ChatGPT and Its Text Genre Competence

An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Being able to reciprocate and produce different kinds of texts is a key quality and a core professional competence. Therefore, genre competence is fundamental in not only educational and academic contexts but also professional environments. This paper addresses the extent to which text-generating AI tools could support the development of genre competence and how suitable they are as a tool for genre-based writing didactics. To answer this, it is necessary to examine whether AI tools, such as ChatGPT, are competent in terms of text genres. To do this, the research explores whether ChatGPT is capable of producing and revising genre-specific texts or identifying and analyzing genre-specific patterns and whether it produces different outputs in terms of genre. To examine these questions, we have conducted a pilot study that includes several different text types and several areas of application (generating, revising, summarizing, classifying, and analyzing). The paper’s results relate to three aspects of “Education in the Digital World”: a) competencies, b) possible changes to educational and learning processes using AI tools, and c) appropriate tools for education in general.