent about 2 hours one week fixing appliances with ChatGPT. For a dishwasher that wasn't cleaning well, Wilson gave ChatGPT a few photos; it pulled the model number, read the manual and reviews, and suggested a fix in under 30 seconds. For an oven that wasn't heating properly, Wilson described the problem by voice and ChatGPT recommended getting a multimeter, which let Wilson pin down the problem. The oven still needs a technician to install the new part.

Get a $500 trip delay claim paid without receipts with a letter drafted by ChatGPT

Michelle got home 24 hours late after a snowstorm delayed a connection in Dallas: a night with friends, another full day at the airport, and a rerouted flight to a city about two hours from home. A Chase Sapphire Reserve card turned out to include trip delay insurance, but the claim wanted receipts and Michelle had none. Michelle told ChatGPT exactly what happened; it said the claim was worth a try, helped write a letter explaining everything, said to include the boarding pass and flight details, and showed where to submit it. A week later the claim was approved for $500, the maximum benefit, and the check arrived.

Narrow 350 direct-admission nursing programs to a college list of 18 with Claude and ChatGPT

Melissa Danielli's daughter wants to be a nurse and get direct admission to a nursing program. Danielli paid $85 to the organizer of a Facebook moms' group for a spreadsheet of 350 schools with their requirements, and the family cut it to 50 by region. Working on two computers, one with Claude and one with ChatGPT, they built spreadsheets, ruled out schools that didn't fit (including ones the AI judged a poor fit) and compiled a final list of 18 schools in a couple of hours one evening.