The Impact of ChatGPT on the role of a Product Manager

The advent of Artificial Intelligence chatbots like ChatGPT, has seen many employees reconsider their job security and ask themselves if they would not be out of jobs very soon.

I am sure as a Product Manager, you must be wondering if ChatGPT is a threat to your job. And with people trying to do more with less people, for instance Elon Musk and Twitter and the recent increase in tech layoffs

First of all, for those who do not know about ChatGPT, here is a little introduction to ChatGPT.

ChatGPT stands for Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer, and it is a chatbot developed by OpenAI that optimizes language models for dialogue. The application is built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 family of large language models, and is fine-tuned with both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

OpenAI released its viral ChatGPT in November 2022 and within three months, it had reached over 100 million users, including my humble self, of course.

Think of ChatGPT as a friendly know-it-all friend who has access so much information that it knows everything and uses artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms to generate natural language responses to a wide range of questions.

OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, was founded in 2015 by CEO Sam Altman, Billionaire Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Jessica Livingston, Elon Musk, Ilya Sutskever, Peter Thiel, Olivier Grabias and others. It conducts AI research with the declared intention of promoting and developing a friendly AI.

Now that you know about ChatGPT, so what can ChatGPT do and cannot do for you as a Product Manager? How can it affect you as a Product Manager?

While thinking through this, I said to myself..Hmmm…why don’t I ask ChatGPT?

So I prompted ChatGPT – “How ChatGPT can help me as a product manager?”

This was the response I got.

As a product manager, ChatGPT can be a valuable tool to help you in a variety of ways, including:

1. Idea generation: ChatGPT can be used to generate new ideas for products or features based on specific criteria or user needs. You can ask ChatGPT to provide suggestions based on certain keywords, customer feedback, or industry trends, and it can provide you with a list of potential ideas.
2. Market research: ChatGPT can help you conduct market research by analyzing customer reviews, social media conversations, and industry reports. You can ask ChatGPT to provide insights on consumer trends, competitor analysis, and product positioning.
3. Product development: ChatGPT can assist in product development by providing feedback on prototypes, wireframes, and design concepts. You can ask ChatGPT to evaluate the usability, functionality, and user experience of your product and suggest improvements based on industry best practices.
4. Customer support: ChatGPT can also help with customer support by answering frequently asked questions, providing troubleshooting assistance, and offering product recommendations. You can train ChatGPT to respond to common customer inquiries and help reduce the workload of your customer support team.
5. Data analysis: ChatGPT can be used to analyze data and provide insights on customer behavior, usage patterns, and product performance. You can ask ChatGPT to generate reports and dashboards that provide a comprehensive view of your product’s performance and identify areas for improvement.

Overall, ChatGPT can provide valuable insights and support for product managers throughout the product development lifecycle, from idea generation to launch and ongoing support.

I then asked ChatGPT another question – “What ChatGPT cannot do for me as a Product manager”

This was its response. 

While ChatGPT can be a valuable tool for product managers, there are some limitations to what it can do. Here are a few things that ChatGPT cannot do for you as a product manager:

1. Replace human judgment: While ChatGPT can provide insights and suggestions, it cannot replace the judgment and experience of a human product manager. Ultimately, product decisions need to be made by humans based on a variety of factors, including market research, customer feedback, and business objectives.
2. Conduct user testing: ChatGPT can provide feedback on prototypes and design concepts, but it cannot conduct user testing to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of a product. User testing requires human participants to interact with the product and provide feedback, which ChatGPT cannot do.
3. Develop a product strategy: ChatGPT can provide insights on market trends and customer needs, but it cannot develop a comprehensive product strategy. Product strategy requires a deep understanding of the market, competition, and customer needs, as well as the ability to develop a long-term vision for the product.
4. Handle complex business decisions: While ChatGPT can provide data analysis and insights, it cannot make complex business decisions on behalf of a product manager. Business decisions require a thorough understanding of the company’s financials, legal requirements, and competitive landscape, as well as the ability to balance multiple factors to make the best decision.
5. Guarantee success: While ChatGPT can provide insights and suggestions, it cannot guarantee the success of a product. Product success depends on a variety of factors, including market conditions, customer preferences, and competitor actions, as well as the ability of the product team to execute effectively.

As you can see, your job as a Product manager is still very relevant and you have no need to fear ChatGPT or any other AI related chatbot.

Personally, I see ChatGPT as an ally to the average Product Manager and you should use ChatGPT to your advantage.

ChatGPT cannot replace a Product Manager’s intuition, empathy, stakeholder management skills, teamwork and collaboration skills. Above all, you are human and ChatGPT is not.