If there’s one thing we’ve discovered in the early days of OpenAI’s GPT Store, it’s that finding specific tools in it isn’t easy. The front page has just a few of the (presumably) many thousands of GPTs that users have submitted, with few indicators of their utility apart from whether or not they’re “trending.” Using the search field doesn’t give you a results page, only an autocompleted list of… the most popular ones? The ones OpenAI recommends? It’s unclear.
For journalists and creative professionals looking to take advantage of the GPT tools that many intrepid AI developers have created, it would take many hours of experimenting with different searches and trying out various tools to get any kind of payoff from a productivity standpoint.
Luckily, we’ve done that for you.
After scouring the GPT Store for tools that are directly applicable to the research, editing, and many other tasks that go into producing good articles, we’ve selected five that we think are worth considering adding to your workflow. For smaller editorial teams and independent creators in particular, these are helpful in speeding up a good chunk of the “chrome” around article writing — the ancillary but important parts of the process that are often afterthoughts.
Before we get to the list, a reminder that The Media Copilot is hosting our first meetup in NYC on Feb. 1! We’d be delighted if you would join us for an evening of stimulating conversation over drinks with journalists, media executives, and PR professionals about how AI is changing the media landscape. To reserve your spot, RSVP here.
Now, on with the show:
1. Copy Edit Pro
Very few newsrooms have dedicated copy editors anymore, with many organizations using software like Grammarly to perform basic proofreading and editing for style. While ChatGPT might be a cheaper alternative — it’s more than capable of editing from a simple prompt — it doesn’t natively highlight the changes it’s made, the paper trail that professionals really need.
Paper trails, however, are what Copy Edit Pro is all about. It logs every change it makes in a list it delivers after it spits back your fully edited article. The edit is tailored specifically for news writing in Associated Press (AP) style, meaning the GPT will edit not just for spelling and grammar, but also for bias and journalistic standards like attribution. Where facts are unclear, it will add needed hedges, and it’ll dial back any judgmental language that may have snuck in.
2. Fact-Check GPT
Any single article is only as solid as the set of facts it’s based on. To get an idea of how verifiable any particular statement may be, you can use Fact-Check GPT to analyze the text for underlying facts and then browse the web to verify them. In its response, it’ll highlight specific claims; tell you if they’re true, false, or unconfirmed; and link to the sources it uses.
Obviously, this tool isn’t a grand arbiter of “truth,” and it doesn’t claim to be. But as a quick temperature-take on where an article or idea stands, it’s a handy reality-check. Caveat: It works best with short passages, not full articles.
3. Video Summary and Analysis
As any writer will tell you, it’s not the writing that takes the most time — it’s the research. And with YouTube ascending to one of the biggest content libraries in existence, often that research means sitting through hours of video to zero in on the discussion or quote that you need.
The Video Summary and Analysis GPT can save you a bunch of time watching press conferences, speeches, and video podcasts by summarizing the content of YouTube videos — even quite lengthy ones — in seconds. It goes into much more detail than out-of-the-box ChatGPT does, and you can ask follow-up questions about specific parts you want to analyze more closely. Sadly it doesn’t work with other video services (e.g. Vimeo), but considering most everything ends up on YouTube, it has the potential to compress hours of research into minutes.
4. News Lens
With apologies to photo editors everywhere, the reality in news writing is that most journalists don’t think about the imagery to accompany their story until the last minute. Typically it’s a scramble to find something, and in cases when the subject is more abstract (like with financial news or broad concepts like cybersecurity), you might spend a considerable amount of time finding the right piece of stock artwork.
Generative AI has simplified the creation of those abstract images, but often you’re just replacing time spent searching image libraries with time spent tweaking prompts to Midjourney or Stable Diffusion. News Lens simplifies the whole process by generating your abstract art directly from the article itself. Just paste in the entirety of your text, and DALL-E spits out what it thinks is the perfect image. (For an example, check the image up top ?)
In our experience, the tool did much better than prompting DALL-E with a simple summary, and you can tweak it with follow-ups. Unfortunately, if your article is about a public figure or a sensitive subject, safety protocols will kick in. Pro tip: Be sure to specify your aspect ratio when pasting your article.
5. Tweet Polisher
Probably not for every tweet, but for the ones that matter, Tweet Polisher can upgrade any X post by tailoring it to the intended audience. If you’re looking to make a tweet more “classy” (say, for a brand’s main account) or more authentic and provocative for a personal feed, it can rewrite the post in seconds. As a bonus, it’ll even fact-check key statements.
Let us know what you think of our selections, and please share your own — either by commenting or replying to the email.
Don’t forget to RSVP for “The Media Copilot – After Hours” in NYC on Feb. 1.
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