ChatGPT Character Limit & How to make ChatGPT Write Longer
by Danesh Ramuthi · Updated March 01, 2023
ChatGPT is a technology that is going to revolutionise the entire media, marketing and IT industry.
We think of ChatGPT as a software that gives us answers for any kind of questions that we have.
That’s actually an oversimplification of it. OpenAI’s ChatGPT can write essays better than most humans, create codes for a softwares, and conduct market research in a split second.
Recently it passed an interview for a coding job with a $183,000 annual salary.
With this huge shift in technology arriving, it is imperative for us to know how it works and what are its limitations.
In this blog post, we are going to help you understand one of the most important features of ChatGPT which is it’s character and word limit.
We are going to learn what the ChatGPT character limit is, whether it has a word limit, through a series of real experiments using ChatGPT itself, and how you can bypass the ChatGPT character limit.
Let’s get started.
What is ChatGPT?
Definition of ChatGPT in a very simple way that even 5 years old can understand is as follows:
ChatGPT is like a smart robot friend who can talk and answer questions. You can type in words and ask it things and it will try its best to give you a helpful answer.
For professionals to grasp what the definition of ChatGPT is, it is an ai powered chatbot and an advanced artificial intelligence language model developed by OpenAI.
It’s capable of having text-based conversations and answering questions on a wide range of topics.
Think of it as a highly sophisticated chatbot that can understand and respond to written language in a human-like way.
We understood what ChatGPT is, let’s dive right into the main topic of today which is ChatGPT character limit.
What's the character limit for Chat GPT's replies?
ChatGPT Character Limit Experiment 1: Listicle Questions
Recently one of the users on Reddit asked ChatGPT a question and encountered an error. Let’s conduct the experiment by yourself and see the results.
Topic: List of 20 mythical creatures from ancient Greece with descriptions of their physical characteristics as well as their special skills, strength, and weakness.
Target: ChatGPT must list all the 20 mythical creatures with the given requirements.
Experiment Passed if it successfully achieved the target and it failed if it didn’t.
Fingers crossed.
Here’s the result:
As you can see, ChatGPT stopped responding at the 9th of the 20th category producing a total of 1349 Characters and a maximum length of 283 Words.
It’s just one experiment and we can’t for sure come to a conclusion whether the moment it stopped is its character limit so let’s conduct 2 more experiments in 2 different scenarios.
ChatGPT Character Limit Experiment 2: Essay Question
We are going to prompt ChatGPT to produce an essay.
Topic: Write me an essay on Greek Mythological Figures
Target: Check total number of characters produced for essay questions.
Here’s the final result that we achieved for this experiment.
For an essay question, ChatGPT produced a complete article of 378 Words with 1815 Characters.
Seems like not a complete article now.
So do you want to test ChatGPT’s limit and see how far it can go?
Let’s do it.
ChatGPT Character Limit Experiment 3: Custom Question
In this final experiment, we are going to ask ChatGPT to write a 1500 words of article.
Topic: 1500 Words Complete Article on the topic History of Rome
Target: ChatGPT has to write 1500 words or at least 1000 words
Experiment is considered successful when ChatGPT produces an article with more than 1000 words.
Here’s our final experiment results:
Well, from the look of the image above you must have inferred that, we get more words than the previous essay, in fact this time, ChatGPT produces 615 Words and 2835 Characters respectively.
So what is the ChatGPT character limit based on the experiments above?
ChatGPT’s character limit is based on the question that you ask of it.
If you ask a listicle question you might get an average character limit of 1400 and for an essay question it is 2000 character limit.
Do note that it totally depends on the specifics of your questions and the numbers above are just an average.
Does ChatGPT have a word limit?
Many ChatGPT users have responded to their frustrations online on the issue that they are encountering chatgpt internal server error on producing long responses.
ChatGPT character limit input
However, these word restrictions are inconsistent, and your experience may differ from that of others. It is speculated that there is a fixed “token limit” that will restrict the number of messages and replies you can send.
It is currently assumed that there is a maximum number of tokens, or hard limit, of roughly 4000 tokens. Therefore, if the total number of tokens in your messages and responses exceeds 4000, you will likely need to begin a new inquiry.
There is still a lot to learn about the token system’s underlying design, so you could be able to go above this limit or hit a wall at lower token counts.
The best course of action for you to take is to test your messages and inquiries to determine how long you can get them without encountering problems with non-responsiveness. This will enable you to determine for yourself what the ChatGPT word limit is
How to make ChatGPT Write longer and produce more words? Fine-Tuning ChatGPT Word and Character Limit.
Right now, we understand what ChatGPT character limit is and whether it really has one. We learned that yes, ChatGPT can’t continuously produce long responses and has a flexible character limit imposed on it for the responses.
But Wait!
There’a a way around it.
Yes we are serious.
Now you can continue generating words and characters from ChatGPT as much as you can.
Use the Continue Prompt
Once you have generated an answer for your question, simply write “continue” or “Go On” on the ChatGPT common box and it will continue giving you the remaining answers.
This works like a charm and let’s take a look at our first experiment just now and how it all is related.
See how the prompt continues from the 9th category, where it was cut off just now, all the way to the 20th category. We now have a full answer to our initial question.
Use the Expand Prompt
Now you have a definitive answer from ChatGPT and in order to get more words and character is to highlight the text and paste it on the common box by adding the word “expand” on the front.
It’s a very simple yet effective way to get longer responses from ChatGPT
You will receive a much detailed explanation on the particular sentences that you have highlighted.
Let’s see how it works.
Original Query:
Expanded Answer:
The expanded query now produces a more detailed response which you can use.
