ChatGPT’s new conversation tool is my favorite AI trick in a while – Digital Trends
Over the past couple of weeks, ChatGPT has been at the center of a few unsavory investigations. From doling out advice that landed a person in the hospital to numerous cases of self-harm, the AI chatbot’s failures have stirred serious scrutiny. The debate has reached a point where OpenAI is building parental controls and a warning system for parents.
On the more “normal” side of things, ChatGPT has just received a feature update that will make conversations a lot more rewarding, especially if you intend to get some work done, or just have a multi-faceted conversation. That feature is called branched chats.
It’s like telling the chatbot to “Hold on to this topic, tell me more about the other thing, and then return to the original discussion.” You see, an AI chatbot has a certain personality and “memory” for each interaction. The moment you switch to another topic, it loses the grasp and “mood” of the previous discussion.
Talking to an AI chatbot is a slippery slope for multiple reasons. The biggest caveat is the “personality” or “character” of an AI assistant, and how the “memory” interplays with the “context” of the ongoing conversation. Let me explain it to you in easier terms.
Most people use a chatbot in its vanilla shape. Some use a prompt like “explain XYZ as a physics professor” to avoid the generalist explanations of a concept or topic. This is essentially telling the chatbot to act and talk like a certain “personality.”
But as soon as you launch a fresh topic of conversation, it switches to its default state, where it acts more like a helpful knowledge butler. That’s more of a necessity than a fundamental fault, but the level of knowledge it gives in this default state may be a hit or miss.
At the same time, you don’t want ChatGPT to retain its “chirpy motivational friend” vibe for the next question, where you ask it about some sordid chapter of human history, the impact of social media in fueling grave robbery and illicit human body parts trade, or other such morbid stuff. In a nutshell, you don’t always need a “code switch,” and that’s where forked chats in ChatGPT come to the rescue.
When you are having a back-and-forth exchange with ChatGPT, scroll to the bottom of the AI response and click on the three-dot button. Doing so will open a small window where you will see the freshly added “branch in new chat.”
When you start a branched chat, it opens in a new browser tab. Here, you can ask all the follow-up questions in the context of the original topic, dig deeper, or close it at your convenience.
The core idea is that your main ChatGPT conversation doesn’t get crowded, or you would be left with no option but to repeatedly scroll from top to buttom, or the other way around.
There are only two prerequisites to branching a conversation. You must be logged in with your ChatGPT account. And second, this feature only works within a web browser environment, and not the mobile app.
With branching, ChatGPT simply creates a fork of the current dialogue where you get extra context, or some unrelated information, before returning to the original topic. Think of it as creating a literal branch, or a mindmap for ChatGPT, where it doesn’t lose the grasp of the main topic.
It’s pretty powerful, especially when you are digging deep into a topic, looking for all the related information, but don’t want to lose the plot. Let’s say you run into the following passage in your tete-a-tete with ChatGPT about the events in The Lord of the Rings:
“Gandalf confronts the Balrog in the Mines of Moria. As the Fellowship flees across the narrow stone Bridge of Khazad-dûm, the fiery, shadowy Balrog of Morgoth approaches. Gandalf fights the Balrog from the depths of Moria up to the peak of Zirakzigil. After victory, Gandalf also dies — his body consumed in the struggle. But the Valar sent him back with greater authority to complete his mission, now as Gandalf the White.”
If you’re not well-versed with the lore, you get a heck ton of questions from a lone paragraph. Is Gandalf the White a different personality, and more powerful? What’s a Valar? What does a Balrog have to do with Morgoth? And if the banter is more detailed, the number of characters and items that pop up will only bring up more questions.
With a branched conversation, you can simply ask all those questions in the right context. The context is important here. Let’s say you are talking strictly about the books, which have different character arcs and events than the films. So, when you branch out the conversation about the aforesaid passage, all your questions will be answered based on how they unfold in the books, and not the films.
Otherwise, ChatGPT would either mix things up or you would unintentionally consume the wrong information. Essentially, branching a gossip is like telling ChatGPT to maintain the core memory and context of the original chat and accordingly answer all the related questions in the branch.
The Lord of the Rings, arguably, is a very blunt way of describing the benefits.
When you need to dig deep into a topic or subject where you have to perform a lot of secondary research, a branched AI-human gabfest keeps everything closely tied to the main theme. All your subsequent questions are answered in a relatable fashion and “mood.”
Right now, for example, I am researching the physical and psychological benefits of using an e-ink screen compared to an average OLED and LCD display. Midway through reading a Deep Research report produced by ChatGPT, I come across statements like “Field experiment on de-colorizing the smartphone interface,” and “E-ink showed differences in temporal/spatial recall vs. print.”
I am not sure how exactly researchers achieved the de-colorization of a phone’s UI. If I head to Google Search or ChatGPT to ask how it’s done, it will give diverse answers like picking an e-ink phone, swapping the screen, or using a software toggle. But if I ask the same question in a branched conversation, ChatGPT will know the exact research paper I am talking about and supply the answer I am seeking in that hyperspecific context.
In a nutshell, branching a chat is all about retaining the memory of an ongoing exchange and helping you find answers to all the follow-up and related questions in that exact knowledge bubble without missing the vibe of the central topic. It’s just a more humane approach — if I might say so — to discovering knowledge via an AI chatbot.
I wish there were a way to create a mindmap of all the answers you get within branched ChatGPT tabs, or create some other graphical representation of it all. But if you really want that facility, you can always export the conversations in Google’s excellent NotebookLM tool and even generate audio podcasts out of your knowledge hunt.
Elon Musk has filed a lawsuit against Apple (once again), alleging that the company is suppressing rival AI products to favor ChatGPT-maker OpenAI. At the center of the lawsuit is Grok, an AI chatbot developed by Musk-led xAI, and how it has allegedly been throttled to favor ChatGPT on the App Store for exposure.
What is happening?
AI is everywhere now, with topics like GPT-5 and Grok’s recent open-source announcement dominating headlines. One of the primary (and most valid) criticisms of the technology is how energy hungry it is; some studies suggest GPT-5 burns through enough electricity to power 1.5 million homes daily, not to mention the amount of water it takes to keep those data centers cooled.
But a new report indicates there could be another option, and one that doesn’t mean we have to scorch the planet in order to use AI technology. The UK Environment Agency and techUK worked together to survey 73 data centers around England, and the results are both surprising and encouraging.
The AI race is unforgivingly fast and brutal. Industries have already adopted it, and the biggest AI companies are racing to put it in the hands of students through exclusive deals and discounts. Now, it seems the next avenue is giving universal access to all citizens, starting with ChatGPT Plus.
What’s the deal?
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