Has anyone tried using ChatGPT or the like to correct your written texts? For example, if I were to write a diary entry, are they good enough at Japanese to find my mistakes and correct them?
Thanks 
1 Like
I use it regularly and it works pretty good. It can correct grammar or vocabulary in sentences and even explain why it did so.
A real example:
3 Likes
Of course you should be cautious and double check where it’s possible. At the end of the day, it’s a ChatGPT and it can hallucinate sometimes 
3 Likes
Personally as someone who has worked with AI I would advise against it on the basis that whilst it can appear to be useful, it has a tendancy to confidently state incorrect things as fact.
This is fine when you are an expert in the subject matter and can spot the times when the information returned is wrong, in this case it can be an excellent tool to speed up workflows - but as a learner there is a risk that when it returns something incorrect the errors won’t be picked up.
14 Likes
My thoughts also. However, maybe some imperfect correction is better than none? Not sure.
Thanks 
If you don’t have anyone else to correct your work, then I recommend using it. It’s definitely better than nothing, and it should correct most mistakes until you get into more nuanced parts of the language. If you have access to GPT4 it’s a lot better than GPT3.5 in my opinion when it comes to Japanese. Like others have said, it’ll still get things wrong (especially when it comes to Japanese), but sometimes prompting it in certain ways can help avoid its overconfidence.
2 Likes
worth noting that almost everyone has access to gpt4 through bing ai. you have to pay to use chatgpt but the bing one is free gpt4
2 Likes
I do not have any statistics on how well the services do with correcting text.
Having said that, I frequently use the free ChatGPT version. A native speaker has proofread the output often enough that I know that it answers my questions correctly 90-95% of the time.
My questions are mostly about disbiguation:
- Explain the difference between A and B in Japanese. (Where I give two words that have near-identical transitions)
- Explain when one uses A versus uses B in Japanese. (To ask about grammar terms that have the same translation into English).
- Explain when one writes a word using the kanji A versus the kanji B in Japanese.
- Create a Japanese example sentence demonstrating the word A. Write the example sentence normally, then write it again with furigana after the Kanji enclosed in brackets, []. Finally, provide an English translation of the example sentence.
ChatGPT free version handles all of these so well that my proofreader is getting tired of the proofreading. Last time, I created 10 example sentence, and the only change was about what word to use for the smell of sulfur. (香り vs. 臭い)
The only thing that I have seen ChatGPT fail badly at is identifying unusual reading of Kanji in low frequency words. In those cases, it tends to give the most frequent reading instead.
1 Like
Typically I also specify (in the main system prompt) what JLPT level I’m currently at and what level I’m studying for - this will actually cause it use grammar and vocabulary at around these levels which has been super helpful.
Anytime I need it to translate something into japanese, or just want to understand a sentence, I ask it to break down the grammar and vocabulary. To use an example used earlier in the thread:
You
十分お金さえあれば日本に住めるかも。
Break down the vocabulary and grammar used, and then translate
ChatGPT 4
Sure, let’s break down the sentence:
- 十分 (じゅうぶん): “enough”, “sufficient”
- お金 (おかね): “money”
- さえ: a particle used to mean “even” or “if only”
- あれば: the conditional form of ある (“to be” for inanimate objects), meaning “if there is”
- 日本 (にほん): “Japan”
- に: a particle indicating a direction or destination
- 住める (すめる): potential form of 住む (すむ, “to live”), meaning “can live”
- かも: short for かもしれない, indicating possibility or uncertainty, “might” or “maybe”
Putting it all together, the sentence 十分お金さえあれば日本に住めるかも。translates to:
“If I have enough money, I might be able to live in Japan.”
The sentence expresses a conditional situation (having enough money) and a possible outcome (being able to live in Japan). The use of かも at the end adds a sense of uncertainty or speculation to the statement.
3 Likes
Thanks for the replies!
I use the Kanshudo AI correct.
https://www.kanshudo.com/ai/correct
It works really well to catch obvious errors in my writing that I should have caught. It also provides more natural alternatives to it. I don’t know if they are using ChatGPT or what version if so, but I can say it does help me analyze nuance better. I feel I am learning from the AI to write better.
I do write these texts corrected by AI for a class. I initially write them myself the best I can, and then go over with the corrected sentences with my teacher.
Sometimes the AI version doesn’t fit with the rest of the sentence. So the teacher does help me see why the AI was wrong, and that is really good to know.
Kanshudo only fixes one sentence at a time, so in reality, you cannot count on it to understand the context of larger texts.Does ChatGPT correct paragraphs rather than only sentences?
I think that if I were in a lower level I wouldn’t use AI (or use it sparingly -I didn’t use it then-), much less rely on it to fix my mistakes when it is not about nuance. Maybe that’s a personal preference, but I would only consider AI to fix Japanese sentences as we would rely on Grammerly to fix English texts -when you already know a certain level of English-.
This also makes me wonder if anyone knows if there is a Grammerly alternative for the Japanese language? I haven’t found one but maybe I don’t know how to search for it. 
1 Like
I use it for everything. Not only text, but you can also use it for conversation practice with GPT voice.
You can mix together your languages while talking, and it’ll still understand you, and correct you if you ask it to.
Here’s some examples of me using it:
https://chat.openai.com/share/8b580fa1-b598-47a3-9cc0-9f3a69bc40d2 - If it hasn’t heard of a word before, you can ask it to search the internet for it.
https://chat.openai.com/share/95281dce-7683-4555-9344-a229a8a71c6c
It can somewhat understand images, but it struggles to read custom fonts, so still some wayS to go before its perfect:
2 Likes