ChatGPT Tutorial 2025 for Beginner! (Including Free & Paid Users Both)

Key Takeaways

Hello everyone. Today I'm going to show you what chat GPT can actually do in 2025. This video is perfect if you're totally new to Chat GPT, haven't used it in a while, or if you've been using it a bit, and want to see what else it can do. Remember back in late 2022 when Chat GPT first came out and blew up? It hit 100 million users in just 2 months. For context, Instagram took 2.5 years and Facebook took 4.5 years to get there. But honestly, I still remember my first experience with it back then. It wasn't great. The knowledge base was pretty limited. It gave weird or wrong answers sometimes. Responses were super slow, and worst of all, after just a few questions, it would say, "You've hit your daily limit." So, I stopped using it for quite a while. But recently with all the new features they've been rolling out, my curiosity came back and I got to say it's come a long way. So let's dive in together. This is what the main interface looks like once you log into Chat GPT. So right in the middle here, that's your main input box where you can chat with Chat GPT. Up here in the top left, you've got a sidebar you can open. This is where all your past chats are saved. You can click into any of them and pick up where you left off. Over on the top right, if you click your profile icon, you'll find your account settings. We'll cover that a bit later. Back to the input area. Let's start with a simple question like, "What is quantum mechanics?" Chat GPT will give you a response right away. After it answers, you'll see a few icons down at the bottom. You can like the answer or even have it read it out loud. There's also this edit in canvas button. We'll explain what canvas is in just a bit. Next to that is a switch icon. By default, it's using the GPT40 model to answer you. Chat GPT actually offers several models. What I'm seeing here includes the ones available with a paid plan. If you're on the free plan, you'll mostly just see GPT40 and lighter versions like 03 Mini or GPT40 Mini. But if you're a paid user, you'll get access to more advanced models like GPT4.51 and 03 Mini High. To keep it simple, the models are generally split into two groups, the GPT series and the OE. For regular Q&A, the GPT models work just fine. But if your question requires more reasoning or complex logic, the OE models usually perform better. They tend to pause and think before answering, and they're especially good at deep analysis and decision-m tasks. Now, let's talk about prompts. A prompt is basically anything you type into Chat GPT. It's your question or request. Prompts are super important. Think of it like this. Chat GPT is already a trained model with tons of knowledge, but just like asking a person for help. If you're vague, you'll probably get a vague answer. The more clear and specific you are, the better the response you'll get. Same thing with chat GPT. So, how well you write your prompt can really affect the quality of the answer. There's a whole world of prompt crafting techniques, but we're not going to dive deep into that today. That said, here are three quick tips when writing prompts. One, be as clear and detailed as possible. The more context you give, the better the answer. Two, you can assign chat GPT a role. For example, say act as a travel planner, and it'll answer from that perspective, which helps improve accuracy. And three, if you're totally lost and don't know how to phrase your question, you can just ask ChatGpt for help with writing a prompt. It'll guide you. All right, let's take a look at the next set of features down here. Over here on the left, there's a little plus icon. That's where you can upload files. Let's say you're a student and you've got a super long research paper to read. You can just drag the PDF into chat GPT and ask it to summarize the key points for you. So here I'll go ahead and ask it to pull out the main takeaways. It'll read through the whole document and give you a nice concise summary. That can save you a lot of time trying to understand the article. You can also upload images and have Chat GPT analyze them. For example, when I'm traveling abroad and come across signs or menus I don't understand, I'll just take a photo and ask ChatGpt, "Hey, what is this? Let me show you how that works on my computer. Here's a photo of a food stall, and I want to know what kind of stuff it's selling." So, I'll drop the image into ChatGpt and ask, "What is this place?" And it tells me it's a food stall or yatai, and even explains what kinds of food it sells. It'll also give you extra cultural context, which is pretty cool. All right, next up, let's talk about the search feature. So, one thing to know is that chat GPT's regular models were trained on a fixed set of data, which means they don't know about events or updates that happened recently. That's where the search tool comes in. It lets Chat GPT pull realtime info from the internet to answer your questions. For example, I'm currently looking to buy a robot vacuum. So, I asked it to recommend a few models, but only the newest ones released within the past year. And sure enough, it searched the web and gave me a list of the latest models. Pretty handy, right? Now, right next to search, there's a feature called deep research. This one's only available to paid users. If you're on the free version, what you'll see instead is something called Reason. So, let me go ahead and switch over to a free account to show you what that looks like. All right, so let's talk about the reason feature. Like I mentioned earlier, when you turn this on, chat GPT will take a moment to actually think before giving you an answer. It's super helpful for questions that need deeper analysis or decisionm. For example, I can ask something like, "Is it better to lease a car or buy one?" Then I'll tell it more about my situation and what I need. Once I turn on Reason, it'll look at the question from different angles and give a well-rounded answer. Now, if you're using the free version, Reason will default to the 03 mini model. But if you're on the paid version, choosing any of the O- series models basically gives you that same reasoning power built in. You can also ask it more advanced or professional questions like say, "Can you help me plan how to learn a new skill? That kind of task is perfect for reason." You'll see the reasoning tag pop up and it'll walk you through the answer step by step. All right. Now, let's check out the next tool, create image. This lets you generate AI images based on your prompts. Since free users have a limited number of image generations, I'm going to switch back to my paid account to show you how it works. Open AAI actually just upgraded this recently, and the image generation has gotten way better. You've probably seen people on social media playing around with photo style transformations. This is the tool they're using. So, let me upload a photo and ask chat GPT to turn it into a Studio Gibli style image. It'll take a little bit of time to process and draw the new image. And boom. Looks pretty awesome, right? If you're not totally happy with the result, you can go back in and tell it exactly what you want to add, remove, or change. There's also a super cool selection tool. This lets you highlight a specific area of the image and make edits just to that part. Like here, I'll select the hair area and ask it