ChatGPT uses deep learning AI to recognise when you’ve requested it to elaborate on an earlier response.
When you ask ChatGPT to provide more details about a question it has already answered, it will do so automatically in response to the expanded query.
This is a simple method for increasing the ChatGPT response length limit.
It can be a fantastic choice for someone who has asked ChatGPT a lengthy question.
Few users have reported that lengthy searches can result in ChatGPT becoming unresponsive.
By requesting ChatGPT to expand on an answer that is sufficient to your liking, you can use the continue feature to have it read your entire query.
Add Page Numbers at the end of each response
I discovered a method to boost output by inserting text such as “page 1 of 10” right at the end of the question.
Then, to continue, type “page 2 of 10,” and the AI will do the rest.
We personally tested out this method and can assure you that it really works.
Here’s how it works:
Ask ChatGPT to rewrite it in 1000 Words: Be very specific in your query.
Right after ChatGPT has generated an answer, you can simply prompt ChatGPT by asking it to rewrite the entire 1000 or more words in your following query.
Even though it won’t produce exactly as much as 1000 words, the newer response would be much higher and of higher quality.
Here’s an example:
Original Answer:
Rewritten Answer:
If the response that you receive were not enough then simply prompt ChatGPT “ Not enough, write more”.
This will allow you to get the word limit that you want.
One thing to keep in mind is that be very specific in your initial question.
If your question were too general like mine was then you will probably get 600-700 words but if your initial response has more details it will have more knowledge now to generate the number of words that you desired.
Speaking about specificity, that brings us to another solution which is to add more subheadings.
Ask everything that you want in the subheading of a question.
By separating your query into different questions, ChatGPT will be able to provide you with lengthier and more in-depth solutions.
When you use this subheading query strategy, you’ll get more results, and those results will be more specific, because you’re sending more queries.
This will provide you with a variety of lengthy solutions to each of the sub-questions, which will ultimately lead to a more comprehensive, multi-part response to your initial inquiry.
ChatGPT is a great tool, and this method of using it to answer a question in greater depth is both efficient and effective.
We did the same and here’s what we get.
By giving ChatGPT a more detailed query, you can save a lot of time by not keeping on prompting ChatGPT to continue.
Utilise your Query prompting skills
Basically, this is similar to what we discussed in the section before this. The major difference is you can be general in your question here but still get longer response.
How to do it?
Just type [Your Question] + “Give Detailed Response}
That’s all.
We did get amazing results using the method above.
One particular user named Asher Ryan has given a more technical solution to bypass ChatGPT Character Limit.
In his answer he talked about the max token option and how to utilise that to control the length of completion.
The max tokens option is where much of your control on the completion’s length will be found.
This option controls the “Response Length” in the Sandbox. Including both the prompt and the completion phases, these requests can utilise up to a maximum of 2,049 tokens.
He also reiterates to everyone to include instances of a specific length.
Asher Ryan Said “The API is adept at spotting patterns and will take into account the length of the samples when producing text. You can provide the necessary context for the expected length by giving an example, or several instances, with the required output length.”
He added, “To build a list of five books in any genre, we updated the science fiction book list creator for the exercise below.”
Does ChatGPT have a text limit? We asked ChatGPT about its Character and Word Limit:
ChatGPT responded by saying that there is indeed a character and word limit in generating an answer but this restriction, however, is a technical one imposed by the technology and software that fuels me rather than a strict character or word count.
“While there is no strict limit to the length of my answers, it is generally recommended to keep them concise and to the point, as this provides the best user experience. Long answers can take longer to generate and consume more resources, which could lead to decreased performance and increased latency.”, ChatGPT responded.
ChatGPT also added, “In short, while there is technically a limit to the length of my answers, the goal is to provide clear and concise responses that provide the information requested in a timely and efficient manner.”
Through our experiment here, we learned a lot of things, one for instance, there is a character limit imposed on ChatGPT but at the same time there are also several ways to bypass the character limit as we have discussed here.
Is it free to use ChatGPT?
ChatGPT is 100% free to use. Recently, they have introduced a subscription model for those who vigorously use chatgpt and want the app to run even on high demands.
That’s one of the benefits of ChatGPT Subscription.
Does ChatGPT need to be downloaded?
ChatGPT can be accessed online; no downloading is required. Despite the fact that there are many phoney versions available in app stores, OpenAI has yet to publish an official app. Due to the fact that these are not official ChatGPT programmes, they should be installed and used with caution.
It appears that ChatGPT is available for local download through Github, while using it is not required.
Does ChatGPT have a history?
Absolutely yes. In ChatGPT’s dashboard is a history section where you can access your past threads but you can’t save your conversation.
So how to save?
You can use a free Chrome or Firefox extension.
We have prepared a detailed guide on how you can save ChatGPT conversation.
Feel free to read through it.
With our real-life experiments, we have determined that the ChatGPT’s character and word limit depends on the questions you ask.
ChatGPT tends to produce answers of less than 1000 words, but it can be bypassed by using the continue, expand, and many other techniques we have explained here.
So, have fun trying out these tips and tricks we have taught you, and hopefully, after reading this article, you can now use ChatGPT more confidently.
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Thanks for Reading!
Danesh is a scientist and a content writer with more than 2 years of experience. He is also a published author of a science fiction children’s book titled Imaginary Tales.
AI has always been in his mind and soul ever since the cult classic movie 2001: A Space Odyssey inspired him to become a writer. Seeing a lot of stigma and misconceptions on AI, he has decided to found Ava Machina as an Hub for people from different backgrounds to gather and learn about AI through expert insights as well as redirecting them to the right source.