Using ChatGPT in the vegan movement: Navigating risks and maximising benefits

As we saw in a recent blog, artificial intelligence (AI) has become an integral part of our lives, almost without us realising, offering both opportunities and challenges.

Right now, it feels like people are talking about ChatGPT, the big buzz in AI tools, everywhere you turn.

If you haven’t used ChatGPT yet, you may be wondering whether it’s deserving of the hype. You might be both terrified and excited about what it means for the future or wondering how reliable it is. You may also be unsure whether it can be used to support the vegan movement or whether it’s ethically right to do so.

Today’s blog is all about harnessing the potential of AI and ChatGPT in the vegan movement, as well as exploring the potential risks and benefits.

What is ChatGPT?

In case you’re new to ChatGPT, it’s an advanced conversational AI tool designed to engage in natural language conversations with users to provide responses and information on a wide range of topics. It has been trained using a variety of open-source data sets (all created before 2021) from the Internet but is more than a super search engine.

ChatGPT can help with things like answering questions, offering explanations, providing suggestions, and engaging in discussions on various topics. People commonly use it for tasks such as drafting emails, generating code snippets, tutoring, roleplaying different audiences, writing blogs and scripts, and much more.

When you log into ChatGPT, you simply type in a prompt about what you want to know or what you need; the more detailed and precise your prompts are, the better the output.

As a conversational model, ChatGPT remembers the early stages of the conversation and will respond to each new prompt with the earlier conversation as context. Despite this, it’s advisable to remind the tool who the audience is throughout the conversation, as it can sometimes go off track!

In July 2023, Chat GPT added Code Interpreter, which took it from not just an informational tool but also one that can perform actions from uploaded files such as data extraction, video creation and more.

Risks and concerns around the rise of AI

As we saw in our recent blog about AI, there’s no denying that using it brings up some thorny ethical issues and concerns that we need to be concerned about as people who champion ethical behaviour. These include:

·         Job displacement

How safe are our jobs if AI can do them for us?

As AI becomes more advanced, there is the possibility that it will replace human workers in various roles, leading to unemployment. People in creative roles may be particularly vulnerable – will people still want to employ copywriters, blog writers, illustrators, coders, developers or designers, for example, if an AI tool can produce usable content in seconds?

Organisations must balance the integration of AI tools with maintaining employment opportunities for individuals. Creatives may find themselves having to redefine their roles, combining the use of AI with their unique skillset.

Some experts say that we won’t necessarily lose our jobs to AI, but we may lose them to the people who know how to use it!

·         Bias and discrimination

AI models like ChatGPT are trained on vast amounts of data, which can inadvertently perpetuate biases present in the data.

Situations like this raise concerns about the potential for biased or discriminatory responses when addressing sensitive topics within the vegan movement.

It’s likely, for example, that AI tools will use speciesist language and data by default, and you may need to challenge this by being very clear about the non-speciesist view of the intended audience. We’ve certainly seen that ChatGPT tends to come from the perspective of ensuring animal welfare within various industries rather than considering the rights of our animal kin.

We asked ChatGPT about this issue, and this was its response:

By recognising that AI may perpetuate entrenched bias and discrimination and viewing its output with a critical eye, we can strive to ensure fairness and inclusivity, but it needs to be a conscious and ongoing process.

·         Privacy concerns

Utilising ChatGPT involves sharing data and interacting with AI systems. Many people feel that this raises privacy concerns regarding the collection, storage, and use of personal information.

As organisations and businesses, we must prioritise user privacy and establish clear guidelines for data handling and storage to maintain trust.

·         Potential malicious or harmful use

We have to remember that ChatGPT doesn’t possess inherent knowledge of the sources it’s been trained on, so it may sometimes generate misleading, inaccurate or even harmful information.

In February 2023, for example, Men’s Journal published an AI-generated article containing 18 medical inaccuracies. As content that can impact people’s health, this naturally sparked an outcry. The problem is that human-generated content often contains mistakes, but AI, learning from this content, isn’t always able to distinguish fact from error.

