Imagine using a customized ChatGPT for specific purproses only. That’s what GPTs (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) offer. For instance, some GPTs are made specifically to write resumes, plan travel, or even find pickup lines to impress your date. You can install them from a GPT Store, and each GPT comes with specific instructions and added knowledge about the respective topic, which is more than what ChatGPT already offers.
But what if you want to create a GPT tailored to your needs? You can create custom GPTs. In this article, I will show how you can create a custom GPT (no code required) using ChatGPT, and also ideas to create custom GPTs for your needs.
Steps to Create a Custom GPT on ChatGPT
Before getting started, there are a few prerequisites for creating custom GPTs:
- You need to have a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20/month, to create a custom GPT. Once you have created a custom GPT, you can continue using it without the subscription.
- You can only create a GPT from the ChatGPT web app. Currently, you can’t use ChatGPT app for the Android, iOS, or Mac for that.
1. Open ChatGPT on the Web
Of course, you’ll need to open the ChatGPT website in a browser of your choice. Then, click on the Explore GPTs option in the sidebar to open the GPT Store. This is where you can find various pre-built GPTs.
Since you want to create a new one from scratch, click on the Create button at the top-right corner to start making a custom GPT.
2. Configure Your GPT
As promised earlier, creating a custom GPT doesn’t require any code. But you can get a live experience of how it will work.For that, the configuration panel shows you two panes: the left pane for Settings and the right pane for Preview.
On the left pane, you can configure different parameters of your GPT either from the Configure tab or the Create tab.
- Configure Tab: Fill out a form with details like the name, description, profile pic, instructions, etc.
- Create Tab: Use the Chat interface to configure your GPT.
3. Add More Details to GPT
- Name: Give a name to your GPT.
- Profile Picture: You can upload one or create one using DALL-E. This makes it easier to find your GPT in the sidebar and gives a personality to your custom GPT.
- Description: If you are publishing your GPT on the store for the public or sharing it with friends or team members, a good description of what it can do will be helpful.
- Instructions: Set the default tone, behavior, and guidelines for your GPT.
- Conversation Starters: Add recommended messages to send when opening the custom GPT to make your process easier.
- Knowledge: Upload relevant data, like PDFs or textbooks, to enhance the GPT’s knowledge base for specific purposes.
- Capabilities: Enable or disable features for your GPT according to your preferences.
4. Test Your GPT
After making enough configuations and providing necessary details, you can put your custom GPT to test.
Enter a message or prompt in the right preview pane to test the GPT you have created. It will give you an appropriate response based on its learning. Study the responses after a couple of prompts and then you can refine your instructions and knowledge to make it better.
5. Finalizing Your GPT
After you are satisfied with the output from the preview, click on the Create button at the top-right corner to finalize your GPT. You get a choice to limit this custom GPT to yourself and select people. Alternatively, you can make it available to everyone on the internet by making it public. In the pop-up, choose whether to keep the created custom GPT private, share it with friends, or publish it to the GPT Store.
6. Access Your Custom GPTs
After you login into ChatGPT, you can access your custom GPTs from the sidebar. If you don’t find them there, click on Explore GPTs > My GPTs to view all your created GPTs.
To use any one of them, click on your created GPT to open it, click on its name in the top-left corner, and then select Keep in sidebar to pin it for easy access.
7. Edit Custom GPTs
After a while, if your custom GPT needs more polishing and tweaking, you can do that any time to improve it. Open the GPT you have created, click on its name in the top left, and then select Edit GPT. This will open the same configuration page where you can adjust settings, check the preview, and click Update to save changes.
Note that you can also delete your GPT any time but it won’t be possible to recover/restore the same thing again. To delete any GPT, click on the three-dot menu on the edit page and select the Delete GPT option.
What You Can Do With Custom GPTs
While the possibilities are endless, you many wonder what GPTs you can build for your needs. Here are some ideas for you to try before you make more specific ones:
- Schedule Assistant – You can provide a schedule, information about tasks that are important to you, average time for each task, etc. Later, you can use this to manage your time, make adjustments according to the importance of tasks, and much more automatically. Besides managing your personal schedule, you can also use it to manage schedules for social media or work-related tasks.
- Content Creation – ChatGPT can already write content like blogs, social media posts, or YouTube scripts. With the help of Custom GPTs, you can specify your style, tone, outline, etc., and get the results in the style you need without mentioning it every time you want to generate something.
- Educational Help – Upload your textbook as a PDF and use ChatGPT to learn from your own textbook rather than taking information from random sources.
- Personal Finance Management – Create a GPT that helps track your expenses, suggest budgeting strategies, and provide financial planning advice.
- Project Management – When you provide all the project details along with the timeline, it can help you craft a plan and clear instructions to tackle an objective. You can continue your progress, provide details of changes, and manage unexpected delays to keep the project on track.
Apart from using GPTs, you can also check out Custom Instructions feature on ChatGPT to adjust replies from ChatGPT to align with your requirements. Also, the new Memory feature helps ChatGPT to remember your details and preferences across chats.