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Is ChatGPT Able to Generate Texts that Are Easy to Understand and Read?

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Good Practices and New Perspectives in Information Systems and Technologies (WorldCIST 2024)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems ((LNNS,volume 987))

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Abstract

The emergence of generative artificial intelligence applications in recent years has opened up the possibility of automatically generating text tailored to the needs of users. However, is the text generated by these tools easily readable and understandable? This study aims to analyze the ChatGPT's capacity to generate easy to understand texts in Spanish, while adhering to the recommended guidelines for Plain Language. The comprehensiveness of several websites belonging to the Public Administration in Spain has been analyzed. Moreover, ChatGPT was requested to enhance these texts in accordance with the guidelines of Plain Language in Spanish. The original texts and those generated by ChatGPT were then compared to analyze the primary linguistic indicators of different Plain Language guidelines. The study presents a quantitative analysis demonstrating that the new texts generated by ChatGPT do not adhere to Plain Language guidelines. Additionally, the study highlights the use of linguistic elements that should be avoided.

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Acknowledgements

This research has been partially funded by INSIGHT research project (PID2022-137344OB-C32) and the grant for research contracts PEJ-2021-AI/SAL-21563. We also thank Santiago Moreno Fernandez, Victor Muñoz-Velasco and Changao Wu for their support in the PLN analyzer.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science Carlos III, University of Madrid, 28911, Madrid, Leganes, Spain

    Andrea Sastre, Ana Iglesias & Jorge Morato

  2. Department of Library and Information Science, Complutense University of Madrid, 28018, Madrid, Spain

    Sonia Sanchez-Cuadrado

Authors
  1. Andrea Sastre
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  2. Ana Iglesias
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  3. Jorge Morato
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  4. Sonia Sanchez-Cuadrado
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Sastre .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. ISEG, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal

    Álvaro Rocha

  2. College of Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, USA

    Hojjat Adeli

  3. Institute of Data Science and Digital Technologies, Vilnius University, Vilnius, Lithuania

    Gintautas Dzemyda

  4. DCT, Universidade Portucalense, Porto, Portugal

    Fernando Moreira

  5. Institute of Information Technology, Lodz University of Technology, Łódz, Poland

    Aneta Poniszewska-Marańda

Appendix I. Linguistic Elements Analyzed

Appendix I. Linguistic Elements Analyzed

Table 3 shows the comparative data in original text (O) and generated text (G) using ChatGPT system for the 10 texts extracted from the Spanish Government web pages. Boxed bold text is used to highlight when the generated text is worse than the recommendation.

Table 3. Recommendations and number of occurrences in each original and generated text.
Full size table

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Sastre, A., Iglesias, A., Morato, J., Sanchez-Cuadrado, S. (2024). Is ChatGPT Able to Generate Texts that Are Easy to Understand and Read?. In: Rocha, Á., Adeli, H., Dzemyda, G., Moreira, F., Poniszewska-Marańda, A. (eds) Good Practices and New Perspectives in Information Systems and Technologies. WorldCIST 2024. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 987. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60221-4_14

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