As well as being unwittingly harmful, tools such as ChatGPT are potentially vulnerable to misuse for malicious purposes. This could include being used deliberately to spread misinformation or generate harmful content.

Vigilance is necessary to safeguard against malicious actors who may exploit AI technology to undermine the vegan movement’s goals and values.

·         Copyright issues

As we mentioned at the beginning of this article, ChatGPT pulls its information from a vast quantity of open-source datasets (all dating to pre-2021).

Although the tool endeavours to return unique responses written in natural language, there is a risk that its replies could resemble or even reproduce existing content without proper attribution. This is even more likely if you use someone else’s words in the prompts you give to ChatGPT.

To mitigate the risk of plagiarism, it’s essential to view anything that ChatGPT generates with a critical eye. You’ll need to cross-reference any facts and figures, preferably linking to trusted sources.

We’d also strongly recommend using ChatPGT as a starting point and then adding the unique voice, perspective and purpose of your organisation. It’s personality that really stands out – and, as hard as ChatGPT tries, AI isn’t always packed full of individual flavour!

Some sources are warning that we are set for a swathe of plagiarism lawsuits against generative AI creators. In addition, there are likely to be changes regarding “academic honesty” and the use of AI by students and researchers in education.

·         Lack of transparency

Understanding how content is generated by ChatGPT is crucial. Lack of transparency can lead to doubts about the authenticity and reliability of any information you provide.

If we go back to that original incarnation of the Men’s Journal article mentioned above, it featured a statement saying that the article was generated by AI but “reviewed and fact-checked by our editorial team”. The fact that this doesn’t appear to have been the reality meant the publication’s reputation took a hit.

This is a perfect example of why organisations should be transparent about the use of AI, clearly delineating which content is generated by ChatGPT to maintain trust and accountability.

If you’re promising human input and fact-checking, then this is what you must deliver.

On 21^st July 2023, US President Joe Biden announced that seven major AI companies, including OpenAI, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta Platforms, had made “voluntary commitments to the White House to implement measures such as watermarking AI-generated content”.

The companies are said to be developing a watermark system for all forms of content, including text, audio, images and videos, so that users will know when AI technology has been used in any way. In particular, this might help people to identify “deep fake” content where real people appear to be doing something that portrays them in an unflattering or compromising light, but the image has been artificially generated.

The emergence of methods to identify the use of AI technology means that we should all be transparent about when and how we’ve used these tools.

·         Other concerns

As you might imagine, there are many other concerns about the use of AI.

Will we become over-reliant on it to do our work for us? Will we see more economic inequality as people are replaced by AI? Can we predict the social impacts of AI, or will there be consequences that we haven’t even considered yet?

We sometimes hear from people in the vegan movement that they’re worried about using AI to develop their campaigns because people in animal agriculture will be able to mine that information and use it to undermine the movement.

Arguably, there is some balance here because if the big players in animal agriculture are using AI, they’re potentially exposing their campaign secrets to their opponents too.

These are all valid worries. There’s no doubt that AI is going to evolve at breakneck speed and that there are likely to be legal cases around intellectual property rights and transparency. However, the reality is that AI isn’t going away, so forewarned is forearmed when it comes to navigating this emerging technology.

The potential benefits of ChatGPT for the vegan movement

But enough of the risks for now! What about the potential benefits of using ChatGPT? And how do those benefits relate to the vegan movement?

·         Content creation

ChatGPT can assist your vegan organisation by generating content, such as articles, press releases, blog posts, and social media messages. The tool can provide different levels of support, from suggesting compelling blog titles to mapping out a loose article structure or drafting a full article.

We’ve heard of people using ChatGPT to write video scripts, Facebook ad copy, courses, editorial calendars and more.

Ideally, you should still enhance ChatGPT’s output with some human input! Spice up bland copy with your unique insights and voice. Add your strategic knowledge to the tool’s suggestions.

There is no denying that this technology can alleviate the burden of content creation, allowing you to focus on other critical tasks, especially if you have a small team or work alone.

·         Customer service

If you run a vegan business or organisation and want a way to answer FAQs or connect with customers out of hours, then AI-powered chatbots can provide 24/7 customer service. ChatGPT can address frequently asked questions, offer guidance, and refer users to relevant resources, enhancing accessibility and engagement.

