ChatGPT is great at writing text, but editing long academic texts was challenging. AI often loses the “big picture,” and the writing can sound generic, trivial, and repetitive. The newest canvas feature offers a better solution, allowing you to work on large texts (or code), direct your prompts at parts of them or even refine parts manually. Think of it like a Google Doc you can edit collectively with ChatGPT.
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Previously, if you needed to work on lengthy text, like a paper, you would copy and paste it into the ChatGPT chat and ask for edits. ChatGPT would generate a new version and output it on the screen. This is not very convenient if your text is very long, as you end up with many versions of the lengthy text. Moreover, it is easy to miss any accidental changes ChatGPT introduced during an edit.
With Canvas, this is much easier. The lengthy text you want to work on now lives on a “canvas”; think of it like a Google Docs window inside your ChatGPT. You can select text inside the canvas and ask for specific, targeted edits of this text or use the main chatGPT window to make large adjustments to the entire document.
This means that you and ChatGPT are collectively working on refining a single piece of text. While you tell what needs to be done, ChatGPT does it for you. You can track changes with the new user interface and jump between versions.
Opening ChatGPT with Canvas
To start using ChatGPT canvas, you need to select the model “GPT-4o with canvas” and then type in your prompt. However, not every prompt will lead to the canvas being used. For example, if I were to ask a question, ChatGPT would simply answer it without opening the canvas. To make sure that canvas opens, you need to state what type of text or code you want to work on. I like to start with “I want to work on …” or “Help me write a ….”.
Your conversation is not limited to a single canvas. After you close a canvas in your conversation it appears as a box or button inside the chat and you can return to it at any time. Here is how it looks:
ChatGPT Canvas is not showing, what to do?
If the canvas doesn’t open automatically, it is usually due to the structure of your prompt. Specify clearly what you want to write for ChatGPT to open the canvas. Think of canvas as a document that you and ChatGPT work on collectively. If your prompt does not specify the contents of this document, there is no need for ChatGPT to create it (i.e. open the canvas). Use a prompt containing “I want to work on..”, “I want to write a passage/paragraph on…” to ensure canvas opens. Here is an example:
❌ What are species distribution models? → Will not open canvas.
✅ Write a paragraph on species distribution models. → Opens canvas and writes the text.
Another trick to force canvas to open is to copy and past the section you want to work on directly: “Let’s work on refining this section: <copy your text>”. This guarantees that the canvas opens.
How to use ChatGPT Canvas
Using Canvas is like sitting with a colleague (ChatGPT) in front of a computer and collectively editing a document (the canvas). You can either tell ChatGPT what part you need to edit and how, or just edit it yourself. Each canvas can contain parts of the entire document you want to edit, e.g. one for the introduction, one for the conclusion and so on. Canvas is equally suited to edit code instead of text.
Editing passages in your text
In your canvas, highlight the text you want to edit. A small window will pop-up to ask you for the prompt. In the example below, I want to edit “specific ecological responses” which is very vague to something more concrete. Here is the result:
At the top right of your canvas are a few buttons to show the changes chatGPT just made. You can also undo them. Keep in mind that the text itself is editable, so you can just manually go in and change parts of ChatGPT’s response that you did not like.
Editing the entire text
To edit the entire text you need to use the main chat that is located on the left side. Tell ChatGPT what you need editing and it will go through the entire text to edit it. An inconspicuous moving white overlay will overlay the text as ChatGPT edits it. Here is how it looks when I want to shorten my introduction to a single paragraph:
To make things a little bit easier, a little button at the bottom right contains shortcuts to the most common actions:
- Shortening/expanding text
- Rewriting it for a more/less educated audience
- Adding a “final polish” (making the text somewhat more readable and adding headers)
- Adding emojis
If you select a text before using the menu, the command will be applied to the selected text only. This is useful if you just want to shorten a single sentence rather than the whole text.
Using CustomGPTs inside Canvas
You can access any Custom GPTs to ask for specific services, like finding a paper using Consensus and SciSpace while improving your text. In the example below I use Consensus to find a paper and then ask ChatGPT to integrate the citation into the introduction. To access custom GPTs type in @ followed by the name of the custom GPT to direct the conversation to this assistant. Assistants are a powerful feature in ChatGPT; if you’re unfamiliar with them, check out the Effortless AI course to start building your own assistants and massively boost your productivity.
Note that you need to have pinned the GPTs with @… first to find them. Click on “Explore GPTs” in the main menu, then find the GPT you want to use, start a chat, and use the button at the top left to “keep in sidebar.”
ChatGPT Canvas Specifically for Academic Writing
Academic writing is, technically speaking, not different from regular writing, but it follows a certain set of rules (e.g. using present tense in results and jargon) and usually has a fixed structure (e.g. your introduction should not mention any results). The easiest way to ensure this is to give ChatGPT some fixed writing instructions. You can prepare a prompt that you copy and paste at the beginning of the conversation. The process is the same as using customGPTs for academic writing, but these are currently incompatible with the new canvas feature. Here is an example of a set of rules for academic writing I use:
Secondly, ChatGPT needs to know the context of your writing. If you are working on a section of the paper, the context could include the whole paper and possibly other closely related papers. This helps ChatGPT to understand your domain better and thus make better suggestions. To add context, either upload a file or copy and paste the relevant text into the conversation.
In this example, I drag and drop a paper, and ChatGPT reads it and integrates it into my introduction. The process of reading a paper and rewriting the introduction takes AI less than 30 seconds – amazing, isn’t it?
Overall, I think, academics of the near future will not be slowed down by writing papers anymore, with AI automating larger and larger parts of it.
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Is ChatGPT Canvas available for free?
Canvas is available for all premium subscribers of ChatGPT; while it is not an additional product to the regular ChatGPT, it does need a subscription.
Summary
ChatGPT canvas is a giant leap forward in convenience and usability when editing large texts or code with AI. Think of Canvas as an editable document that opens inside of ChatGPT and can be edited by you or the AI. In addition, you can use custom GPTs to search for papers or anything else you have been using ChatGPT for. The key to using Canvas effectively for academic writing is to provide enough context for the AI to generate useful text and edit your paper chunk by chunk. It is possible that academic writing will be replaced with technologies like this in the near future.
