Decoding ChatGPT: A taxonomy of existing research, current challenges, and possible future directions

TLDR

ChatGPT, launched in November 2022, has attracted widespread attention for its strong performance across domains such as exams and creative writing, yet concerns about bias and trust persist. This review surveys more than 100 Scopus-indexed papers to construct a taxonomy of ChatGPT research, examine its applications, and outline future research directions. The authors conduct a systematic analysis of the literature, identifying common methodological approaches and mapping ChatGPT’s use across healthcare, marketing, finance, software engineering, academia, environmental science, and NLP. The review reveals that ChatGPT holds significant potential for real‑world problem solving across diverse fields, but also highlights persistent bias and trust issues that warrant further investigation to realize its transformative impact.

Abstract

Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer (ChatGPT) has gained significant interest and attention since its launch in November 2022. It has shown impressive performance in various domains, including passing exams and creative writing. However, challenges and concerns related to biases and trust persist. In this work, we present a comprehensive review of over 100 Scopus-indexed publications on ChatGPT, aiming to provide a taxonomy of ChatGPT research and explore its applications. We critically analyze the existing literature, identifying common approaches employed in the studies. Additionally, we investigate diverse application areas where ChatGPT has found utility, such as healthcare, marketing and financial services, software engineering, academic and scientific writing, research and education, environmental science, and natural language processing. Through examining these applications, we gain valuable insights into the potential of ChatGPT in addressing real-world challenges. We also discuss crucial issues related to ChatGPT, including biases and trustworthiness, emphasizing the need for further research and development in these areas. Furthermore, we identify potential future directions for ChatGPT research, proposing solutions to current challenges and speculating on expected advancements. By fully leveraging the capabilities of ChatGPT, we can unlock its potential across various domains, leading to advancements in conversational AI and transformative impacts in society.