Setting Up ChatGPT

ChatGPT is made by a company called OpenAI, and for most people it's where the AI habit starts. This page gets you an account and, more importantly, turns on the settings that make it feel like it knows you.

Take it slowly. The whole setup is maybe fifteen minutes if you stop to breathe. You can close the page and come back tomorrow; nothing here expires.

Getting to ChatGPT

Open a new tab in your browser: Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, whichever you usually use.

Click in the long bar at the top (the address bar). Type this exactly:

chatgpt.com

Press Enter.

What you should see: a clean page with a big message box, and a button to Log in or Sign up near the top corner.

If you see something different (a search engine, a broken page), you probably mistyped. It's chatgpt.com. You may also see the older address chat.openai.com, which sends you to the same place.

Making your account

Click Sign up. You'll be offered a few ways to do it:

• With your Google account. If you have Gmail, this is the quickest: click the Google option, pick your account, approve, done. No new password.
• With an Apple or Microsoft account. Same idea, if you'd rather use one of those.
• With an email and new password. Type your email, pick a password, and confirm through a verification email.

Pick whichever is easiest. The Google or Apple way takes about ten seconds. You may be asked for your name and birthdate; that's normal.

What you should see after signing in: a mostly-empty screen with a big text box in the middle and a prompt like "What can I help with?" That's the main chat. You're in.

Free versus paid

You're on the Free plan automatically. Nothing charged, nothing owed.

Here's the plain version of what the tiers do. Names and prices shift, so treat these as approximate:

• Free: enough to get a real feel for it. You get the everyday model, some access to the smarter models, and basic file upload, with limits that reset through the day. Plenty to learn on.
• Plus: around $20 USD a month. More usage, faster access to the better models, image generation, and the ability to build your own Custom GPTs. This is what most regular users eventually land on.
• Pro / Business / Enterprise: higher tiers for heavy users and organizations. Most people never need these. Skip them for now.

The settings that matter

ChatGPT out of the box is a decent chatbot. The settings below are what turn it into something that feels like it knows you. Find Settings by clicking your name or profile picture in a corner of the screen, then Settings. From there, the pieces worth touching:

1. Tell it who you are, once

Look for Personalization, or a setting called Custom instructions. This is a box where you write, one time, who you are and how you'd like ChatGPT to respond. Then it applies to every new chat automatically, so you stop re-explaining yourself.

Keep it short and real. Something like:

I'm a nursing student studying for licensing exams. Explain things plainly, define medical jargon when you use it, and don't pad answers with filler. When I ask for a summary, keep it tight.

That single paragraph quietly improves every answer you get afterward. There's usually a second box for "what should ChatGPT know about you" versus "how should it respond"; you can split those, or just put everything in one. The exact wording of the boxes moves around; the idea doesn't.

2. Memory, and how to see and prune it

ChatGPT has a feature called Memory: across separate chats, it can remember facts you've told it, your dog's name, that you prefer metric units, that you're writing a screenplay. It's handy, and occasionally too eager, remembering something you'd rather it forgot.

The important part is that you can look at everything it has saved and delete any of it. In Settings, find Personalization then Memory, and open the list of saved memories. Read through it now and again. Delete anything stale or wrong by clicking the little remove control next to it. If a chat is getting weird because of an old memory, this is the fix. You can also turn Memory off entirely if you'd rather it kept nothing.

3. File upload

Near the message box there's an attach control: a paperclip or a plus sign. Click it to upload a document, a PDF, a spreadsheet, or an image, and then ask questions about it. This is grounding in action (see the Basics): instead of asking ChatGPT to recall a document from hazy memory, you put the real thing in front of it. Upload the actual file whenever accuracy matters.

4. The model picker, and why you'd switch

Near the top of the chat is a small dropdown with the model name in it. There are, roughly, two flavours, and this same split exists in every AI tool:

• A fast, everyday model. Great for maybe 90% of what you do: rewriting an email, brainstorming, cleaning up a paragraph. Quick and plenty smart.
• A slower "thinking" model (sometimes shown with a "reasoning" label or a separate name). It deliberately works through hard problems step by step. Reach for it when the task is hard: planning something with lots of moving parts, untangling why numbers don't add up, careful analysis.

Simple rule: fast model for most things, thinking model when the problem is hard. The default is a fine place to start, and the names in the dropdown change often, so don't memorize them.

5. Voice mode

Look for a voice or headphone icon near the message box. Voice mode lets you talk to ChatGPT out loud and hear it answer back, as a spoken conversation. It's good for thinking out loud on a walk, practising a language, or rehearsing a difficult conversation. Try it once so you know it's there.

6. What a Custom GPT is, briefly

You'll see a Custom GPTs or GPTs area, and a store full of ones other people built. A Custom GPT is just ChatGPT with a saved set of instructions and files bolted on, a pre-set version tuned for one job, so you don't re-explain the task each time. That's the same idea as a "project," and this guide covers building one properly on the Projects page. For now, just know the button exists.

One small test

Before you close the page, type this into the chat and press Enter:

Hi. I'm just learning to use AI properly. In two short paragraphs, plain English, no jargon: what are you good at, and what should I not trust you to do without checking?

Read the answer. Notice how it responds to the "two short paragraphs, plain English" part. Being specific about the shape of what you want is most of good prompting, and you'll practise it properly on the Prompting page.

Where to check this

Because ChatGPT's screens and prices change often, the reliable source for current details is OpenAI's own help centre at help.openai.com. Search there for the exact feature name if a setting has moved since this was written.