Again, this needs to be well thought out. You’ll probably need to include the option to “talk to a real human” at some stage in the process. We’ve all had frustrating experiences with chatbots, so the key is to cherry-pick what could help your organisation.

·         Collaboration and finetuning your messaging

This is one aspect of ChatGPT that people don’t necessarily expect but find very exciting!

You can ask the tool to act as a thought partner or collaborator, helping you to refine your organisation’s messaging and campaigns. By engaging in roleplaying scenarios and soliciting rebuttals, you can strengthen your responses to common arguments against veganism, for example, or improve your fundraising efforts with messaging that’s more targeted to a specific audience.

You can even ask the tool how your business is perceived by different stakeholders and audiences and drill down into where these perceptions come from – good or bad. If ChatGPT makes content suggestions or volunteers revisions to your content at your request, you can ask it to explain its logic.

In a recent Zoom webinar about using ChatGPT in the vegan movement, David van Beveren, Founder and Executive Director of Vegan Hacktivists, talked about how you can use ChatGPT to prepare for media interviews.

In his example, David said to imagine that you’ve agreed to be interviewed by Piers Morgan. You can ask ChatGPT to question you in his style, complete with his trademark putdowns and disparaging remarks. This can be a helpful way to highlight your key points, keep the interview on track, and figure out how to best respond to any criticism.

It doesn’t have to be Piers Morgan, of course – if an interviewer is in the public domain, you can ask ChatGPT to roleplay them! Or you can create a persona and ask ChatGPT to roleplay that.

·         Research and writing

ChatGPT can aid in data analysis, generate research ideas, and assist in the creation of research papers and reports, enhancing productivity and efficiency.

It isn’t advisable to get the tool to write everything for you, but AI can help in terms of generating ideas or helping you clarify your thoughts, as well as pinpointing gaps in your content.

·         Search engine optimisation (SEO)

Good SEO is an integral part of raising your vegan organisation’s visibility but it’s often something that gets pushed back in the list of priorities.

It’s possible to ask ChatGPT about keywords you should be targeting or how to create stronger meta descriptions, for example, so that your web pages attract more click-throughs from searches.

Alternatively, you could post the copy for a web page in ChaptGPT, tell it the focus keyword you want to use and ask how the copy could be strengthened from an SEO perspective.

You may be interested to know that Google’s advice around AI-generated content and SEO is evolving. Back in 2022, Google’s John Mueller warned against using it, likening it to automatically generated content that poses a risk of ranking penalties. However, with Google developing its ChatGPT competitor, Bard, the search engine has revised this advice, saying that what matters is that you’re producing helpful, high-quality content that provides value to the reader.

How to confidently navigate the ChatGPT challenges

As you can see, ChatGPT is an exciting tool for vegan organisations.

Yes, it’s crucial to approach AI-generated content critically. The quality and accuracy depend on the prompts you provide – they must be clear, specific, and aligned with your intended objectives.

If you want ChatGPT to elaborate on a specific point, you can ask for this. If you want a response in a particular style or for a particular audience, ChatGPT only knows if you tell it.

Some people are wary about businesses and individual thought leaders and influencers using AI, so it’s vital to provide context and acknowledge its limitations to promote transparency and trust.

In addition, you should implement robust security measures to protect sensitive information and prevent the misuse of AI-generated content. Regular monitoring, encryption, and restricted access to data can minimise the risks associated with malicious use.

Finally, collaboration within the vegan movement is vital in order to address concerns regarding AI technology’s potential exploitation by pro-animal agriculture entities. Sharing knowledge, best practices and security measures can strengthen defences against attempts to undermine the movement’s goals.

Conclusion

As we’ve already said, AI is here to stay and set to evolve. It’s understandable if you feel terrified and exhilarated by its potential in equal measures!

We will all need to proactively address concerns related to job displacement, bias, privacy, and transparency, at the same time as exploring the potential of this technology. The hope is that the vegan movement can leverage AI in a responsible and impactful manner, effectively advancing its cause in the digital age.