to change the hair color. Let's give it a second to work its magic. Aside from using create image for fun, like turning your photos into cool art styles to post on social media, it also has more professional uses. For example, let's say I'm working on a product photo for a skincare brand and I want it to look more polished and high-end. I can just give Chat GPT a few prompts and ask it to retouch or enhance the image. And just like that, we get a super professional looking product shot. Even the text on the packaging is kept super clear and clean. Now, let's move on to another really cool feature, canvas. This tool basically lets you co-write with Chat GPT. Whether it's regular text or code, so let's say you're a content creator brainstorming ideas for a new series. You can ask Chat GPT to help you come up with topics and even generate a rough outline. Here it's given me 10 episode ideas. Now let's say I want to expand more on episode 1. I explain what I need and the right-h hand canvas will update with more detailed content just for that episode while leaving the rest of the episodes unchanged. You can also click this icon in the top right to see exactly what's been changed. It'll show you the before and after with edits clearly marked. And if you don't like the changes, no worries. You can undo them with one click. You can also click on any section of the text to ask a question or make edits, add more detail, shorten it, whatever you need. Chat GPT will update the content based on what you ask. If you ever leave the Canvas view, you can just click back in and pick up where you left off. All right, next up, let's talk about deep research, which is a paidonly feature. And just a heads up, it does come with a monthly usage limit. You can use deep research to dive into more complex in-depth questions. For example, I want to understand the current landscape of AI tools. What categories are there? Who are the target users? And which tools are most commonly used by each group? That's the kind of task deep research is perfect for. Before it starts, it'll ask me a few clarification questions just to make sure it's giving me exactly what I need. Once I answer those, it'll begin the analysis. You'll see a progress bar show up here, and it might take a bit of time to process everything. So, let's give it a moment to finish up. And during the deep research process, if you click on sources, you can actually see how chat GPT went about analyzing your question. It'll show you the articles, websites, or databases it pulled from. All right, after about 13 minutes, it finally finished the deep research. And now we've got this super detailed, wellorganized answer. Way more in-depth than a regular response. Plus, each section has source references at the end, so you can doublech checkck everything and make sure it's accurate. Now, back to the main chat window. If you look at the bottom right corner, there's a little mic icon that lets you talk to chat GPT using voice input. Especially if you're using chat GPT on your phone, voice input is actually a really convenient way to interact. All right, now let's check out another feature on the left sidebar. Explore GPTs. This is basically the GPT store. You'll find all kinds of customized chat GPTs here. Some made by OpenAI, some by companies or individual creators. Let's try out one of them, the presentation and diagram generator. This one can create mind maps for you. So, let's say I want to analyze a YouTube channel I really like. I'll ask it to break down the channel content and turn it into a mind map. It'll connect to an external site to generate the diagram. And just like that, it visualizes all the channel content as a mind map. Pretty cool. Now, aside from using GPTs made by others, you can actually create your own custom GPT, too. This feature is only available to paid users for now. So, when should you create your own GPT? Well, let's say you always start your questions the same way, like asking it to play a certain role or focus on a specific topic area. Instead of repeating yourself every time, you can just create your own GPT and call it up whenever you need. So here, I'll make one that helps me write Excel formulas and VBA code. Excel formula wizard is great. So, right here under instruction, this is where you tell your custom GPT exactly what it should do. It's kind of like writing a prompt, but instead of typing it every time, it's already pre-filled and saved in the background. All right, done. I've now got my own custom GPT ready to go. Next, let's take a look at another feature in the left sidebar called projects. This is also only available for pro users. The simplest way to think about projects is it's like a folder where you can group all your related chats around the same topic. For example, if you often summarize academic papers, you can create a project just for that. Then every time you have a paper to summarize, you just drop the chat into that same project. When you open the project, you'll see all the conversations you've added in one place. You can also add an instruction for the project just like the instruction in custom GPTs. In that way, every time you start a new conversation within the project, you don't need to repeat your explanation. Like here, I've got another paper to outline. I just upload the PDF and chat GPT will automatically follow the instructions I already set. No need to type anything. Also, inside the project, you can attach files and chat GPT will use the content of those files to help answer your questions. All right, now let's look at a new feature in the top right menu under your profile called tasks. I actually just noticed this feature today. It's the same function to GPT4 with scheduled tasks model. There's even an example here. You can ask it to send you specific info every week like news summary. Also, you can schedule tasks to run at a set time and it'll trigger an action, then notify you either on your computer or phone. And by the way, this is a paid only feature as well. Next, right below that, tasks, there's customized chat GPT. This is different from my GPTs. Customized chat GPT is more about personalizing the way it talks to you. You can tweak its tone, how detailed it is, what kind of style it uses. It's like giving chat GPT a personality that fits your vibe. And finally, let's talk about Sora. It's Open AI's texttovideo model. Just like a few other tools we mentioned, Sora is only available to paid users. There used to be a shortcut for it in the left sidebar, but I don't know, it's gone today. So, I'll just head over to the Sora website directly. Using Sora is super simple. You just type in a description of the video you want to create and it'll generate a video for you based on that. Here I'll type in a scene I want to turn into a video. Hit generate and boom. Sora gives me two different versions of the video. And that's how Sora works. All right, let's head back to the chat GPT page. So that wraps up everything from basic features to all the cool stuff you can do with the paid version of chat GPT. If there's any part you'd like me to dive deeper into, feel free to leave a comment down below and let me know. In the next video, I'm planning to cover Gemini, Google's AI tool. So, if you don't want to miss it, make sure to like, subscribe, and turn on the little bell icon so YouTube actually shows you the video. That's it for today. See you next time. Bye.