Chinese entrepreneurs are using AI to start content businesses and write self-help books, but the real money is in selling a dream. With a highly competitive job market in China, graduates and other job-seekers are turning to AI-enabled chatbots like ChatGPT. Despite not being officially accessible to Chinese users, there is an intense interest in the potential of the system. Online education services like Youdao promise to increase work efficiency tenfold with ChatGPT. On forums like Zhihu, users are asking how to make money using ChatGPT, with the answer being to create lots of content.
One recent college graduate, who requested anonymity, was inspired to use ChatGPT to write essays for students in China. He used the AI chatbot to generate an outline and ideas, which he then cleaned up and submitted, netting him $10 per assignment. Another user, Yin Yin, used ChatGPT to spruce up product descriptions for a Yunnan tie-dye shop on Taobao, getting paid monthly for her efforts.
Some entrepreneurs are going even further, such as Shirley, who wrote an entire book using ChatGPT about the pseudoscientific belief in Japan and Korea that blood type correlates with personality. She used the chatbot to generate an outline and different sections for each chapter, as well as to rewrite paragraphs to create a more fun, lighthearted tone. Within two days, she had created The Little Book of Blood Type Personality: The Japanese Way of Understanding People, complete with cover and illustrations created by Midjourney.
While AI chatbots like ChatGPT can help entrepreneurs create content with greater efficiency, it’s worth noting that the quality may not always be smooth or coherent. There may also be ethical issues around plagiarism and transparency, particularly for those seeking to profit from their AI-generated content. Nevertheless, the interest in ChatGPT’s potential highlights the ongoing push for automation and efficiency in content creation.
