How to Train ChatGPT on Your Company Data or Writing Style

ChatGPT is a pretty impressive tool. You can use it multiple ways at your business, from analyzing data to helping you write blog posts and email copy.

Of course, when you have ChatGPT write for you, it may not use the style that you use at your business. Or, maybe the style is fine, but ChatGPT is missing crucial information that it needs to perform the task adequately. 

In these cases, you may be wondering how to train ChatGPT on your company’s writing style or data.

Thankfully, there are several ways to train ChatGPT. On this page, we’ll cover five different ChatGPT data training techniques, including:

1. Standard chat feature
2. Custom instructions
3. ChatGPT Plus plugins
4. Third-party chatbot builders
5. Python custom data training

Keep reading to find out more about how to train ChatGPT. Then subscribe to Revenue Weekly — our email newsletter — to learn more about using ChatGPT in your marketing efforts!

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1. Standard chat feature

By far the simplest way of training ChatGPT on your writing style or data is to provide it with samples of that data in your prompts. This process doesn’t require anything special — when you give ChatGPT a prompt, include the info you want it to know, and tell it to factor that information into its response.

For example, if you want it to use a certain writing style in its response, provide a sample of the type of writing you want, and then tell ChatGPT to emulate that style.

This is an extremely easy method, and if you want to do it for one specific prompt, it’s a great option. However, if you want all your ChatGPT responses to match a certain style, this isn’t the best method, since it requires you to retrain ChatGPT every single time you give it a prompt.

2. Custom instructions

A more long-term solution is to use custom instructions. When logged into ChatGPT, click on your profile name in the bottom left-hand corner. You should then see a button that says, “Custom instructions” or “Customize ChatGPT.”

Clicking that button will open a dialog box where you can tell ChatGPT what you want it to know. You first input any data you want ChatGPT to know about you, and then you specify how you want it to respond based on that data.

When you provide custom instructions like these to ChatGPT, it will retain them across all chats going forward. That means you don’t have to rehash the same data every single time you give ChatGPT a prompt.

3. ChatGPT Plus plugins

Another ChatGPT training method is to use a plugin. This method requires you to have a ChatGPT Plus subscription, which costs $20 per month. 

Once your subscription is set up, go into ChatGPT and create a new chat using the GPT-4 model. You should then see a button labeled “Plugins,” from which you can go to the plugin store.

In the store, you can install a plugin (or plugins) of your choice. The reason to use plugins is that certain types of plugins can read certain types of data. For example, maybe you want to give ChatGPT access to an Excel spreadsheet of data. In that case, you’d want to find a plugin that can read Excel spreadsheets.

Once you’ve found a good plugin, it’s as simple as installing it, going back to ChatGPT, and enabling that plugin in a new chat. You can then give it a link to your data and begin feeding it prompts.

4. Third-party chatbot builders

Maybe you don’t want to use ChatGPT to help you generate marketing materials or online content. Maybe you want to use it for a chatbot on your website, and you want that chatbot to speak in a certain way and have access to certain data to better help your customers.

In that situation, the best approach is probably to use a third-party chatbot builder. There are a variety of chatbot building tools out there to choose from, and you should take some time to identify the one that best meets your needs. Once you do, the tool will give you some instructions as to how to set it up.

Generally, you’ll follow two steps to connect your chatbot builder to ChatGPT and your data. The first is to generate an API code in ChatGPT and submit it to the tool.

The second is to connect the tool to your data, whatever format that data may take. Be sure to verify that the tool you choose is compatible with the types of data files you want to use.

5. Python custom data training

There is one final ChatGPT data training method you can use, and it’s by far the most complicated one. It involves using Python to create a custom script. This one’s only a good option if you know how to code (or if you have someone at your company who does). If that’s you, you can use the following steps:

1. Install Python.
2. If you haven’t done so recently, update PIP (Python’s package manager).
3. Install the following libraries in Python: OpenAI, LlamaIndex, PyPDF2, and Gradio.
4. Generate an API key.
5. Compile your training data and put it in a single folder.
6. Write your Python script (you can find templates for this online).
7. Save the script in your training data folder.
8. Run the script, which will then train ChatGPT on your data.

The list of steps above is a bit oversimplified, but if you want to use this method, you can find more detailed guides online. However, as previously noted, this isn’t a good method to use unless you’re familiar with coding in Python. And even then, it’s not necessary unless you want your training to be highly specific in some way.

Learn more digital marketing secrets with Revenue Weekly

Now that you understand how ChatGPT training works, you can start using it to improve your business practices. Of course, training ChatGPT is just one way to improve your business and marketing success. 

If you want to learn more ways of optimizing your marketing and driving more revenue, you’ll want to seek help from the experts. You can do that by checking out more helpful content right here on the WebFX blog, like our ChatGPT cheat sheet. You can also subscribe to our newsletter, Revenue Weekly, to get marketing tips and tricks delivered right to your inbox.