Two years after ChatGPT burst into the mainstream, the conversation around it has split into two camps. One side treats it like a digital oracle that can do everything. The other dismisses it as a glorified autocomplete that makes stuff up. Both are wrong. The truth is somewhere in the middle, and it’s worth being specific about where ChatGPT genuinely earns its keep.

Writing First Drafts

This is probably the single most useful application for most people. Not finished writing — first drafts. If you need to write a business proposal, an internal memo, a job description, or even a tricky email, ChatGPT is excellent at producing a starting point.

The key word is “starting point.” The output almost always needs editing. It tends toward generic language and safe opinions. It’ll give you a structure and fill in the blanks, but the personality, the specific details, the things that make writing yours — those still come from you.

I’ve found it saves about 40-50% of the time on routine business writing. That’s significant. It doesn’t save much time on writing that requires genuine thought or expertise, because you spend as long editing as you would have spent writing.

Summarising Long Documents

Hand ChatGPT a 20-page report and ask for a summary, and it’ll do a surprisingly good job. Meeting transcripts, research papers, policy documents, legal agreements — if you need the key points extracted from something lengthy, this is where it shines.

The Australian Government’s Style Manual recommends clear, concise communication in business writing. ChatGPT can help you get there faster by condensing verbose documents into plain language. Just verify the summary against the original — it occasionally misses nuances or overemphasises minor points.

Brainstorming and Idea Generation

When you’re stuck, ChatGPT is a useful thinking partner. Not because its ideas are brilliant — they’re usually obvious — but because having a list of 20 ideas to react to is easier than staring at a blank page. You’ll reject most of them. But numbers 7 and 14 might spark something genuinely useful.

This works for blog topics, marketing angles, product feature ideas, business names, event themes, and dozens of other creative tasks. The output is a starting point for your own thinking, not a replacement for it.

Code Assistance

Developers have been among the biggest beneficiaries. ChatGPT is remarkably good at writing boilerplate code, explaining error messages, suggesting fixes for bugs, and translating between programming languages. It’s not replacing developers — anyone who’s tried to build something complex with AI-generated code knows it falls apart quickly — but it’s a powerful productivity tool for experienced programmers.

At Team400.ai, they’ve noted that the biggest gains come from using AI to handle repetitive coding tasks, freeing developers to focus on architecture and problem-solving.

For non-developers, ChatGPT can help with spreadsheet formulas, basic scripts, and automation. If you’ve ever spent 30 minutes trying to write a VLOOKUP in Excel, you know how useful this is.

What It’s Bad At

Let’s be equally honest about the limitations.

Factual accuracy. ChatGPT confidently states things that are wrong. It fabricates citations. It invents statistics. If accuracy matters — and in business, it usually does — you need to verify everything it tells you. This hasn’t improved as much as people expected.

Anything requiring current information. Despite web browsing capabilities, it’s not a reliable source for what happened last week or what the current price of something is. Use it for general knowledge, not breaking news.

Complex reasoning and analysis. It can follow instructions and pattern-match, but genuine analysis — the kind where you weigh competing factors, consider context, and make a judgment call — is still a human skill. ChatGPT will give you an answer that sounds analytical but is often just restating the obvious in a structured format.

Anything sensitive or high-stakes. Legal advice, medical information, financial planning — ChatGPT can give you a general orientation, but treating its output as professional advice is a mistake that can cost real money or worse.

The Practical Takeaway

Think of ChatGPT as a capable but junior assistant. It’s fast, it’s available 24/7, and it can handle routine tasks well. But you wouldn’t let a new hire write the final version of a board paper, give legal advice to a client, or make strategic decisions without supervision.

Use it for first drafts, summaries, brainstorming, and coding help. Verify everything important. Edit everything it writes. And resist the temptation to use it as a substitute for thinking — because the moment you stop applying your own judgment, the output goes from useful to dangerous.

The tools keep getting better. OpenAI’s GPT-4o has narrowed some gaps. But the fundamental dynamic hasn’t changed: AI is a productivity multiplier, not a replacement for competence. The people getting the most out of it are the ones who already know what good work looks like.