A woman says she turned to artificial intelligence and used ChatGPT for help with paying off thousands of dollars of debt.
Realtor and content creator Jennifer Allan started a 30-day ChatGPT challenge that she shared in a TikTok video series.
“Everyday, I’m asking for one task to make money to pay down my $23,000 in credit card debt,” Allan explained.
Over a month, Allan made over $11,000 and paid off $12,078.93 of her debt.
Allan credits ChatGPT for helping her get disciplined about reaching her goal.
“I went from not looking at [my debt] at all to, you know, being in it every day,” said Allan.
ChatGPT gave Allan many recommendations, including one unexpected idea that went viral.
“It told me to put my total debt number, to the $23,000, on a watermelon in Sharpie … and auction it off on eBay as ‘debt art,'” Allan said in a TikTok post. That post went viral, reaching over 2 million views.
In a follow-up video post, Allan explained that she had taken a photo of the watermelon and auctioned off the photo for $51.
But other ChatGPT answers were much more fruitful for Allan, including one idea to search for money she may have forgotten about in apps she had on her phone.
“I found on Venmo I had $100.80 that was sitting there,” Allan said in another video post.
Allan also said the journey helped her rediscover other money sources she hadn’t thought about in a while.
“My husband was actually like, ‘Oh, didn’t we have a brokerage account?'” Allan recalled.
“There’s $10,200 sitting in this account that is available. Like I could literally cry right now,” she said in a TikTok video.
Allan said nearly half of her credit card debt has been paid off so far.
Although Allan’s method worked for her, some financial experts like Noelle Carter, president and CEO of Parachute Credit Counseling, warn that ChatGPT and AI should be treated as a tool and not a solution.
“AI can be a powerful assistant to come up with ideas, but, you know, certainly not a substitute for human expertise or critical thinking,” Carter said.