I test ChatGPT features for a living, and this new one really did supercharge my productivity

OpenAI is constantly adding new features to ChatGPT to make it more functional for everyday needs and more essential in our workflows. The most recent of these updates is a new canvas feature — unveiled last week — that has left me beyond impressed. 

If you use ChatGPT as a co-editor in any capacity, you will never again use ChatGPT without this feature. Canvas is a new interface that makes collaborating on your writing and coding projects easier with ChatGPT. The concept is best understood visually, so stick with me. Here’s how Canvas works.

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The interface

If you are a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, you can choose the “GPT-4o with canvas” beta from the model selector dropdown in the ChatGPT interface. Upon selection, your page may look the same, but once you enter your project, you will see the magic happen. 

For my example walk-through, I’ll use an essay I published as an undergrad. (I don’t use any AI tools to edit or write my ZDNET articles in any capacity.) I copied and pasted the essay text into the textbox with the prompt: “Can you help me edit this piece?” 

As you can see below, it automatically opened a new interface in which my edited project was placed on the right side of the screen, my initial prompt was on the left, and a textbox was available to ask additional questions. With this interface, no matter how many questions you ask, or how many edits are made, your project will always remain in the same spot on the right, giving you easy visibility as to what it is looking like after each edit, and how it fares next to the original.

What makes Canvas a game-changer? Typically, when you ask ChatGPT to revise the text, the AI outputs the new version as the next message, making it difficult to compare the original and edited piece side-by-side and keep track of the changes. 

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Although ChatGPT has advanced writing skills, it’s still AI and prone to hallucinations, so it’s useful to double-check edits. Keeping track of the edits is also useful because it helps you learn from the changes and possibly implement them next time. It also prevents you from having to scroll up and down continuously through your conversation to find the suggestions and edits. 

The shortcuts 

Another game-changing element of this layout is the shortcuts. On the right page where your project lives, a button in the bottom in the lower right corner — represented by a pencil — includes four one-click shortcuts that can transform your project with a click. 

The writing shortcuts help users adjust lengths, change reading levels, add emojis, and “add final polish,” which checks for grammar, clarity, and consistency. The coding shortcuts can review code, add logs, add comments, fix bugs, and port to a language. The buttons are a quick and efficient way to implement the change you want without using text prompts. 

Here’s another convenient tool: When you highlight a portion of your project, another set of shortcuts will appear. This time, Canvas enables you to change the formatting with options such as bold, italicize, or change text type and ask ChatGPT directly for help with that specific section. 

Once the edit on that specific section is complete, it will reflect in the larger project, keeping the rest of the project intact and only changing what the user requested — which helps the user stay organized. 

What about the quality of the edits? Because Canvas uses GPT-4o — OpenAI’s most advanced, well-rounded model — the edits made are valuable and improve the overall quality of the text. If you ask for a general edit, it will not only look for things like grammar and spelling (as Grammarly does) but will check for syntax.

The cost 

Unfortunately, all of the wonders described above will come at a cost. To access the feature right now, you have to be a ChatGPT Plus subscriber, which costs $20 per month. If you are a ChatGPT power user, the cost may be justified as it comes with other perks, such as the new Voice Mode and unlimited image generations.

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Enterprise and Edu users will get access to Canvas this week, according to OpenAI,  and ChatGPT free users will gain access in the future once the tool is out of beta.