Let’s round out the week with our very own technical support agent.

We’ll also explore visual mode in ChatGPT.

Let’s get started:

Having someone you can ask to help resolve tech problems is a life-saver.

As someone who “works with computers” I’m my family’s go-to tech support guy. So I’m more on the giving end here!

But what can take someone tech-savvy seconds to diagnose and fix could save hours of futile effort otherwise.

Thankfully we can now call on ChatGPT for this assistance. We just need to remember to do so!

Let’s look at a few ways to do this.

Basic query

First up and most basic, ChatGPT can give advice for most well known pieces of software and hardware out there. You don’t even need to open the manual. ChatGPT has read the manual already!

If you run into a tech block you can generally just ask ChatGPT how to get it done.

For instance I recently had mic problems with my mic sounding too quiet.

I can pop in a simple request like:

My Rode NT-USB is very quiet on my Macbook.

Give me a set of potential fixes. Ask for clarifying information as required.

ChatGPT will offer me a set of potential solutions to work through:

It ended up being using a non-powered USB hub which was ChatGPT’s 6th suggestion!

What do you need from me?

The above basic query works well if you know roughly what’s wrong and the solution is simple enough.

Sometimes it’s less obvious and you’ll need to provide more information for ChatGPT to be able to give assistance. This happens more in code, website problems or anything more “complex”.

In this case we’ll use a prompt like this:

My website is loading slowly.

Ask me for the details you'll need to be able to diagnose and provide recommendations.

For each tell me how to gather than information for you.

When I've provided it all provide recommendations.

This differs because we are asking ChatGPT to first have us go and collect information. And once we’ve got everything it needs it’ll be able to give suggestions.

This stops it from being too generic. In this case above if I just asked how to speed up my website I’d get a whole load of generic suggestions.

Instead ChatGPT will ask me to go fetch specific information like server response time:

We return to ChatGPT with all this specific information and it’ll actually be able to pinpoint the exact problem we’re having.

Show me

OK here’s the really cool one. Sometimes you don’t even need to type it all out with ChatGPT. Sometimes you can just show it the problem and it’ll know what to do.

To do this we can use its vision mode. Tap the camera icon to take a photo or the photo icon to upload one.

For example here’s a photo of a malfunctioning modem:

If we upload this photo and the model number ChatGPT can go ahead and diagnose potential issues.

We can also do this with software and code.

For example I noticed some error messages in my site’s code:

I’ve left this photo deliberately low quality (screen glare included) to show how powerful ChatGPT can be.

I uploaded this photo and asked “how do I fix these website errors” and got a list of the errors, explained:

More than this though a set of step by step instructions for the fixes:

Now, the more context I give ChatGPT the better its recommendations will be . But as a first pass this is already valuable. I would just continue my conversation with ChatGPT, asking for clarification when required, until the error is resolved.

Broader applications

We are talking about IT issues specifically in this Part but more broadly ChatGPT’s visual mode is mega powerful and underused.

I’m currently sitting in a cafe at a cinema and notice the seats are a little (!) worse for wear:

ChatGPT tells me to clean up the leather and then:

It then (politely) suggests that it may be too late and I should get them replaced or call a professional!

The point here though is that visual mode allows ChatGPT to give us advice on pretty much anything we can take a photo of. If you aren’t taking advantage of it yet make sure to begin adding it into your workflows as a powerful addition.